Laura’s Winning Ideas

Here’s why it is good business to deploy the proposal team to help with resumes for departing colleagues.

1. These departing colleagues will be back again.

Many of these folks will go to work for your clients and be involved with your firm again. Some will go to work for smaller firms who may be good teaming partners for you. Some will go to work for larger firms who may buy your firm out someday.

2. It eases the departure for those leaving, to have a purpose in their final days.

Most often, folks avoid talking to the soon-to-depart, as if layoffs are contagious. Others commiserate and moan and groan. No one needs to nurture a bad attitude as they are closing out their work and emptying their desk.

This will be the fourth time I’ve made myself available to help job searchers. When layoffs, RIF, downsizing, or closings happen, folks get jolted from their desk and exposed to the harsh elements of job hunting. As a proposal expert, we have skills to offer our friends and associates during these times.

Most often, my team has put out our shingle and spread the word that we would help with resumes. If your team has the ability, and your organization is going through change, you might consider doing the same.

Here’s the first steps I recommend:

1. Suggest they get a book to help

My favorite is The Damn Good Resume Guide by Yana Parker. This book is short, has lots of examples, and guides you through the process of writing a great resume. The resume and cover letter are simply a proposal, and getting an interview is the same as making the shortlist. In this book, the page of action verbs is worth the price of the entire book.

2. Suggest they start a master resume file

The goal is to look like you’ve been preparing for the specific opportunity at hand for years. The goal is not to work hard on the perfect resume and then make 200 copies to send out.

Sigh. Everyone should update their resume regularly in your proposal database, but not everyone does this. Sigh. Your corporate resume database should include career long activities so you have lots of fodder to customize resumes for proposals, but many organizations only maintain the latest version of each person’s resume.

Therefore, most folks will need a list of everything they’ve accomplished in their career, not just their latest activities. As they remember brilliant things they’ve done, these should be added first to the master resume file before using them in a current resume.

Most job searches will take longer than hoped for. You’ll need to create custom resumes on the fly, responding to opportunities within a day. With a career long master resume file, you have a checklist of your experiences from which to quickly build a responsive resume.

As a consultant, I’m always looking for work. I often find an opportunity in another industry, one with which I’m familiar only because I worked with that industry many years ago. My master resume file jogs my memory for those less recent activities.

A master resume file is just a list of all your previous activities. You’ll edit the ones you use for a resume, and update this file every time you create a new resume. I keep mine in MS Word, and any software will work.

3. Order personal business cards

If possible, they’ll want to hand out new business cards to everyone as they depart. And they’ll want to have them handy to give to everyone they meet along the job hunt.

Don’t be cute. Just have name, address, phone and email on a professionally printed card with a blank back so folks can note where they met and how impressed they were!

My favorite printer is VistaPrint. Pick a style from the FREE BUSINESS CARDS and then pay ($9.99) to leave off their logo on the back. Don’t use the microperf business card stock you print at home. It looks unprofessional, and costs more.

4. Bring in their sample resume for editing

Finally, you can edit their resumes. Fresh eyes and a professional writer are valuable gifts you can offer. Sometimes outplacement is offered, and you may be just an extra option. Sometimes placement doesn’t cover resumes right away and your offer may calm nerves. If no placement assistance is offered, you will be most welcome.

I smiled when I read in the Wall Street Journal about the RFP issued by the Treasury Department for management of the $700 billion rescue plan. The RFP made it clear that only large established firms need apply. And the proposal was due within 48 hours.

RFPs (Requests for Proposal) added “Page Limitations” to reduce the time and expense of reviewing proposals. Proposals had ballooned to massive tomes. However, the outcome wasn’t improved by reviewing such large proposals. Page limitations cut the cost of reviewing proposals and didn’t turn out to reduce the quality of selection.

How would you respond to a shortening of time in which a proposal was due? What kinds of information would be needed in your database? Something to muse about. One never knows when this might just become a feature of upcoming RFPs.

The Story of a Sign

Spend five minutes on this video. It’s worth the price of admission!

The web is a-twitter over this video. The advertising folks think it is about copywriting for advertising. Humph. I’m prejudiced, but know that it is about proposal writing. How do you capture imagination and communicate effectively when space is limited?

In this video, the first sign would not have passed the WE WE test. The second sign focuses on the proposal recipient, then adds facts about the proposing entity.

Beautifully demonstrated. Touching story.

Understanding proposal writing is important. Send this to your boss. Assign it as required viewing before your next team meeting.

In storyboard sessions, we capture information to understand the perspective of the people who will be reviewing the proposals. Storyboard sessions are not about filling out forms. Storyboards capture the essence of the hopes and fears of the proposal recipients. Once we have that understanding, the proposal is written from that perspective, not the perspective of our firm.