We don't know about you, but we can't think of anything more exciting than curling up in front of a roaring fire, with a glass of fine wine, and reading someone's resume.
Yes, we're kidding. Resumes are not exactly exciting reading, and most SBIR/STTR proposers are so wound up about the innovation and the work plan that they forget that the resumes are a critical, albeit boring, part of their proposal.
Why are resumes critical? Because the persons reviewing your proposal probably do not know you personally, unless you are a Nobel Laureate or perhaps a notorious criminal. Given that neither is likely, then they must rely on your written resume to convey your qualifications to perform the proposed work.
And trust us, the reviewers MUST have a comfort level with your team members’ qualifications. They usually are willing to take risks on your innovation, but not on your qualifications to prove that it is a feasible solution to a pressing problem. Put another way, risk is acceptable in your technology or innovation, it is not acceptable in terms of your qualifications to do the research. Your project may prove infeasible, but it needs to be because the innovation didn’t work, not because your team members didn’t know how to do the work.
So, assuming you now agree with us about the importance of the resumes of your SBIR/STTR project team members, here are some resume pointers:
1. Update your resume. We reviewed a proposal the other day where the most recent work experience of the Principal Investigator was 2002. But the text of the proposal suggested that he had owned two businesses since then, and had sold one for a handsome profit. In an era where your commercialization ability and commitment is increasingly important to your chance of getting SBIR/STTR funding, don’t you think those two “experiences” should have been included in the resume?
2. Admit you work for the company. Another common error is to claim, in the text and budget, that you are an employee of the company applying for the SBIR/STTR award, but then leaving the company off of your resume. Are you, or are you not employed there? If not, then there needs to be an explanation in the text of your intentions of joining the firm upon some milestone, say notification of award of the SBIR/STTR grant or contract.
3. KISS. Yes, you know what that means: NO ONE wants to read a six page resume for someone on your team (we read one that used the person’s experience having a newspaper route in junior high as evidence of his commercialization expertise). Some agencies put limits of 1 or 2 pages on resumes, because they want to make it clear that no one wants to read a resume that goes on and on and on and…. Keep the resume targeted on relevant experience and education. Do not list every paper or presentation that your well-published team member has made—KISS it by writing something like “out of an extensive publication list of over 50 articles and presentations, the following six are most relevant to this project.”
4. Keep formats consistent. It seems trivial, but don’t have five different resume formats for the five members of your team. Inconsistency looks sloppy, makes the reviewer wonder if you all are on the same page, or if you really do work for the same company. Hey, and here’s an idea: go with a format that is specified by the agency to which you are applying. For example, NIH wants academic experience listed chronologically, starting with the most recent degrees.
5. Explain gaps. Remember those gaps in the famous President Nixon tapes, and what hot water they got his administration into? Same problem here: time gaps in your experience make the reviewer wonder whether you were serving time, got stranded on a desert island, went on a coast-to-coast motorcycle ride as part of a midlife crisis, or heaven knows what else. Take away the mystery by filling the gaps, even though what you actually did may be less exciting or sinister than what will be assumed if you leave time gaps in your resume.
6. Get relevant. Put emphasis on relevant education and experience. We reviewed a proposal recently where the description of prior work by the 2 person company included some really relevant research. But when it came to the resumes of those two employees, neither one even mentioned that highly relevant work. CUSTOMIZE each resume to the project you are proposing—this is the time to emphasize the most relevant stuff, not just relying on a generic resume that does an equally poor job of showing your qualifications for each specific project you propose.
7. Include business experience. Historically, resumes in SBIR/STTR proposals have focused 99.9% on research, and 0.1% on business and commercialization experience. Today, we’d say you need to show more like 60% research and 40% business/commercialization. And if we’re talking Phase 2, then it might be 50/50.
The bottom line is that you should not use, in your SBIR/STTR proposal, that outdated, generic resume that is equally irrelevant to every project you might be proposing. Instead, each resume should be carefully edited and tailored to the project being proposed, and the collective set of resumes (along with qualifications of any subcontractors or consultants, if you have any) shows to the reviewers that you have all the major bases of the project covered. Consistent formats suggest that everyone on the team is on the same page (and makes it easier for a reviewer to se that the team collectively has the necessary experience), and keeping resumes short and focused helps the reviewer see the relevant qualifications without having to wade through pages of irrelevant stuff.
