Evidence Rather Than Adjectives

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"Significant growth" scores nothing. "Turnover rose from X to Y over eighteen months" scores.

The substitution of adjectives for evidence is the commonest weakness in entries that are otherwise competent, and it is entirely fixable. For teams that want a concrete workplace example, the practical guide.

Why adjectives score nothing

Because every entry has them. A useful outside reference for comparison is Goodreads, which provides a useful contrast to the specific process described here.

A judge reading forty entries sees "innovative", "market-leading", "passionate" and "exceptional" in all of them, which means the words carry no information and cannot separate one entry from another.

They also cannot be checked. A scoring judge is awarding points against a criterion, and there is nothing to award points to in an assertion.

The entry is not being disbelieved. It is being unable to be believed, which is a different and worse position.

What counts as evidence

A number with a period attached. Not "we grew" but the figure, the start point and the interval.

A comparison. Against last year, against the sector, against the position before the work.

A third party saying something specific. A testimonial naming an outcome rather than praising your character.

A document. Accounts, a certification, a published report, a customer's own figures.

And a named consequence. Somebody did something differently, something stopped happening, a cost fell.

The substitution test

Take any sentence in your entry and ask whether a competitor could write it.

"We are committed to outstanding customer service" — yes, anybody could.

"Our average response time fell from nine hours to under two, measured across 1,400 tickets in the year" — no.

Every sentence that fails the test is either evidence waiting to be supplied or words that should be removed to make room for the ones that are.

Where there is no number

Some genuine achievements do not have figures, and the answer is not to invent proportions.

Describe the specific instance. One case, in detail, with what happened and who it happened to, is evidence in a way that a vague generalisation is not.

Name the change. "Before, the process required three approvals and took a fortnight. Now it requires one and takes two days." No statistics and entirely checkable.

And say what you do not measure, which scores better than pretending.

The numbers that undermine an entry

Round figures with no source. "Over 10,000 customers" reads as an estimate and invites doubt about the rest.

Percentages without a base. "300% growth" from a small starting point is arithmetic rather than achievement, and a judge will assume the base was small if you do not say.

And anything unverifiable that sounds impressive, which raises the question of what else was inflated.

A judge who doubts one figure discounts the entry, which makes an honest modest number worth more than an unsupported large one.

Where the evidence comes from

Almost always from records that already exist and are not organised.

Invoices, job notes, support tickets, calendars, correspondence, the accounts. The entry does not create evidence; it retrieves it — and how long that takes depends entirely on whether anybody was recording.

Which is why the first serious entry a business writes is much harder than the second. The first assembles the evidence base; the second updates it.

Keep what you gathered. A folder of figures, quotes and documents, dated, is reusable across programmes and across years, and it is the actual asset produced by entering.

Two claims that need care

Firsts. "The first in the sector to..." is checkable and frequently wrong, and being contradicted on it damages everything else.

Say "among the first" or state the specific scope in which it is true — which is honest and loses nothing, because a judge reads an unqualified first with suspicion anyway.

And attributions of cause. "Our campaign increased sales by 30%" claims a causal link that may not hold. "Sales rose 30% in the period following the campaign" states what happened, and a judge draws the inference themselves — more persuasively than if you had drawn it for them.

Evidence a judge cannot verify

Still worth including, labelled as what it is.

Internal figures nobody outside can check are normal and expected. State the source: "from our own records" or "from the client's reporting."

A judge does not require independent audit, and does require to know where a number came from.

The failure is a bare figure with no provenance, which reads as either careless or invented and is discounted either way.

The one adjective worth keeping

Where it is doing work that a figure cannot.

Describing the nature of something — "a manual process", "a seasonal pattern" — is not the same as praising it, and stripping every descriptive word produces a document that reads like a spreadsheet.

The rule is narrower than "no adjectives". It is that an adjective claiming quality must be replaced by the evidence for that quality, and adjectives describing a thing can stay.

Reading your own entry as a judge would

Print it, and mark every claim.

Tick where a figure or a document supports it. Cross where nothing does.

Then count. An entry with more crosses than ticks will score badly regardless of how well it reads — and the crosses are a list of what to gather rather than a verdict on the work.

Fifteen minutes, and it is the most reliable single review available before submission.

The short version

• Adjectives score nothing because every entry has them and none can be checked
• Evidence is a number with a period, a comparison, a specific third-party statement, a document, or a named consequence
• The test: could a competitor write this sentence? If yes, it is doing no work
• Where no figure exists, describe a specific instance or name the change — both are checkable without statistics
• Round numbers without a source and percentages without a base invite doubt about everything else
• A judge who doubts one figure discounts the whole entry, so an honest modest number beats an unsupported large one