The Tender Team – Specialist Bid Writer Recruitment Service

Here at The Tender Team, we specialise in bids in tenders. As part of our service, we offer a recruitment service which is focused solely on bid and tender writers. The reason is simple. Through the organic growth of our businesses, we have helped clients grow to the point where it makes financial sense for them to hire an in-house tender writer as opposed to contracting their tender writing out to us.

In addition, we help many larger corporations with their tender and bid writing when they have resourcing challenges (employees resign, maternity leave etc) and they often need to beef up their teams.

Why use The Tender Team as opposed to a standard recruiter to recruit a bid writer?

The benefits of engaging us to hire your next tender or bid writer include:

• We nurture and have in place an active pool of tender and bid writers across all industries and across Australia. We actively engage with our candidates and many of them have worked for un on a freelance basis whilst in-between roles. That means we know their capabilities, strengths and weaknesses.
• We are bid writers ourselves. We have the capability to screen candidates and ask the hard questions. We can drill down into their specific experience and ensure their hands-on experience matches their CV. We also have a testing procedure where we give candidates an RFP and conduct a verbal test / discussion about how they would approach different questions.
• We get to know our clients and their values – like we would any client. We find writers that are a great cultural fit. When we start working with a client for a bid or tender on a contract basis, we get to know the client and their operations very quickly. We will do this same for you when recruiting for you. We understand the importance of finding someone that fits in with your organisational culture, as well as a skilled bid writer that will deliver.
• We have new candidates approach us daily. Many candidates approach us looking for freelance work whilst we are in between roles. This means we have a large amount of freelance candidates who are often looking for full-time work and our talent pool is forever increasing.

Are you recruiting a tender or bid writer? Here are the attributes to look for.

Calm Under Pressure  –  No matter how well organised a bid writer is, there will always still be tender submissions that go down to the wire. This can be a reflection of the pride taken in the proposal, late input from subject matter experts, or last-minute changes due to a late addendum. Either way, you need a bid writer who will work methodically under pressure and stay composed.

Assertiveness – A bid writer needs to be assertive. He or she must have the confidence and gravitas to challenge internal stakeholders, propose alternatives and sometimes simply say no.

Writing skills – Writing with flair in a persuasive manner is a given. However, a bid writer also needs to be able to quickly understand content, restructure it and edit it so it is simple and informative. Bid writers need to be able to write quickly, maintain win themes throughout the bid, and keep a consistent tone.

General Knowledge – Many bid writers often find themselves in unfamiliar territory with certain tenders as the subject matter can be highly technical and industry-specific. A good bid writer will identify these circumstances and adapt by absorbing general knowledge for a specific area so that their grasp of the basics is enough to communicate adequately with someone more technically inclined. A desire to gain more general knowledge is a prerequisite for a worthwhile bid writer.

Time Management – Often, bid writers will have more than one tender to consider in the course of their activities. Proper time management is necessary for not only submitting tender responses before the deadline but ensuring that each one has been completed to their fullest and more reasonable extent.

Graphics – Although we champion the use of experts, sometimes given time or financial constraints, the bid writer will need some graphic design skills to ensure the bid flows well.

Who we are and how our recruitment firm fits in with our operations

We are a full-service content and proposal creation consultancy which is focused on winning you government and private sector contracts. Founded in 2007, we like to think we have the experience and expertise to make your next tender in line with industry best practices. Our recruitment functionality is an extension of our bid writing capability and enables us to leverage on our extensive experience writing bids to find our clients highly skilled bid writers for full time and part-time roles.

Jason Cooney, our Director, leads our recruitment service.

Regardless of who you get to help write your bid, it’s important to have a comprehensive process in place. For example, there is great benefit in having a tender library of content that you can draw on for different tenders. It’s also a good idea to be well organised and develop a tender response plan early on in the process.

Where there are key subject matter experts involved, they need to be identified and sent draft content early on in the process. This is so there is enough time to refine and write the final response based on their input.

We believe  it is best to identify and convey your key messages and differentiators prior to writing your bid. This enables us to integrate them strategically throughout your response.

It’s often best to work out your key messages and differentiators prior to writing your bid, and ensure these are conveyed consistently throughout your bid. The competitive landscape is equally important, as are ensuring your bid is readable and concise.

Often, senior executives only read the executive summary of your bid and the time and effort you put into bid writing isn’t truly appreciated. This can be the case for some senior executives, but not all, with many interested in the detail.

Either way, tailored bid writing is critical to ensuring you draft an engaging and compelling proposal.