Reruiting? What's That?

This afternoon, we received word that we won the contract for a bid we submitted three and a half months ago (yes, we sent off the proposal on January 4, such is the way things go sometimes).  Things have been slow this year, but on the bids we have made, we've got a good success rate.

Recruiting was definitely a part of this.  Finding people, identifying skills, maintaining good relationships with consultants - these are all very important skills.  However, we're not winning the contracts based on our recruiting acumen.

Our process for developing bids has turned greatly towards proposal writing.  Recently, we've been spending more and more time making sure that the proposal was perfect, and less time worrying about getting the perfect candidate (rarely is there a perfect candidate, we generally have to find a near-perfect candidate and go from there).  We have been winning bids with three things: proposal writing, competitive pricing and gumption.  It is for this reason that I am inclined to turn my career sites more towards proposal writing, away from straight recruiting.

In Praise of Pedantry

I just returned from a seminar on proposal writing, and something that was mentioned really didn't sit right with me.  Our presenter, who has significant qualifications, mentioned that spelling and grammar are important, but not that important.  Further, he suggested that you didn't need someone to proofread your proposal.  In his words, 'if it sound right to you, it's fine.'

Sadly, that is not fine, so I must object.

Now, I'm a little pedantic.  How pedantic?  Well, I use the word, pedantry.  Be that as it may, there is a valid case for employing proper grammar and syntax... even for you non-pedants out there.  Basically, the reason we have these rules of usage is so that everyone understands the meaning of each other's words.  Language can be quite ambiguous.  We rely on these rules to ensure that other people understand that which we write or say.  It is not enough that you understand the meaning; to adapt a phrase, it must sound right to your audience.

There's a Murphy's Law-esque phenomenon that afflicts many writers; it suggests that whenever you write a blog post correcting someone's grammar, you are destined to commit, at minimum, one grammatical faux pas.  Thus, I fully expect that there is some sort of mistake in this post.

And I will take such a mistake as further support for my argument.