How To Be Top

The achievement of coming out top in a Global Recruiter award is undeniable: you have proved your business processes, internal talent and attitude score highly against your industry contemporaries. The impact of winning is unquestionable: the profile of your business immediately rises, recruiters are attracted to you as a preferred employer and, perhaps most importantly, new and existing clients want a piece of your action – safe in the knowledge that the support and service they are going to receive will be market leading and exceptional.

However, winning an award isn’t entirely down to luck. And before you start wondering, we’re talking about how you create your entry. There are ways to tell your story that will always impress and attract the judges’ attention.

Of course you have to be in it to win it, but what more can you do to ensure your company places its best foot forward, demonstrates its full potential and convinces everyone you’re the one to watch, and the one to beat?

We asked some of our esteemed industry award judges to take us through some hints and tips that will make your award entry the best it can be.

David Thornhill, CEO, Simplicity:

• Demonstrate Impact: Showcase the tangible impact of your work with concrete examples, metrics, and case studies. Judges want to see evidence of how your efforts have made a difference, whether in terms of Turnover, client satisfaction, or industry influence.

• Tell a Compelling Story: Craft a narrative that captivates the judges and highlights your journey, challenges, strategies, and successes. Engage their emotions and make them invested in your story by illustrating your passion and dedication to your work.

• Innovation and Creativity: Showcase any innovative approaches, unique strategies, or out-of-the-box thinking that set you apart from your competitors. Judges appreciate creativity and originality, so don’t be afraid to showcase your most innovative initiatives.

Andy Dunne, Managing Director, TEAM:

• Prepare Early: Gather all necessary evidence early, especially testimonials, to support your submission as early as humanly possible. However long you estimate it will take to gather the information from others, times that by 3 or 4!

• Convey Your Strategy: Clearly explain your business strategy, including growth plans, vision, goals, and ‘the why’.

• Evidence Brainstorming: Use a large whiteboard or A2/A3 paper to dump all potential evidence you might include, then plan how to structure this in your submission.

• Critical Review: Have your most critical and honest friend proofread your submission. He/ she will 100% spot things you have missed.

• Leverage Testimonials: Ask clients and candidates for referrals or case studies early. These are valuable even if you don’t win, and will help you to continue to build your relationships with them.

• Innovate Each Time: Avoid reusing material from past award submissions to keep your entry fresh and unique. You never know if you will get a judge that’s seen your prior entries.

• Show Your Passion: Whatever category you enter, make sure your passion shines through.

• Avoid Acronyms: Keep your submission clear and jargon-free – acronyms will just confuse the judges.

• Include Press: Add any local press mentions, such as scans or screenshots.

• Engage Your Team: If you have staff, involve them in supporting your entry with their examples and passion.

• Handle With Care: If you win, be careful with your award—speaking from experience, it’s heart-breaking to see it damaged when you get it out of the box at 1am to show your taxi driver on the way home from London and he BREAKS IT!

Miles Lloyd, Founder, NorthStar People:

• Demonstrate/Evidence/Impact: There’s no use in just saying what you do, make it meaningful.

• Detail, in the right place: You’re given the opportunity to add attachments/docs/files, for God’s sake use that opportunity to provide the detail for judges to use as a reference point for the detail. Keep the deep detail in at attached docs level and not in the narrative of the submission, and please make it easy to reference that detail so use a simple numbering convention to reference appendices, etc.

Paul Sharpe, Founder, NorthStar People:

• Where’s Wally? If your application blends in to the background, then the story isn’t strong enough. You could be one of many doing the same thing. Be bold, different and stand out from the crowd by making sure your application is memorable.

• Data and evidence: Don’t just tell the judges about your achievements, prove them! If you are shouting about your best achievements I should be able to find them. Quantify your successes with clear and proven data and metrics.

Samantha Hurley, Operations Director, APSCo:

• Don’t waffle: Lots of flowery language just uses up your word count. Stick to the facts. If you say you’re the best – give evidence to back up your claims.

• Read carefully: Be sure to understand the question/criteria and make sure you answer accurately covering all the required elements.

Louise Triance, Founder, UK Recruiter:

• Read The Question: You can write four paragraphs of beautiful prose on why your company is so amazing BUT if you were asked to talk about your use of social media or employee engagement then I’m going to immediately see red.

• Stick to the Word Count: When I have 25 different entries to read I do not want some of them going waaay over the word limit. Additionally, once you’ve answered the question please stop talking. No waffle!

• Give Examples, Stats and Facts: The number of times I’ve read a gushing narrative about the amazingness of a companies reward structure or revenue achievements without a single example or stat. You don’t have to give away your trade secrets but bear in mind that judges treat information shared in award entries with the utmost confidence.

• Don’t Use Jargon: I’ve been in the recruitment industry for well over 20 years but still see strange acronyms and jargon on awards entries which means absolutely nothing to me. Hard for me to get excited about your entry when that’s the case.

• Be Passionate and Persuasive: I love an award entry where you can feel the company is a winner. Help bring that out in your entry by showing passion and the use of persuasive language.

• Only Enter An Award You Can Actually Win: I’ve seen nominations for social media awards from companies who frankly my six year old has a bigger online presence than and ‘Manager’ awards from bosses who could give Lord Sugar a run for his money

Chris Bryce, Chief Executive, FCSA:

• Make your entries relatable: Tell a story – a human story when relevant – and don’t be afraid to acknowledge that not everything works every time.

• Detail in the Data: If your entry is highlighting growth in an area, try to give a little detail of the data. I sometimes see something like ‘up 46% from last year’ and wonder ‘but 46% of what?’

Now you know what our judges are looking for, it’s your turn. And better still, there’s no fee to enter.

Visit the awards website to choose the categories most relevant to your business.  Simply register your company and complete the criteria (remembering what you’ve read above). Deadline for the awards is June 30^th. Good Luck, we hope to see you at the awards ceremony in London in November.

ENTER NOW at https://ukawards.theglobalrecruiter.com/