Examples and tips from successful PGA Excel applications

06/12/2023

PGA Excel is a new assessment framework that enables PGA Members to demonstrate their impact and achievement to employers, golfers and the wider industry.

To help you with your application, we got some insight from one of our professional markers who picks out five things you should consider when completing your PGA Excel application.

Choose your specialism - It’s important to choose the correct speciality for your submission. Professional, Coach and Manager all have unique marking systems which align to the varying roles of each speciality. CLICK HERE to find out more about choosing your specialism.
Provide high quality evidence – It’s important to look at the requirements of the entirety of the submission and plan which value blocks best align to your individual evidential examples to gain maximum effect. The Value Blocks command varying mark allocation, therefore stronger evidence should be placed in the Value Block with the highest available marks. PGA Members should avoid repetition as this will not count for a higher grade.
An impactful personal statement – A descriptive personal statement allows you to set the scene highlighting your career to date - how long you’ve been a PGA Member, the jobs and experience you have – those types of things. It gives us (the examiners) a really good flavour of where you sit and what you should be expecting from that individual when they come on to the other sections.
Justifying your self-assessment – Some of the best applications that we’ve seen justify why they’ve filled out their self-assessment in that way and why they have themselves in that space in their personal statement. If they don’t’ fill out that section correctly, you just read the evidence on its own which can be taken out of context. But if at the start, for example, you see a person has been managing a prestigious club, you recognise the evidence is far greater than you would if you didn’t have an appreciation of where they sit and what they do. CLICK HERE to start your self-assessment.
Make it ‘punchy’ - Some of the best applications we’ve seen are really ‘punchy’. They get to the point and they demonstrate their impact and achievement succinctly, rather than perhaps tip-toing around a subject and trying to fill it with words that maybe don’t mean much. We’ve got no issues with PGA Members filling out sections with clear bullet points, as long as they can demonstrate and justify the extent of their impact.