And All is for Naught

A few weeks ago, a big RFP came out from one of our major clients. They're looking for four Business Analysts, and the contracts will run for one or two years. For our little firm, this is a pretty big contract (sure, we've gone after bigger ones, but recently we've been doing a lot of three to six month single consultant placements).

We've got some really strong BA's that we work with, so we weren't too worried. However, we had a lot of work in front of us (and I missed the first week while I was away on vacation), so at the end of last week and over the weekend I spent a few hours each night working on a couple of resumes (I was up until about 1:30 or 2:00 am on Sunday night/Monday morning). Well, we got an email from the client today.

Don't worry; the RFP hasn't been revoked; they haven't cut the number of BA's they need. They have only cut the number of BA's that need be presented. They need four people, but they're only asking for one resume (one contract will be for the primary BA, and the other contracts are in slightly subordinate roles). So all the work we did on the three weakest candidates was completely unnecessary.

On Sunday, I turned a twelve page resume into a twenty-three page resume. All that was completely unnecessary.

Well, I guess that's not really true. We now have three extra consultants with vastly improved resumes, and I am now that much better at technical writing.

Of course, on the down side (other than the fact that the consultant can now shop that twenty-three page resume to other firms), this means that the bidding will be all the more ferocious and competitive. We would have had four great candidates; not every firm could have said that, but they probably each have one great candidate. We now have to have a fabulous candidate.

Oh well, such is life.