Awards

Awards of any kind are a dignity-shredding affair, especially when your auditors can’t count envelopes, but just what is going through the mind of an investment banker, or recruitment consultant, who thinks it is wise to hold, participate in, win, or humblebrag on LinkedIn about, an industry award is genuinely hard to fathom.

These gala events used to be convened by tedious advertising-funded industry magazines (does anyone actually read Risk Magazine? Why? When?) but in recent times these comparatively austere publications have been joined by all kinds of obscure “industry networking platforms” and hitherto unheard of “trade associations” in making arbitrary, meaningless and sometimes frankly outrageous awards to individuals whom you would think the simple pleasure of excelling at their professional calling, or failing that, being richly rewarded for it, ought to be award enough.

But nonetheless, some are afflicted by a kind of neurosis which they must hope public recognition as “Person of the Year, IT Procurement, Government Sector”; “Business Development Professional of the Year: Information Services Sector”; “Contentious Litigator of the Year” might redress.

It must be nice to have an insecurity that is so easily quashed. These awards are “judged” anonymously, by reference to no published criteria and awarded to persons who, on its face, don’t have obvious merit in the chosen field at all, let alone enough to be lionised so aggravatingly.

These awards foster unconscionable behavior too: The humble-bragging by the recipient on LinkedIn or the Corporate Intranet;