UBC Insiders » Best Buy University

Best Buy University

Posted By Alex Lougheed On August 26, 2010 @ 12:00 pm In Investigative | Comments Disabled

Ever since Pierre Ouillet ^[1] was hired on as Vice President Finance, Resources and Operations, we’ve been noticing a trend with UBC’s relatively recent hires (well, most have been here for about a year now. We’re behind, ok.)

^[2]

Alternatively you can work for BP with your BComm. We assume their public relations is hiring.

In the IT department, Oliver Grüter-Andrew ^[3] is the new Chief Information Officer. Oliver’s almost at his one-year anniversary with UBC, and before then, he worked for Accenture in their Best Buy portfolio ^[4], among others.

You also may have noticed Campus and Community Planning is all atwitter ^[5]. The fingers behind the tweets is Tracy Bains, a new hire, and recent supervisor of electronic communications ^[6] at Best Buy.

These are just two of what are rumoured to be many Best Buy alum in our ranks, thanks to Pierre’s shake up ^[7]. Fortunately, though, and we assume this is exclusively because of the changes (we’d make poor conspiracy theorists ^[8] otherwise,) a UBC BComm will now prepare you to even work at Best Buy, according to their 2011 recruitment package.

Update, August 26, 6:00pm PST:

We’ve found more. A lot more.

Dennis Silva ^[9], UBC’s Director of Supply Management, was the Senior Manager of Project Resources at Best Buy last year.

Michael Shakespeare ^[10], UBC’s Managing Assistant Treasurer, was the Senior Manager of Best Buy’s Personal Financial Services last year.

Doug Gregg ^[11] is a Project Management Consultant at UBC, coming from Accenture, and formerly from Best Buy.

Claudio Pini ^[12] is the Director, IT Transformation & Project Management Office, at UBC, coming from, you guessed it, Accenture, where she/he was a senior manager.

Bing Lim ^[13] is the Systems and Client Services Team Lead, coming from Best Buy.

Miranda Chu ^[14] comes from Best Buy and Accenture, and is UBC’s Network Team Lead, starting this year.

In total, that makes it two directors, one CIO, one managing assistant treasurer, two team leads and one “internal consultant”, among others we found. While it’s an obvious business practice to hire those you know will do a good job, when it comes to public institutions, equal opportunity hiring procedures must be held paramount.