The Sum of the Whole Is Far Greater than Its Parts (Part Two)

In general marketing copy, a seasoned copywriter will tell you that the correct and strategically responsible approach to the “short copy vs long copy” debate is: The correct length for any marketing piece (without a specified word count or when limited by format) is “as long as it needs to be” . It should not be longer: It should make its point impactfully and using only the word count that is required to do so. (The exception to this rule is the Direct Marketing copywriter, who uses repetition and re-phrasing as part of the well-recognised DM formula.) It should not be shorter: Any communications piece that has, as its primary imperative, the requirement of compelling the reader to a course of action (including the selection of a CV owner as the best candidate for a position) should never stop short of ensuring that objective, purely to conform to some arbitrary minimum length expectation. The piece must include all the information essential to achieve its intended purpose. If a page or word count has been stipulated, the information must be prioritised and compacted to nonetheless achieve the strategic inclusion of all the required key data / points. This is the responsibility of a skilled writer. (That said, any imposed word count that makes this task literally impossible is, at best, unrealistic, and at worst, irresponsible, on the part of whomever is making the unworkable stipulation.) But What About A CV? What Applies? In the case of an executive’s bio or resume, more often than not, the challenge is indeed to convey an abundance of relevant and “tasty” information within a length-limited or semi-lemgth-llmited format. The key is prioritisation and planning. And, in turn, the key to effective prioritisation and planning is the well-researched, intricate understanding of the targeted position and the selection committee or other readership. With prioritisation informed decisions can, for example, be made as to whether to use valuable word count allowance to include a greater listing of experiences versus substantiating and providing case examples to support other, higher-priority inclusions. This highlights the fact that a savvy CV production is not one that should be left to your “common garden” writer. An executive resume – or indeed, any CV – is a high-stakes piece. Every inclusion and every word employed to articulate every inclusion should be strategically selected – both for impact and for achievement of the ultimate ob jective.

When you pepper your Curricula Vitae (or any other component of your bids or proposals) with your own in-house jargon, you demonstrate your inward, internal, self-focused thinking. You give the evaluator the clear message that you’re unable or unwilling to think or communicate from any perspective other than your company’s. You indicate: self-centricity (vs client-centricity) a culture of corporate or “brand” arrogance, Intellectual inflexibility, and (possibly) a lower-than-optimum IQ. Unless they use the exact same jargon, you’ll be inadvertently indicating to the evaluators that it is the client side of the relationship that will have to constantly make the effort to interpret you and your position, rather than vice versa, as it should be. To avoid submitting CVs peppered with this “insider” terminology, enlist – as a confidential audience – someone who understands the client-side’s industry or working environment and can read or listen to your writing through their ears.

One of the most common mistakes bidders make when answering a call for Expressions of Interest or Requests for Proposal, is submitting a response that’s full of unsubstantiated claims (as website copy and general marketing materials commonly are). Nowhere is this more common than in project team members’ CVs. In turn, the most prevalent forms of this, are subjective “self-opinions” regarding one’s strengths, achievements and track records. By way of example: If you, as the CV owner in this case, describe yourself as “a resourceful and highly respected leader with the ability to adopt innovative approaches to challenging situations”, you better be quick, in your subsequent paragraphs, to offer proof of your: Resourcefulness Your own personal track record for innovative approaches Why the situations you applied them to were particularly challenging, and Why that resulted in your being regarded highly, and by whom Rinse and repeat across several more examples, since you claim this standing not only as the result of your involvement in one project, but across a greater career span The Magic Happens Here . . . Then, if you want to rivet the evaluators to their seats, highlight the relevance to the similar challenges you’ll likely be faced with on the project you’re bidding for. Now, with regard to the answer generated by the above question, what’s the proof point of this high-relevance criticality? Offer proof of your claim (and not just by citing the name of a project), or demonstrate that the claim is proven or is provable. In summary, table proof that your claim is true (not just your opinion); provide some authoritative indicator of third-party concurrence; make it relevant to the client and, in turn, prove this relevance. If you can’t specifically do all that with the project in question, you’ll have to read more of my future articles to work out what to do in such an instance. Or, better still, take my course, OPERATION CV: On-Target, Bid-Specific Curricula Vitae. (TRELAWNE: LINK TO COURSE DESCRIPTOR-&-SALES PAGE.)

A ‘Fog Index’ is a self-administered tool new journalists are encouraged to use before handing their writing over to their sub-editor. It’s a great little mechanism for the section authors of a bid submission to apply to their work – and the pressure of limited page counts on project team members’ CVs (often more than in any other section of a submission), there’s no better place to use it. Here’s the formula to apply to any specific piece of your writing, to calculate its Fog Index (the lower the score, the better): Take a random sample of at least 100 words from a CV you’ve authored or one of your team members’ CVs that you’ve edited. Count the number of words in your average sentence. Divide that by the number of sentences in your sample tract. Then, count how many words of three-syllables or more, that you’ve used in the sample. (Don’t count names or other forms of proper noun.) Add these two subtotals together. Then calculate four-tenths of the total. You’ve now calculated the specific Fog Index rating of that CV. Aim for a Fog Index rating of no greater than 12, but preferably lower.

