1. Make sure you cover the basics 

Before deciding whether to prepare an entry, you should check what is required. How can you evidence your achievements? You don’t need a big professional set up or marketing budget to do this but to stand any chance of winning an award you will need to satisfy some basic criteria.  

Ensuring you meet the basic criteria set for location, company size, years qualified etc are simple no brainers. Other areas might require you to think more creatively, can you back up your claims with evidence of impact? What unique problem were you tasked with solving? Make sure you can tell your story. Providing hard evidence to back up your reasoning is the best way to sell your nomination. Make sure you include links to news articles, case studies, videos, social media posts, or testimonials in your nomination; anything that backs up what you’re saying and showcases your work or achievements!

Insider’s tip: Be willing to talk positively in your entry about what you have achieved – and to be able to back up your assertions. 

2. Be specific and prove it! 

Entering awards can be likened to sitting an exam. Back then you made every effort to make it easy for the markers of your paper to give you the marks you sought.  By all means make your entry look good, but not at the expense of key data. 

Make sure your nomination covers who you are, what you do, why your work is notable, and what impact you’ve had, so the reader has proper context as you expand on your nomination. Can you ensure that yours highlights your firm’s personality, makes them sit up and pay attention? Think about how you can capture and hold their attention even if they are tired and bored. 

Judges will look for tangible examples of excellence and achievement; it’s easy to say that you’re great, but make sure you explain why!

Focus on outcome and impact: What did you achieve, and what effects did it have? How did your actions improve or change things?

In effect, you are making it easy for the judges to like your entry and consider you a worthy winner. 

Insider’s tip: search online to see which firms or accountants have won ‘your’ award in previous years. You can also see what the judges said about those entries and use this insight to inform your entry.

3. Show your passion

We need to get to know the team or candidate through the application.  What makes them tick? What gets them jumping out of bed every day to get to work? 

We’re all about celebrating the human achievements behind the tech. Maybe you’ve led an ESG movement internally, volunteer for a worthy cause outside of work, or given back to the profession and community you are part of? 

4. Don't procrastinate just nominate! 

Don’t talk yourself out of it! If you never try you simply never know!  Equally don’t leave it too late – a rushed, and panicked nomination will be easily spotted.  Give yourself at least half a day to start preparing a worthy entry. You will want to allow plenty of time to check what’s required and then to collate supporting materials, draft your entry, refine it and review everything before you enter text into the online form and press ‘submit’. 

Common mistake: thinking that ‘more is better’ and supplying too much unfocused supporting data. Many judges will make an initial assessment by reference to the main entry document.  

Insider’s tip: signpost the content of your supplementary material by referencing key elements or summarising what it shows so that the judges know what it contains.