A little something I wrote ahead of the National Online Recruitment Awards…Firstly, there is one reason why I don’t love the NORA’s; they are in their fifteenth year and I’ve been involved in some capacity since the start. How to make you feel old or what?!
NORA stands for National Online Recruitment Awards and were established by Stephen O’Donnell. They acknowledge and reward excellence in online recruitment practice. These are some of the things I love about them:
1) Over the past 15 years every site I LOVE has won an award (http://norauk.com/history/). I’ve been a judge for at least 10 of those fifteen years and some years I’ve picked the winners and some I’ve not – but I’ve never strongly disagreed with one.
2) I love the introduction of the NORA Academy (http://norauk.com/nora-academy/) especially seeing as the amazing Lee Biggins and CV-Library won the award the first year.
3) Judging is actually quite fun. Some years it’s been painful (like the year when not one single site seemed to have improved one tiny bit from the previous year – OMG that was depressing!)
4) Some of my best friends have been judges; Stephen’s had a great crew over the years and we’ve had a few heated debates about some of the sites nominated.
5) In the early days (when there was no formal awards ceremony) Stephen took the judges out to dinner. I sat between Dan McGuire and Tom Atkinson who had a “fight” over who had won the most awards in their careers so far. Only slightly awkward!
6) The awards evening has that perfect mix of excitement, pride, disappointment and alcohol. I absolutely guarantee you that at least one of the team handing out the trophies will go awol minutes before they are due on stage, that a non-winning finalist will strop out and that Ricky Wheeler or Simon Lewis will buy a round of shots. Even if you aren’t a finalist you have to attend; it’s great fun
7) I might have wandered off with a couple of the trophies over the years… we’ll it’s nice to have SOMETHING in my awards cabinet even if it’s not really mine.
8) The final reason why I love the awards is that they do really mean something. They are independently judged and are worth their weight in gold (although don’t get your hopes up folks – they are actually a very nice quality perspex)
Now is the time to nominate in one of the 14 categories and I look forward to seeing you at the awards in November.
