Announcing Red Hat Certified Professional of the Year Contest for 2017

Red Hat is accepting nominations for the Red Hat Certified Professional of the Year contest for 2017 starting on December 1, 2016 and will continue accepting them through February 17, 2017.

Red Hat Certified Professionals that participate in the contest get a 25.00 USD gift card to the Red Hat Certified Professional Online Store! If you are a Red Hat Certified Professional we encourage you to enter to win this globally recognized award. You can also submit a nomination for another Red Hat Certified Professional if you would like.

How does the Red Hat Certified Professional of the Year award work?

Just to clarify Red Hat Certified Professionals (RHCPs) can nominate themselves for the award or be nominated by a customer, team member, or employer. The award is presented to one RHCP nominee with the most outstanding submission.

What does the winner receive?

The Red Hat Certified Professional of the Year winner will receive:

• One complimentary pass to the 2017 Red Hat Summit in Boston, MA, including airfare and three nights of hotel accommodations.
• Recognition and award presented at the Red Hat Summit Reception for Red Hat Certified Professionals.
• A featured mention in the Red Hat Certified Professional award press release.
• Promotion of their story on the Red Hat website, blog, and the Red Hat Training and Certification newsletter.
• Success story video posted on redhat.com and the Red Hat youtube channel.
• RHCP of the Year logo to use on social media and business cards..
• $25.00 gift card to the Red Hat Certified Professional Online Store.

What do the judges look for in a submission?

We want to know how the Red Hat-certified skills helped the contest participant:

• Succeed in their current job using Red Hat solutions.
• Enhance their company's or customer's' IT environments using Red Hat solutions.
• Improve their company's or customer's' system performance.
• Increase their company's or customer's' system security using Red Hat solutions.
• Deliver results to their organization or your customers using Red Hat solutions.
• Describe the business outcome from their efforts. Did it drive out costs?  Reduce time to market?  Make the organization more competitive?  Improve performance?

Here are a few additional suggestions from one of the judges:

• Describe the business outcome from your efforts. The incredibly esoteric and brilliant implementation you worked on all year might well qualify you for Red Hat Certified Professional of the Year, but not if we, Red Hat doesn't know how it helped your business or organization. Did it drive down costs? Reduce time to market? Make the organization more competitive? Improve performance? Cure incurable diseases? Help exceed business objectives? If you work for a non-profit organization, we would love to hear about the impact your work has had on the communities you serve.

• Use up the space provided on the contest form. Novelist Ernest Hemingway was known for “economy of expression.”  For the RHCP of the Year contest, you get no credit for reducing your accomplishments down to a single sentence. If you follow the advice above about describing a business outcome you should be well on your way. Provide some details on how you have done what you have done or why you chose one way versus another. We are not scoring on length, but if you provide no details, they have no story.

• Use the space provided and then some. You also have the option to upload a document or video to help tell your story.

• Show some personality. Maybe personality should not be a factor in a contest like this, but it is.  Show us that humor, insight, or way with words you have. If you have no humor, insight, or way with words to offer, then really, really work on that great “business outcomes” part.

• Make Red Hat part of the story. This is the Red Hat Certified Professional of the Year contest. We want to hear about you, but we also want to hear about us, too. There is no need to exaggerate here, but a submission that somehow never mentions Red Hat, its products, or its certification program is unlikely to win.
• Keep it real. We will validate submissions before making awards.

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