2020 Caregiver of the Year

Essay Writing Tips

If you read the Selection Process section, you know how important the essays are to the nomination process! We also know that writing effective essays can be difficult. Here are a few tips to help get you on the right track.

1) Intros and conclusions are always difficult, but don’t get hung up on them in your nomination essay. Start with something along the lines of “I’m writing to nominate so-and-so,” and then run through a quick run-down of how they fit each of the criteria from the form. This part should be brief before getting into specifics in the body of the essay. For your conclusion a simple statement about how they should be Caregiver of the Year will suffice!

2) It’s all about specific examples. Don’t just tell us “Jane is always on time and goes above and beyond for her clients.” Give us an example of when she did that! Saying “Jane has given up several weekends and holidays” is not as effective as saying “Jane took time away from her family to see her client on Christmas because he had no family in the area and she didn’t want him to be alone.” You’re saying essentially the same thing, but painting a far more complete picture of what the caregiver does for her clients.

3) Just being nominated speaks to their value, the goal of the essay it to set them apart. General platitudes are nice to pepper in, but keep in mind that every nominee we get is an exemplary caregiver. “We wish we could clone her!” is nice, but every employer feels that way about their nominee, so tells us why! We already know that you value your employee, you nominated them after all – but tell us what they do (specifically!) that makes you feel that way. We’re not saying to leave out how much you love the heck out of your caregiver, just make sure to give us the reasons why!

4) Stories reign supreme. The committee is made up of actual, human people with actual, human emotions. If you appeal to those emotions, your candidate is a lot more likely to recieve higher consideration. Give us an anecdote about a time that your caregiver really went above and beyond. A testimonial from a client is perfect – and try to get them to describe a specific event. “Our caregiver Jake will connect with clients and sing with them” is good, “Jake stayed up all night with his client on a Saturday night playing the Irish folk music of his client’s youth on his guitar while knitting a coat-of-arms quilt and reminiscing about days past because the client had missed his veteran’s reunion to take care of his ailing wife” is much, much better. Man, this fictional Jake character sounds amazing.

5) Keep it to at most a page, and get it in on time! We’re not saying we’ve never chosen anyone with a particularly long-winded essay, but c’mon, have pity on us. We have to read a lot of essays.