ACS Conference presentation awards: can you list them on a C.V.?

[WG]

I was going through my desk and found a "Certificate of Merit" that was awarded to me for a presentation I made at an ACS national meeting a few years ago. I don't know how I missed it, I suppose sometimes one forgets things once stored away. The award says the presentation was "judged outstanding for material content and for manner of presentation".

I know people often list awards for grants or fellowships they have received. Can you list awards given to you for conference presentations? At the moment my thought is that something like this would be relevant if one needed to show good public speaking ability for a job or fellowship application. Thoughts?

On my C.V. I already list the presentations I have made at conferences, if I was to list this, should it be a note next to the particular presentation it was awarded for? Or should it go under a separate awards section?

[John D. D,]

My thought on this would be that you could, but someone who is hiring you for a position where that might be relevant is likely to have first hand knowledge of your speaking ability. Awards, lists of accomplishments are likely to be long enough distractions as it is from what someone is trying to say. It can sometimes take up to 1/3 of a talk to get through them, to hear the science of whether someone's organ is likely to be rejected or not when transplanted under protocol X.

[Rich Lemert]

Ultimately, it's up to you to decide what to put in your c.v./resume. If you feel it helps enhance your professional image then put it in. If it doesn't, then don't waste the valuable real estate.

Personally, I probably would not list it. It's not a major award like e.g. the ACS's Priestley Medal (which should definitely be listed) - it's a minor award from a single meeting. It might catch someone's eye, but they're going to base their opinion of your speaking ability either on first-hand knowledge (as already mentioned), or on having you present a seminar.

If you do include it, I'd just list it with the presentation.

[John D. D,]

Or maybe just put a star next to the presentation since the award refers to material content within it. This then leaves anyone who wants to, to ask what the star means.

[John D. D,]

I guess one case where you might want to be explicit about it, is if you specifically wanted to direct someone to the content of that talk where something was orally presented that could not be published (a higher barrier of access).

[Dave Walker]

It ultimately depends on the job you are applying to. As you probably know, it is generally wise to adapt your CV/resume for each application, highlighting your skills that overlap with the job description.

From personal experience, I can tell you that listing the posters and talk that I presented at AACR -- no awards -- was a positive for me; the sales job I applied for presents at AACR annually and they liked that I was familiar with the event from the other side.

Additionally, I have see the so-called "Academic CVs" that are literally a list of all accomplishments to date. This includes where one was born, high school, college, hobbies, you name it. So all posters would go into one of those.

[BMK]

For an Academic CV: The advice I've always received is that you should list all awards, and they should go within there own section that usually is right before you start going into your publications (which should also be split by type as appropriate for the field, e.g., "Invited Editorials"/"Peer-reviewed"/"Full Conference Manuscript"/"Scientific Abstract" for my field). However, the awards themselves are often separate from the presentations, and should be listed as such (again, may vary by field, but in mine "best paper" awards from the main conferences are viewed very favorably).

Overall, this tends to matter more for junior faculty (actual and those aspiring to be) because this is also a section on the NIH biosketch and it gives committees a chance to see how your biosketch (and thus how you as a PI) will appear to grant study sections. Can be viewed as a bonus by search committees.

But for everything else, I agree with Rich and Dave regarding the industry side of things: only list if it is relevant. Applications to R&D and scientist roles (which may have opportunities to present at conferences themselves) may place higher weight on these types of things than other roles.