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Résumés in a service proposal: adapt without inventing

In an evaluation grid, the experience of the project manager and of the team is often worth as much as the methodology. The temptation to embellish is real. Adapting a résumé is something else, and the line between the two is fairly easy to draw.

4 min readUpdated October 2026

What the committee scores in a résumé

The criterion is often called "Project manager's experience" or "Experience of the proposed team". Behind those titles, the tender documents list what counts: a number of years of relevant experience, comparable mandates, the role held in those mandates, training, membership in a professional order, sometimes the working language.

Two kinds of requirements hide in those lists, and they need to be told apart. Some are minimum requirements. "The project manager must have ten years of experience in environmental assessment" is a condition, and a person who doesn't meet it can make the proposal non-compliant. Others are used for scoring. "Experience in similar mandates will be evaluated" opens a scale of points. Missing a minimum requirement can eliminate you, while a scored criterion is a matter of points.

The committee reads each résumé with the grid beside it. For each expected element, it looks for a precise line: a mandate, a period, a role, a result. A four-page résumé where the element appears on page three will score lower than a one-page résumé where it comes first.

What you can adapt

Adapting means choosing and ordering what is true so that it answers this call for tenders. In practice, you can:

  • put the mandates closest to this one first
  • drop unrelated mandates to respect a page limit
  • use the wording of the tender documents when it names what the person really did (if the documents say "life cycle assessment" and the person ran one, call it that)
  • give more detail on a relevant mandate and summarize the others
  • follow the template the tender documents impose, its order, length and language

All of that changes the form of the résumé, never its facts.

What you never touch

Dates, titles and roles, client names, mandate values, degrees, professional order membership and years of experience stay exactly as they are.

Each of those facts can be checked, and a committee can call a reference. The classic trap is the inflated role. "Took part in" and "led" are not worth the same points, which is exactly why the second one is tempting. An analyst who ran the survey component of a mandate led by someone else was responsible for the survey component. She was not the project manager.

A committee that discovers an inflated role does not stop at that résumé. It rereads the rest of the proposal with suspicion.

A fictional example

The tender documents ask for "experience in public consultation". Here are three versions of the same line for a fictional consultant.

One résumé line, three versions

The master résumé, as it exists at the firm

Source

2022-2023, senior consultant, urban plan, municipality of 25,000 residents. Responsible for the consultation component (three public evenings, 240 participants, consultation report).

Adapted to the tender, with nothing invented

Same facts

Public consultation, urban plan (2022-2023), municipality of 25,000 residents. Responsible for the consultation component: designed and facilitated three public evenings (240 participants), wrote the consultation report.

Invented, don't do this

Invented role

Project manager, public consultation and urban plan (2022-2023).

The second version puts the consultation first and describes it in the tender's words. The third turns responsibility for a component into leading the mandate. It might earn points, right up to the first reference call.

One source per person

Résumé errors come from copies of copies more often than from lies. The résumé adapted for a 2023 call for tenders becomes the base for 2024, which becomes the base for 2025, and a slipped date or a rounded-up title spreads from one proposal to the next.

To avoid it, each person has a master résumé: complete, dated, in both languages if the firm works in both. Each proposal draws an adapted version from it, and no adapted version ever becomes a source again. After each finished mandate, update the master résumé while the details are fresh.

The same principle applies to departures. Someone who has left the firm should no longer appear in a proposed team, even if their résumé is still in the shared folder.

How Clarido does it

In Clarido, each person has a profile in the firm's library, and that profile serves as the master résumé. For each member of the proposed team, Clarido writes a bio of about 150 words tailored to the tender documents, from the profile. It puts first the facts that answer the requirements, mandatory ones first, without adding a mandate, a title or a year. When the profile barely answers the tender, the bio is shorter, never padded.

The bio can then be edited in the proposal like any other text, and the profile stays untouched. Former employees are not proposed for the team.

Key personnel and their replacement

When the tender documents designate key personnel, they often set rules for replacing them during the mandate: equivalent experience, the client's written approval, sometimes penalties. Read that clause before you put the team together. Proposing someone you know will not be available amounts to promising a replacement from day one.

Sources

Bios tailored to the tender, nothing invented

Clarido writes each team member's bio from their profile, with the facts the tender requires first.

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