Having your own in-house recruitment function/partner has many benefits. One of the key benefits being, your organisation is engaged with your recruitment team and able to trust your recruiters with tasks and information you may not be able to include a recruitment agency in. One of these key areas is the tender process. Coming from my experience of working in-house with FTSE100 sized businesses to SME businesses I have been involved in tender development many times. Many tenders will ask you questions like:

• If you win this tender, will you need to recruit people to deliver the services?
• If you do need to recruit, how will you do so?
• How will you ensure the competency of the people you recruit?
• How will you ensure the people you recruit are suitably experienced?
• What is your recruitment process?

 This type of answer will not quite cut the mustard, even if you pad it out a bit -

❝ Candidates will be sought from job boards, referrals and recruitment agencies.

The client will want to see facts and figures in this section of the tender. Without including facts and figures about how you will attract  employees/contractors to deliver the services your answer will not carry enough impact. You will want to show proof of how many people you can engage with immediately, whether they have experience working with your business previously and if you need to recruit new people, how you will do this in the most cost efficient manner. Your recruitment function can be a key player in developing this area of the tender: 

• Recruiters will know the going rate/salary for you to be able to attract new contractors/staff, helping you get the tender price correct
• The recruitment function should have data round how many people they can engage with from their talent pools and other recruitment channels
• Your applicant tracking system(ATS) or HR system will provide valuable information round previous applicants or employees you could quickly engage with to deliver the project

 In my experience tenders will regularly be closely fought towards the end by 2-3 tendering parties. By this stage the client usually has at least a couple of tenders that are scoring very similarly. This is where, if you have put extra effort into the non-commercial and technical areas that are sometimes rushed over, you might just increase your chances of winning. Also, by engaging your recruitment function early you can make sure that they are prepared to recruit the new people needed without using a 3rd party. This will help you keep your tender price lower and provide a lower cost base for delivering the contract. Good luck in your tenders! You can download my tip sheet on the detail you should include that might just win you that next tender.