I hope this helps, gaga:
Field: Biology
Profile: this is my first postdoc (started in September), and I have a PhD and an MSc from different universities in Canada, and I spent some time during my PhD as a visiting student in the EU and in the USA.
Proposed research: interesting, and I’m excited about it, but not a traditionally “sexy” topic. I am at a large institute overseas with excellent resources and I work with a young, but “up and coming” supervisor.
Publications: 13 (8 first author) in moderate impact general journals (e.g. PNAS) or top 5 field-specific journals, but no Nature/Science papers. Average impact factor is about 8, my h-index is 6, I have about 150 citations, but several of my papers were published last year and haven’t been cited much (yet!)
Communication: I’ve given a handful of presentations (>10) at international conferences/research institutes, most of them have been oral presentations, and I have won some prizes for these (travel prizes for conference funds, best conference talk/poster, etc).
Teaching & Mentoring: I was a TA for 3 years during my PhD and won a teaching prize. I’ve mentored about 5 undergrads in the lab plus two MSc students, and most of them are on publications, though some of these are still in prep.
Service: I peer review papers for three international journals, I have organized/volunteered at conferences, I did some student government work during my PhD, and I coordinated a volunteer program.
Other awards: NSERC CGS-M, CGS-D3, plus smaller awards.
I think a lot of this has to do with how you write the application. If I just listed these, it would be kind of boring (sorry). But if I write my statement as if I were writing a reference letter for myself, it’s a lot more interesting to read. I try to address each criteria directly and provide evidence for why I am excellent at it. For example, they want to know about teaching and mentorship. I don't just say: “Teaching is important and I’m a good teacher. Trust me.” I say: “I’m a good teacher. I’ve taught for 3 years, including some course design/development. My students nominated me for a TA award (which I won) and my most recent undergrad is first author on a paper from their project, which I designed and supervised.”
I think another thing that likely helped was that one of my reference letters was from an international collaborator, since this addresses the scientific and personal criteria, but also shows that I already have an international reputation.
I figured with my profile, I had an ok shot at an NSERC PDF, but Banting is quite unlikely.
Hey man, all those guys who get Banting (or NSF, Marie Curie, etc) will reject their NSERC PDFs, so there are a lot of short-list people who will still end up getting a PDF!