Earlier today, I had the pleasure of being a judge in this year’s Palliative & End of Life Care Awards run by Care Talk Magazine.
Working alongside another judge, I spent a day interviewing all nine finalists in the Innovation in End of Life Care category via Zoom. And what a day it was – the entrants were all incredibly impressive in their own right, which made choosing the overall winner, runner up and highly commended candidate extremely difficult.
But my fellow judge and I got there in the end and, quite fortunately for us, our top three choices aligned, which made the whole deliberation process a whole lot easier. We submitted our feedback an hour ago, and while I may be feeling rather frazzled after a day of back-to-back judging, I’ve decided to stay logged on and share the following judging tips download with you.
Why? Because I want you to benefit from my ‘live’ judging mode and benefit from practical awards tips that have been shaped by a real-life, here-and-now judging process.
So here goes, my top five tips for impressing the judges, from somebody who’s just been an awards judge:
Tip 1: Stick to the question
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Make sure that your responses specifically answer the question you are being asked.
It’s really easy to go off on a tangent and provide too much information (especially during the earlier questions because you want to share all of the good stuff), but this means you could wind up not fully answering what needs to be answered. Unfortunately, the judges won’t know that you were capable of fully answering the question, they can only go with the information you share with them.
Tip 2: Ask for questions to be repeated
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Certain awards questions can be a bit long-winded, so long, in fact, that you forget what you need to cover mid-answer.
Don’t be afraid to ask the judges to repeat the questions, so that you can answer them fully and correctly. (Bonus tip: Tackle longer questions by splitting them in two and then tackle the two parts separately for absolute clarity).
Tip 3: Be mindful of the time
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Like all awards finalists, you will have been given an allocated time slot.
In the case of The Palliative Care Awards, the finalists were interviewed by the judges for 30 minutes. The clock starts ticking as soon as your session starts, so make sure you don’t make your initial responses overly long or complex as you won’t have enough time to fully answer the rest of the questions.
Tip 4: Spread the load
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If you have entered a team category or your entry is based on a team effort, invite other team members to join you in your judging interview. This will provide the judges with more of an all-rounded view and help evidence your success from multiple angles. It will also relieve you of some of the pressure to remember everything and do well too!
Tip 5: Illustrate your successes
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Turn up armed with plenty of practical examples of your success. It’s all very well saying you do a great job, but being able to reel off tangible up-to-date facts, figures and other proof points is exceptionally powerful and will make you stand out. (Bonus tip: share your results in different formats, e.g. a short video case study, strong client testimonial or a table of year-on-year success stats).
Awards aren’t all judged in the same way, which means you may not necessarily find yourself in an e-interview with a judging panel. But if you do, remember these tips, they’re here to help you and your colleagues shine in more ways than one.
Want to be an award-winner, but aren’t sure where to start?
Or perhaps you know which awards you want to enter and which projects to submit, but haven’t got the time or resources to write your entry? The Awards Clinic from SK Copy Co can help, get in touch for a tailored quote today.
In the meantime, for more information about The Palliative & End of Life Care Awards, visit: https://www.palliativecareawards.co.uk/