Judges Top Tips for a Successful IRP Awards Entry
Your recruitment career
If you’re planning on entering the IRP Awards this year (and you should! It’s free for IRP members to enter the individual categories) we want to help you as much as we can.
We spoke to our judges from the 2015 IRP Awards, to get their top tips for entrants this year.
Our judging panel consists of senior leaders from your big name clients, and they’re who you have to impress.
Here's what last year's judges had to say:
CLARITY.
“Be succinct, and stick to the brief. Entries that didn’t do as well this time around went off on tangents and didn’t follow the entry criteria.”
BRING IT TO LIFE.
“The entries I enjoyed reading the most were the tangible ones. There was a lot of ‘we’re very good at this’ without giving evidence. Some of the entrants who stood out gave case studies and specific examples. It doesn’t have to be paragraphs, it can just be two or three lines. Everyone who entered was fantastic, but it’s the little things that differentiate you and make a very big difference to the judges”
CHECK AND DOUBLE CHECK.
"Poor spelling and grammar doesn’t help you – get someone who doesn’t know your organisation or anything about you to read your entry – do they understand what you’re trying to say? Does it make sense to them? This is a better idea than getting someone internal to check it, as they already know what you’re trying to say.”
BE IMPACTFUL AND INSPIRING.
“Putting together your entry is like crafting your CV. It has to be impactful. Fill it with output based information and what you have actually achieved. I don’t want to know how you’ve done it, I want to know the impact. Evidence from employees, clients and stakeholders confirming your achievement are key. I want to be inspired.”
SHOW YOUR DIFFERENTIATOR.
“It’s really important to see that special ‘nugget’ about you as an individual. What are the things you do that go above and beyond a typical day? You’re probably doing very different and innovative things and think they’re everyday things, but you’ll be surprised at the difference it can make using these in your entry. It shows you go above and beyond.”
Our judges also told us last year that they saw “fantastic and really innovative ideas, from some great personalities I’d like to meet…..it was great to come across some agencies I hadn’t before, there were some great examples of agencies and individuals who are going above and beyond”
“It just shows what a great industry recruitment is.”
So don’t you want to stand out and win an IRP Award, and impress big name clients along the way?
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