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Ask the Recruiter

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Joe Grimm
Joe Grimm, visiting journalist at the Michigan State University School of Journalism, tackles the toughest recruiting questions.
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Put Small Awards on My Resume?
Q. I haven't won any outside awards in a few years (I was a finalist for a few big ones from the local Society of Professional Journalists chapter last year but a Pulitzer finalist team swept them).
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I have won two internal awards from my company, though. Should I list the internal awards on my resume?

Prizewinner

A. Absolutely.

The more impressive the award sounds, the better, of course. An annual or monthly award for best enterprise, headline, graphic or investigation sounds good and might suggest that an editor look at your clips or ask a question in the interview.

After the experience and education sections of their resumes, job seekers sometimes add sections for skills, activities and awards. This can flesh them out as people and show information, sometimes in rapid-fire bullets, that might not fit into the top two sections.

Be judicious. Some people lard up their resumes with so many awards they start throwing out other, more useful material. Just include your best awards. Those would be the bigger contests, the more recent ones and the ones in which you placed higher.

Joe Grimm
Joe Grimm
It sounds ridiculous to say that, seven years ago, you placed third in a statewide contest for best feature story. It can make editors wonder if they are coming in seven years after your peak. If you would like, you can say that you have won several awards but are listing only a couple:

"Proven journalist with more than a dozen awards, including:"

One last word on awards. They are nice, to be sure, but don't go overboard to win them. Some wonderful journalism does not win awards, but is mightily important to audiences.

Coming Wednesday: This journalism graduation has had to take non-journalism jobs to support her family. She asks, is it now too late for her to do journalism?

Posted by Joe Grimm 12:01 AM
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