5 top tips for awards success!

Marilyn has been buried under a massive virtual mound of entries for the APSCo Awards for Excellence. As a relative newbie here at the APSCo nerve centre I haven’t seen the process from the inside – I’ve usually been the guy on the outside trying to string together a series of vaguely related and almost impressive stats into a compelling and winning submission – with varying degrees of success it has to be said.

Whittling the entrants down to a shortlist was a very time-consuming and rigorous process and it’s been fun to hear the arguments between judges on who should or shouldn’t be shortlisted. What’s clear is that it is genuinely a very hard job to choose – they ain’t blowin’ smoke… well anywhere… when they say this. Marilyn says (somewhat wearily) that the standard of submissions gets better and better each year which in turn makes the judging panel’s job more difficult.

So let’s have those 5 top tips for award success, I hear you yell…

1.       The successful companies seem to have placed real emphasis on staff development…things like developing academies, partnerships with training providers, measures like the Recruitment PracticeStandard - all these things help.

2.       Judging by the gasps of exasperation, anyone who doesn’t stick to the word count can be in big trouble – if it says 500 words it’s a good plan to stick to it. There were loads of superbly crafted, literate and entertaining entries that began to rival classic Russian novels* in their length. Not a good plan. Follow the required format. There’s usually an option to provide any other information alongside the entry if there are things you really believe are important – give the judges the option

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3.       Answer the bloomin’ questions – there were some examples of Izzard-like lateral thinking which took us to wonderful places – but completely unrelated to the response being sought.

4.       Give evidence – we all love being market-leading, innovative, customer-focused, we have the best people blah blah blah – where’s the evidence? Show me the money! Well don’t, actually, bribery is never a good way forward…

5.       Make it easy for the judges to understand. Don’t over elaborate. Don’t use illustrations if they don’t really illuminate. Just make it easy to get to the information.

And if you follow all these rules, there’s still no guarantee. But at least you’ll be on that level playing field.

Happy form-filling!

* On the subject of huge novels I just finished reading 'Les Miserables' - it's utterly fantastic once you get past the social treatise(s). The last lines on Valjean's death were sublime:-

"The night was starless and extremely dark. No doubt, in the gloom, some immense angel stood erect with wings outspread, awaiting that soul."

Beautiful...