The original version of this article is published on Jordan's Pursuits Academy. With more and more non-price-based tender formats hitting the marketplace (like the Australian government sector’s new ‘Market-Led Proposals – MLPs), the pressure is on to ensure delivery team members’ Curricula Vitae garner maximum points on the evaluators’ score sheet. So why are the vast majority of organisations insistent on placing such low priority on this critical bid-supporting mechanism? Why are they relying on woefully generic, multi-purposed CVs . . . when a superior performance in this central component of their submission stands to catapult them streets ahead of the competition? The Issues Let’s look at some of the problems and then some of the potential solutions, and let’s take – as a case study – one of the toughest industries in which to create differentiation between key personnel. In civil engineering’s major projects sector, players fish in the same (often international) pool of talent for their key personnel. They compete fiercely with each other for the “best” people for a project. Below are some of the problems that sector faces as they pertain to the production of bid-supporting Curricula Vitae. Being Forced to Hire Without Certainty In a high-profile Government-funded major infrastructure project that relies on the strategic selection and offering up of key personnel, industry players are forced to seek out expertise (both at the hands-on project management level and also at more the academic, oversight level) that relates as closely as possible to the key characteristics of the contract in question. That expertise doesn’t come cheap. And it certainly doesn’t come cheap when there’s a pre-bid bidding war for the same talent. If a company manages to secure the crème de la crème, specific talent they want to arm themselves with to bolster the smarts in their project delivery teams, they then have a real pressure to win the bid. No savvy construction or design company wants someone earning that sort of salary sitting around idle. (It’s also demoralising for the talent they hired in, who would have been looking forward to adding the prestige of that particular project to his or her personal CV.) It All Happens Too Late  One of the issues closely related to this scenario is that, ironically, the competitive run on the targeted talent happens late in the bid process . . . meaning that CVs are often the last components off the submission production line. And we all know how much time is left for the last components off the submission production line. That’s one of the primary reasons the opportunity to highlight the intensely advantageous, highly relevant strengths of such key personnel is let go to waste. Let Me Count the Ways . . . Here are some of the other reasons: Multi-Purposing of Curricula Vitae Creates Generic Blah The CV owners (i.e. the key personnel themselves) are asked to furnish their existing CVs, which will then be given a bit of an edit – or a “massage into shape” – by a generic “bid writer” or someone playing the role of editor. No-one actually interviews these key assets . . . or if they do, they don’t drill down deeply enough to flush out the most project-specific strengths of this particular asset, and why those strengths matter so much to the project’s success. Together with the above scenario, this is the No. 1 reason for the half-baked, non-compelling, unconvincing examples of thinly-veiled multi-purposed, generic boredom-in-print currently submitted in most organisations’ bid documentation. Every item below has its roots in the above. Poor Bid Strategy Processes Result in A Lack of Guidance The bid’s strategy development processes have either failed to fully identify, or capture and communicate, the client’s and the project’s most immediately pressing pain points, fears, desires, limitations, sensitivities and so on . . . such that the most relevant skills and strengths (other than simply the technical) of the CV owner can be compellingly presented. The Whole Has Not Been Presented As ‘Greater than the Sum of its Parts’ In yet a further wasted opportunity, the CVs of the individual personnel aren’t taken as a “whole”. Where personnel have been asked to largely author their own CVs, it goes without saying that these will have been produced in a vacuum. The “1 + 1 + 1 = 7” opportunity otherwise afforded by producing the CVs as a whole, and the team and its collective strengths and skills as a holistic solution, has been completely wasted. Lack of Interest by (Some, Not All) CV Owners (Sometimes being the case and sometimes not) CV owners are more focused on getting on with the project and doing what engineers and construction project managers do . . . which, by preference, would not include writing CVs and other bid-related activities. These are neither their strong suit nor their interest. Consequently, even when a professional writer is involved in the production of a CV, the time and focus that is nonetheless a required contribution to a successful output, is just not there on the part of the individual in question. (Again, please note that this final point doesn’t apply to all CV holders; only some. But when you’re relying on milking every last point out of the evaluation team for the collective of your CVs, one lukewarm CV is one too many.)

So, the CV that’s about to be included in the Key Personnel section of your organisation’s in-progress RFP submission is, of course, all about you. Right? Wrong. You might think it is. But you’re likely not viewing its content from the perspective of the client and its evaluation team. You are, in fact, a part of an overall equation. An equation in which the parts must combine, and add up, to assure the client and its project or procurement of, for example: Breadth and depth of skill , to ensure against any competency gaps. Complementarity of skill sets , where “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, with an interlinking of the variety of skills, without gaps, to ensure the collective ability to produce the desired outcome. (Related to complementarity and yet different) A diversity of skill sets , such that a variety of different angles can be applied, in real-time situations, to optimise opportunities and produce solutions. A collectively appropriately-experienced project or service delivery team. Redundancy in key positions and/or critical areas to ensure against schedule interruptions in the event of personnel unavailability or related eventualities. This category of imperatives might be described as the “objective” (versus the subjective), or, more loosely, the “qualitative” (versus the “quantitative”) considerations. It’s also only a very macro-level sampling of a client’s many (written and/or unwritten) criteria and considerations in this category. It’s a tiny part of the huge totality of the overall subject of bid-supporting curricula vitae – and formulating thorough, compelling, project or procurement-specific productions. In Part Two , we’ll look at a client organisation’s more subjective or qualitative imperatives of the CV collective.