Articles 
The business of selling services to the U.S. government is arguably the world’s largest talent competition. In 2022 alone, the federal government allotted $694 billion to contracts, a $3.6 billion increase from 2021.
In an industry worth billions of dollars each year, thousands of companies compete to provide highly skilled personnel to the government, at the lowest price possible under razor-thin profit margins.
For positions requiring security clearances, with an unemployment rate of nearly zero percent, the ability to attract and hire talent is central to overall business performance.
Throw in the challenges of inflation, worker shortages and compliance requirements, and producing the talent to compete for and win new business can be overwhelming and frustrating. But it is the daily reality of government contractors.
Internal Struggles in Federal Contracting
Even with the pressure to win new government contracts, talent acquisition and business development often fight a tug-of-war on priorities. Filling jobs on sold business has to be a priority because it produces revenue on an immediate basis. However, if you don’t build a sales pipeline, you won’t have the business to sustain revenue or retain valuable employees.
Between talent acquisition and business development, there is a lot of interdependence, but the tug-of-war tendencies should be replaced with a relay-race mentality. Teams should have a cohesive, pass-the-baton objective that fosters a smooth transition throughout the proposal cycle.
The bid and proposal cycle can be long, but strategic processes can help determine the viability of the opportunity, uncover strengths and weaknesses, generate intelligence within candidate pools and lead to a smooth, confident proposal, as opposed to chaos and missed opportunities.
In the world of federal contracting, talent acquisition and business development teams must learn to work smarter, not harder. For talent acquisition to continue to increase its value to the business, the ability to drive more opportunities into the sales pipeline essentially draws a line from talent acquisition efforts to revenue.
Implementing an Optimized Approach to Federal Contracting
The first step to driving better internal collaboration when hiring federal contractors is to adopt a single platform that enables all stakeholders to combine their data, learn from it and leverage it to improve your company’s growth and profitability.
Avature’s tried and tested technology has proven successful in the industry, confronting the conundrums of government contracting by empowering you to apply processes that better align different teams and provide increased visibility into all available information.
Keeping Top Talent Keen in the Federal Contracting Process
One of the key challenges facing talent acquisition teams is candidate engagement. Proposal cycles for federal contracts can be anywhere from nine months to three years, so TA professionals have to be prepared to keep the right candidates engaged for the long term. But with so much on their plates, how can they dedicate time to building relationships with top talent on top of their day-to-day activities?
Make a Branded and Personalized Impact
Best-in-class CRM solutions should provide you with recruitment marketing tools that will help you get ahead in recruiting government contractors by keeping the best candidates interested over time.
And if you want to make a lasting impression, investing in a platform that allows you to flexibly utilize branded templates to communicate with your audience can help position you as an employer of choice and create a consistent, branded experience that helps your organization remain front of mind.
To take your engagement campaigns to the next level and gain an advantage in such a competitive talent marketplace, ensure that the tool you decide to invest in allows for superior segmentation so you can tailor communications accordingly.
Nurture Relationships Through Automation
With the right technology, such as Avature CRM, powerful engagement workflows can be set up to help you build and manage candidate pipelines. Once you’ve considered the experience you want to deliver and have configured the steps to turn this into a reality, TA teams can focus on the most pressing activities, safe in the knowledge that automated actions will keep candidates warm in the background.
The solution also allows both business development users and recruiters to set up reminders to nurture specific candidate relationships, ensuring top talent doesn’t slip through the cracks.
One example of success comes from Lockheed Martin. When it came to attracting and engaging candidates, the organization took a two-pronged approach. They first identified when candidates would be more open to considering a new position. Their second tactic involved truly understanding what motivated this need for change and tapping into it through their messaging.
Keeping these two elements in mind, they leveraged Avature to build different drip campaigns targeting candidates over two weeks. They also leveraged Avature CRM to identify and segment 1,500 qualified prospects to target. By automating communications and also delivering a human touch at the right time, Lockheed Martin achieved a 90 percent open rate, with 38 individuals responsive to the outreach and 13 invited for an interview, all in just a fortnight.
Leverage Data to Drive Meaningful Results
Minimizing the internal “imperfect information” situation will automatically bring you many benefits. But investing in technology that helps all stakeholders visualize this data in real-time can truly help you win more contracts, achieve breakout performance and maximize profits.
With this in mind, Avature gives those responsible for federal contractor recruiting the ability to assess performance and project status in one quick glance thanks to a powerful reporting framework. You can create custom dashboards for advanced analytics and tailor them to meet the needs of individual stakeholders.
To Conclude
Federal contracting is a highly competitive business that requires a cohesive team effort. Under significant pressure, and without adequate technological solutions in place to drive collaboration, internal tensions build, and it’s almost impossible to optimize your approach.
Investing in a specialized solution designed to tackle the challenges of federal contracting can transform the way you win bids by creating an intuitive and collaborative platform for all stakeholders. If you want to learn how Avature can aid you in that mission, contact us.
