Bid Writing as an Intentional Career Path

Why are so few young people intentionally choosing bid writing as a career? One of the most striking findings from the APMP UK Bid Writing Focus Group survey was that only 4% of respondents intentionally chose bid writing as a career… the rest of us “fell into it”.

There are so many good reasons to choose this profession intentionally. It’s challenging, collaborative, analytical, people-facing, commercially important and highly transferable. And yet, most students, parents and careers advisers barely know it exists.

The APMP UK Bid Writing Focus Group’s Education Workstream has begun researching how we can make bid writing easier to understand, easier to explain and more visible as a career option.

Our work so far…

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been exploring how students discover career options and reviewing how careers platforms currently describe bid writing. We’ve also been speaking to careers advisers, gathering feedback and testing out messaging. We carried out a survey to establish an initial view of bid writing among careers advisors, and the findings were fascinating. When asked whether they recommend bid writing as a career:

• 22% said yes

• 10% said no

• but 68% said, “I would if I knew more about it”

This feels hugely important because it tells us that bid writing is not undervalued, it’s just that key people don’t know enough to talk about it confidently. That’s a very different challenge. Our Education Lead spoke to a school careers advisor directly, who said this: “I don’t suggest roles. I focus on skills, interests, personality and strengths.” So advisors are helping students explore sectors, transferable skills and future career pathways. This tells us that we need to frame bid writing as a way to combine different skills and interests, e.g. creativity and technology, to boost visibility in the careers advice space.

The employability message

Careers advisors obviously want to recommend fields with good employment prospects. After all, graduates are entering an increasingly competitive market and some traditionally attractive fields are becoming more saturated and uncertain. When we explained there are often more bid writing jobs than skilled bid writers, the careers advisor said, “that’s the thing that really triggered with me.”

Bid writing is widely misunderstood

One of the advisers we spoke to described bid writing roughly as “gathering information and writing it into a coherent document.” While not completely wrong, this description misses so much of the role. Bid writing is also:

• Facilitating workshops

• Shaping win themes

• Interviewing experts

• Analysing requirements

• Structuring responses

• Solving problems

• Storytelling

• Collaborating under pressure

• Influencing how organisations present themselves

What’s more, being a bid writer is very much about working in a team (contrary to the image of a reclusive or isolated writer) and offers exposure to senior leadership activities and decision making.

Students are unlikely to explore careers they’ve never heard of

We’ve also been looking into career visibility, and have found that students now engage far more with EdTech platforms, online career tools and digital resources than traditional leaflets or printed materials. So, if bid writing isn’t visible in these digital ecosystems, students are unlikely to discover it organically. We can help to change that, by creating resources that explain the role quickly and confidently.

Another particularly interesting topic was apprenticeships. There was strong enthusiasm for creating more awareness of professional apprenticeships generally, especially beyond the traditional trades people associate them with. That reinforced something we’re already exploring within the Focus Group—whether clearer apprenticeship pathways could help introduce younger people to bidding earlier in their careers.

What’s becoming clear

This project is still in its early stages, but some strong themes are already emerging:

• Bid writing has an awareness problem, not an image problem

• Employability and transferable skills resonate strongly

• The role needs sector context

• Digital visibility is critical

• Careers messaging must be skills-led

• Real stories and relatable examples matter

And perhaps most importantly, there are lots of young people who would genuinely thrive in this profession but currently have no idea it exists. That feels worth changing.

More on our progress coming soon.