The Importance of Resumes

I got into the proposal writing field quite by accident. I was an Administrative Assistant with an international consulting firm in the Washington, D.C. area. Like most such firms, my company spent a lot of time preparing proposals for federal contracts. Because I had always enjoyed writing, I hounded my boss to let me participate in the proposal preparation process. He finally agreed, and I got my first assignment: preparing resumes. It wasn't really what I had in mind -- after all, writing a resume wasn't "real" writing and it didn't seem to be a very important aspect of the proposal process. It wasn't until a long time later that I realized how important it really was.

A lot of organizations don't spend much time dealing with resumes for their proposals. They pull the resumes of their staff members and consultants out of a folder and stick them in the appropriate sections of the document. Or if the individuals they are proposing for the project don't have resumes, they quickly write them up. This is not the approach you want to take if the bid you're preparing is important to you.

Resumes are like every other section of a proposal: they have to be tailored to meet the specific requirements detailed in the RFP or RFA, and/or tailored to meet the specific requirements of the project you are bidding on. This often means that the resumes you are submitting with your proposal will have to be re-written -- sometimes extensively. Your objective in doing this exercise is to demonstrate that each proposed individual meets (and hopefully exceeds) the qualifications required for the job. Does he/she have the appropriate or required educational background? What work has he or she performed that is similar to the work that he/she will be doing in conjunction with the proposed project? If you have ever applied for a job yourself and have tailored your resume to meet the position requirements or have written a cover letter describing your qualifications for the position, you will be doing pretty much the same thing for the resumes that will go into your proposal.

To get the information you need for the resumes, you may need to conduct in-depth interviews with the personnel you are proposing. Or you can give them a list of specific RFP/RFA requirements or project task descriptions and ask them to tailor their resumes to those requirements. However you choose to get a good resume prepared, you need to take into consideration the time it will take to do it. Depending upon the state of the original resume you are working with (if one exists), it can take anywhere from a couple of hours to a day or more to get a resume in shape. The time you spend on each resume will also depend on the importance of the position and the proposal evaluation criteria. Typically, you will spend more time preparing resumes for the Project Director and other managerial personnel than you will for lower-level positions.

The qualifications of your proposed personnel -- and the way in which these qualifications are presented -- can make or break a proposal. And that is why the tailoring and preparation of resumes plays such an important role in proposal development.