Financial professionals, take note: these five professional awards could give your career the boost it needs.
What moves should you make to ensure you’re on the shortlist? Here’s what you need to know about each award (and why it matters).
- Barron’s Top Advisor Summit (Top 1% Advisor)
Barron’s Top Advisor Summit is a coveted confab that draws some of the United States’ top wealth management professionals. As an invite-only event, it’s very much a place to see and be seen – where you’ll rub shoulders with luminaries like San Francisco-based Daniella Rand, a wealth management professional lauded for her active approach and market-beating performance.
To earn a spot on Barron’s Top 1% list, you’ll need to demonstrate a consistent track record of market-beating performance. It won’t be easy; this isn’t an award to snag in your 20s and coast on for the rest of your career.
- Forbes’ Top Wealth Advisors
Forbes needs no introduction, and neither does its list of the country’s top wealth advisors. Many are household names, at least in the financial industry, and all have set themselves apart for market-beating performance and innovative approaches to wealth management. Like Barron’s Top 1%, Forbes’ Top Wealth Advisors list is a place for advisors who’ve well and truly Made It.
- Investment News Best Place to Work for Financial Advisors
This award is made for financial advisors who operate their own shops, but its appeal is broader than mere owner-operators: If you’re still a junior-level employee who’s passionate about your professional home, you have a real incentive to get your employer on this list. When the time comes to move on, this is one award you’ll want on your resume.
- Forbes’ Best-in-State Wealth Advisors
Looking to drum up some local business? There’s plenty of room on Forbes’ Best-in-State Wealth Advisors lists, which point prospective clients to the most innovative and effective advisors operating in their backyards. Even in this age of instant long-distance communication, it just goes to show that there’s still room for an old-fashioned handshake or two.
5. On Wall Street’s Top 40 Advisors Under 40
Young, ambitious wealth management professionals: this one’s for you. Like other “top 40 under 40 lists,” this is a peek around the corner – a look at who’s likely to end up in the corner office, calling the shots. This is another resume-building must, even if you have no designs on moving up anytime soon.
6. Firm Awards, Titles, and Recognitions. In addition to these awards, many firms offer their own awards, titles, or recognitions to be earned by their top-ranked advisors. Be sure to ask your advisor if they have had the privilege to receive any of these prestigious honors, and what they represent.
Pick Your Spots
No matter how deserving you are, it is unreasonable to expect to earn all of the awards and accolades to which you believe you are entitled.
To the extent that you advocate on your own behalf for such recognition, it is imperative that you pick your spots – choosing only those accolades for which you have reason to believe you are a lock (or close to it).
Spending all your time in pursuit of public recognition may leave little time for the thankless, but no less important, work that is ultimately most crucial to your quest to each said recognition. Years from now, you’ll find yourself more successful for knowing when to pipe up – and when to keep your head down.