Supported by RSA ANZ
Convenor: Lawrence Arnold office@careermelbourne.com
Director RSA ANZ: Philipa Duthie philipa.duthie@thersa.org

The Australian Career Book Award – from the beginning

This working life – a workout with Lisa and Monique – View video

Dr Kirstin Ferguson AM – 2023 Medalist for Head & Heart

Aim

There is widespread social concern over the future of work. Despite the highest level, and the widest reach of education and qualifications in our history, people are concerned about the future of their careers and have uncertainty in the new world of global pandemics, economic disruption, rapidly changing job roles, and robotic recruiting processes. They feel a lack of control over their futures.

There is a need for genuine and accessible career development advice based on reliable career research. The Royal Society of Arts Oceania contributes by supporting high-quality career development books through a Fellow-led event – The Australian Career Book Award. This builds on the traditional RSA award model of citizen recognition in place since 1754.

The key values of the Royal Society of Arts are: creativity; inclusivity; and responsibility. The award criteria aim to operationalize these values, and nominated books should demonstrate these explicitly, or implicitly.

Award criteria

The Award Committee will confer the award based on the award criteria specified in the nomination form.

The book

The award will go to an Australian career book published after January 1, 2019. The book will be a Print-on-Paper (PoP), printed and readily available to a wide audience, not an e-book. It should be a popular book, reaching the largest possible market with regard to the defined audience. Books can cover any aspects of career development, employability, employability skills, and the skills needed to gain and improve work. They should combine innovation with rigour, to produce change in the reader’s career understanding and strategies to improve individual or group outcomes.

An Australian career book will target the Australian career reader with career information based on the Australian career and employment context.

Books nominated in previous years will not be considered unless they are part of an integrated set of volumes constituting a new edition, or have been so substantially re-configured as to present a new book.

The author

A diversity of backgrounds is expected – career counsellors, HR operatives, industry experts, or individual memoirs telling a story to improve the career development of readers.

The publisher

Books may be produced by a traditional publisher, a niche publisher, or the author as a self-publisher implementing traditional printing, or Print-on-Demand technology.

These wide specifications should attract a wide range of career writers to nominate books.

Nomination form

Download a copy of the nomination form.