Four Tips for Writing Winning Proposal Resumes

In proposal writing, resumes stand out as a key element of your value proposition. They highlight which personnel meet or exceed the requirements of the RFP and offer specific experience that demonstrate your ability to provide a winning solution.

But proposal writers often create resumes without understanding the solution, and proposal reviewers spend little time reviewing the final product. Here are four tips to help maximize the resumes in your proposals:

1. It is important to decide who will write the resumes. A cost-effective approach would be to have the proposed candidate prepare the first draft of the resume, and then have a technical writer format and fill in the gaps where necessary.
2. A uniform format helps standardize the process of crafting resumes and helps evaluators navigate them. Each company should develop a format that fits the proposal requirements, usually with traditional sections such as a summary paragraph, education, jobs, and specific skills/certifications.
3. Resume writers should tailor the summary paragraph of each resume to the evaluation factors of the RFP. This approach will allow the evaluator to clearly identify the quality of each proposed candidate, as well as highlight any deficiencies in the resume that writers can use to get more up-to-date information or to replace for a better candidate. Writers should also address the RFP requirements within each job they list.
4. If the proposed candidate does not possess the required qualifications, you should first look to find a more qualified candidate. You should NOT look to obscure deficiencies by carefully including or excluding certain words. Proposal writers should always develop clear, responsive, and well-formatted resumes.

OST Global Solutions is a professional business development consulting firm. Our capture and proposal consultants have helped our clients win more than $25 billion in funded contracts. We can provide capture and proposal teams to develop a complete, winning proposal, or we can provide consultants on a case-by-case basis to fill gaps on your business development team. Our services include capture management, proposal management, orals coaching, proposal writing, graphics support, editing, desktop publishing, and cost volume development.

Reach out to us to discuss how we can help you win your next bid.

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