Young Guns & Legends: Nomination Tips

Want to submit a winning nomination? Follow these tips!

The Personal Statement requested on the online nomination form—essentially, why the candidate deserves consideration and recognition—is critical and necessary to ensure a complete nomination and evaluation of the candidate. It can come from a nominator or the nominee directly.

If the nominator does not have access to this information, he or she must ask the nominee to provide it or the nominee will not be considered.

More about 2026 Young Guns & Legends:

• Call for Entries
• Nominating FAQs
• Previous honorees

Here are some tips to help you to prepare a personal statement and optional supporting documents:

Nominations are judged on several key factors:

1. Leadership skills
2. Productivity
3. Innovation
4. Contributions to the housing industy
5. Professional growth and achievement
6. Education
7. Community service
8. Special telents or story

1. Leadership

Specific examples of how the nominee has demnstrated leadership on a team, a company, or an industry initiative.

2. Productivity

Specific examples of how the nominee has demonstrated productivity, such as delivering on a comoany or industy initiative that has shown results and exceeded expectations.

3. Innovation

Specific examples of how the nominee has initiated or integrated innovation into a teamm, company, and/or the industry, and to what effect.

4. Contributions to the housing industry

Specific examples of how the nominee has engaged, contributed, and addressed housing industry issues and challenges on a broad scale.

5. Progessional growth and achievements

For Young Guns, demonstrate the growth of the nominee's skills, responsibility, and success in their chosen profession. Be as specific as possible. 

For Legends, tell us how the candidate has made a significant and meaningful impact on the housing industry, and how their leadership, innovative or creative spirit, and dedication has made the industry better.

6. Education

Formal education is not necessarily a reliable indicator of career success, but the judges need to know the extent of a candidate's education and how it contributed to their overall career development or contribution.

Did they earn a degree at night while working a full-time job? Did they seek out advanced training, such as a CGP, CAPS, MIRM, or other professional designations?

7. Community service

As with the item above, be specific. With what organizations and in what roles did they serve their community? How are they giving back? What's been the impact of their service?

8. Special talents or story

Here's where you could discuss additional (and special) information that would be helpful to the judges.

Is the candidate involved in activities or have a special (cool, interesting, fun) talent not specifically related to work or community/professional service? Did they start in another profession or career track? Conduct symphonies? Speak five languages?  

Note: You can also attach supporting documents about the nominee and/or a resumé/CV or a link in your statement to a LinkedIn or similar online profile/CV.

Statement length

How long should the personal statement be? The webform allows you 700 words, but you can also attach up to four (4) supporting documents to supplement the online statement.

Either way, the statement should tell the candidate's story concisely but comprehensively, in an organized fashion.

SUGGESTION: At the beginning of the statement, list 3 to 5 main reasons why the nominee should be named a Young Gun or Legend. Use the points above to structure the statement, supporting each point with more detailed information.