I have served as Chair of the @APA Div. 20's Award Committee for two years now, and have reviewed applications for student awards, dissertation awards, early career awards, distinguished contributions' awards (research and applied). Here's a

1. Visit your professional organization’s webpage & find information on awards. Almost all societies have some awards; see past winners; which ones you would be interested in/ willing to put in the work for. Most award applications take some effort – CV/personal statement/letters

2. Ask your mentors/sponsors to “nominate” you for these awards. With the exception of two awards that were a surprise to me, for all other awards, my mentors/sponsors either asked me if I would be interested in applying or I asked them to nominate me. Advocate for yourself!

3. This one is for mentors/sponsors – be on the lookout for awards for your students. It will take effort on your part to do that, but it would be helpful for your mentee to know that you appreciate and acknowledge the hard hours they have been putting in.

4. Don’t be shy to boast about how awesome you are. As reviewers we want to know how you wrote the script to do some complex analyses, or strategies you implemented to recruit participants from BIPOC groups. Highlight your accomplishments and be specific.

5a. Celebrate and toast if you are the winner, but don’t let not winning bring you down. If you didn’t get the student award, apply for the early-career award, the mid-career, and then the distinguished career.

5b. I have seen some amazing applications come through for each of these and I would be honored to work with any single one of those applicants. Attribute the winning to internal factors and attribute the non-selection to external factors.

6. Why apply for these? Good question. As academics, we get more failures than wins, so it feels good, reinforces, strokes the ego, but also helps you connect with other people in the field. If you are an early career scholar, it gets your work out to a broader circle.

7. And then, of course, if you win, we will ask you to Chair this committee and do more service work!