Whether you’re looking to bring in your company’s first specialist or you’re ready to scale up your team, the pressure to get it right is huge. We’ve all been in that spot where a deadline is looming, the SMEs are ghosting us, and the “blank page” is winning.

Attracting the Right Fit for Your Business

Don’t just hire a “good writer.” You need to look at where the wheels are currently falling off your process. There are different types of specialists, and picking the wrong one for your specific “pain” is a common trap.

• “All-Rounder” Bid Writer: This is your primary engine. A great Bid Writer isn’t just someone who can write well; they are a translator. They take a mess of technical notes and turn them into a persuasive, easy-to-read narrative. If you need someone to own a response from start to finish, this is your hire.
• Technical Bid Writer: If your experts struggle to get the “how-to” on paper, you need this specialist. They can sit with an engineer for 20 minutes and turn a complex whiteboard drawing into a high-scoring, clear response.
• Bid Manager: If your submissions are technically sound but always late or disjointed, you need a manager. They own the timeline and the portal so the Bid Writers can actually focus on the story.
• Strategist: Compliant but losing? This person looks at The Golden Thread—making sure your “win themes” aren’t just in the intro, but are baked into every single answer to make you the only logical choice.

What Makes a “Great” Bid Writer?

Beyond a nice writing style, look for these “in the trenches” traits when vetting candidates:

• Sales Instinct: They need to realise they aren’t writing an essay; they are selling an outcome. A great writer knows that every “we do X” must be followed by a “which means you get Y.”

• The “Librarian” Mindset: A great internal hire is obsessed with the Bid Library. They hate starting from scratch. They save the best bits and prune old content so the next bid is faster and better.

• Portal Resilience: We’ve all dealt with portals crashing at 11:58 am. You need someone with a “Busy Work Killer” attitude who can handle the formatting and the admin without breaking a sweat.

The Power of Peer Review

When you grow a team, you’re not just adding capacity; you’re adding a safety net.

• Fresh Eyes: After staring at a document for 48 hours, you become “blind” to your own mistakes. Having your Bid Writers swap sections for a “Red Team” review is the best way to catch errors before the evaluator does.

• Shared Knowledge: In a good team, if one person finds a brilliant way to explain your Social Value, they share it. It levels everyone up instantly.

Hiring is about more than just “getting more bids out.” It’s about protecting your senior team’s time and making sure that when you do bid, you’re doing it with a professional way that stands out.

Putting the right Bid Writer in the lead combines the speed of your existing tools with the wisdom of actual experience.