Management of CVs

Most organizations that bid for work will recognize the importance of a structured and systematic approach to CV preparation. The pressures of producing an efficient tender, often within desperately tight deadlines, mean that no one can afford to waste time hunting for copies of CVs, trying to piece together information about a person's experience or having to reconstruct other people's CVs to make them presentable. Even when a CV is in reasonable shape to begin with, getting it right for the bid in hand can take several hours' work.

The management of CVs has three main elements:

• compiling the material;

• applying procedures that enable CVs to be rapidly edited and fine-tuned;

• maintaining CV material in a form that keeps it up to date.

Compiling the material involves holding in a database details of the professional background, competencies and experience of the individual, together with information on matters such as language capability, publications, training achievements etc. This material should include CVs produced as part of bids and proposals. The task of compilation is best undertaken within the technical unit with which the person works, not by a personnel department or staff records office. A large firm can derive significant benefits from a unified system of CV preparation, storage and maintenance; but it is generally preferable to have the system managed on a divisional basis rather than centralized.

Editing and fine-tuning means generating a CV that offers the best possible match to the requirements of the work, omitting material peripheral or inappropriate to those requirements. There are professional contexts - for example, in some European countries - where convention dictates that an expert's strengths have to be portrayed through a single, unvarying CV registered with the governing body of a profession; but this practice is the exception. In most areas of professional services procurement, clients do not expect to be presented with what is patently a stock, all-purpose CV, which they are likely to regard as evidence of a lack of effort and interest on the part of the bidder.

Shape the detailed content of the CV to focus on directly relevant experience and bring out positive features that reinforce its competitiveness. For example, the individual may have fulfilled comparable roles in previous contracts or worked in a similar business environment or project location. Clients sometimes include in the bid specification job profiles for key personnel, outlining the role the person is expected to perform, the responsibilities of the position and the competencies required. They will look for people who match these requirements.

The task of editing has to be done carefully and truthfully, without exaggerating or departing from the facts, and without making claims that may embarrass both your firm and the individual at a later date. You must be able to support every claim made in a CV It is important in particular when outlining the role that a person played in an assignment to define precisely the extent of the responsibilities credited to him or her. Asserting just that an individual had 'responsibilities' or has 'proven experience' is uninformative and likely to win few marks. Substantiate the point with facts and details.

Maintaining CV material involves systematic review and updating on a routine basis. There are three main parts to the task: adding new information on people's assignments and career developments; revising material about current work - for example, ensuring that contracts that have been completed are written about in the past tense, not the present; and holding in the database those edited CVs that are likely to have further useful applications.

The information should be updated at intervals of not more than six months - perhaps quarterly if the person undertakes a large number of short-term contracts. Work done during the past year or so is often the most influential part of the person's record of experience. If you are a bid manager, you cannot rely on individuals to supply the relevant information without prompting and progress chasing. Your management system has to ensure that all CVs are kept in good order and ready for use. If you work on your own, you have to approach this maintenance task as you would the keeping of accounts and business records: if you don't tackle the job methodically, you are likely to face a huge task at the last minute. Routine maintenance is the only way to make sure that up-to-date CVs are available to meet short-notice requirements.