Are you looking for a new challenge and want to join a successful and rapidly growing organisation? Do you have a passion for exploring new ways to change people's lives at a national scale through government policy? If so, we want to hear from you.

The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) is looking for an exceptional and experienced candidate to join as a Bid Manager in the Growth team. At any one time you will lead a number of our competitive (UK) bids, working closely with the relevant policy teams to create and submit top-scoring bids. You’ll be working with a small but very central team of bidding specialists, led by the Senior Bidding Manager, and you’ll work closely with the Bidding Coordinator on a range of different bidding activities. 

This role is an opportunity to further shape and lead BIT’s recently created bidding team. BIT’s bidding capabilities are a central part of our growth strategy and the role is a chance for a commercially driven candidate to introduce bid-winning skills and experience that will drive the successful conversion of more of the socially impactful work we want to win. The successful candidate will bring a competitive edge as well as sharing these skills with the wider team to build on and optimise our bidding abilities.

What does the Bid Manager do?

This role is in our Growth & Bidding team and plays a pivotal part in ensuring our wider team’s bidding efforts are coordinated, supported and successful.  Key objectives your work will include:

• The project management and production of high quality, competitive bid responses, through all stages of the end-to-end bid lifecycle - for a segment of the competitive tenders;

• Supporting policy teams with aspects of competitive tendering processes such as  bid/no bid decision making, creating win themes and storyboarding bid responses; 

• Specialising in the writing & continued improvement of high scoring copy for competitive bids, and owning the bid content library;

• Quality assuring competitive bids ensuring tenders are followed correctly and lessons learned from previous bids are incorporated;

• Delivering post bid wash-up sessions to create and share feedback and guidance;

• Ensuring all data relating to all managed bids is captured correctly including analysing feedback and ensuring lessons learned from previous bids are included in best practice templates and bidding guidance;

• Work closely with the other members of the Growth Team, as well as policy advisors and project coordinators across the organisation; and

• Linking up with other areas of the business including Project Management team and Operations globally to share resources and learning.

What makes a great Bid Manager at BIT?

We are looking for people who understand what we do, share our values and are keen to learn and develop their expertise. We are looking for candidates with the skills listed below. We expect to provide training and development support in some of the areas.

• Bid management expertise. You have a proven track record of consistently leading successful bids, ideally in the public sector. You can create and deliver bid winning strategies, including judging commercial opportunities. You are proactive and can independently source new opportunities.

• Commercial and financial awareness. You will have business development responsibility and work with other members of the team to make it a success.

• Clear and convincing communications. You’ll need to build and develop internal relationships as well as have a critical eye when it comes to reviewing tender documents and bid responses. You’ll need to stay connected to a wide range of colleagues in different teams to ensure key milestones for bids are delivered on time as well as communicating knowledge management improvements across the organisation.

• Organisation and managing logistics. You have excellent organisation and decision making skills that give your colleagues the highest level of reassurance you are managing all aspects of the work in a timely manner and at the highest quality. As BITs systems are currently undergoing changes, the bidding cycle and process is very manual and needs a keen eye at each stage. You are able to combine intellectual curiosity with a pragmatic focus on delivery and manage and implement multiple business initiatives that comes with an organisation that has experienced rapid growth and diversification.

• Managing and developing yourself at work. You demonstrate high self-awareness and are aware of the impact that your actions and words have on those around you. You are resilient and accept responsibility for decisions whether they achieve the desired outcome or not. You are self motivated and always seeking to develop and apply fresh thinking skills.

• Using tools and resources. You have great IT skills, including G-Suite and MS Office and CRM experience. 

• Basic understanding of contracting, compliance & privacy. You are able to simplify the process around complicated legal and compliance matters by understanding the flow of what needs to happen when and supporting teams during this process to create efficiencies during this work.

Who are we and what can we offer you?

The Behavioural Insights Team is the world leader in applying behavioural science to public policy challenges in order to strengthen communities and improve lives. 

We design and rigorously test new ideas across a range of areas such as health, crime and education, to establish what works and what doesn’t. We have helped Tuberculosis patients take their medicine; reduced police susceptibility to cyberattacks; and helped organisations close their gender pay gap.

• You will work alongside a friendly, talented and driven team with diverse expertise - from economics to anthropology and neuroscience - and a wide variety of personal and professional backgrounds. What unites us is the goal to have positive social impact through our work.

• We have regular team lunches with a diverse range of guest speakers. 

• We encourage flexible working and have a culture which enables this; for example flexible start and finish times and an IT set up which allows for easy working from home options.

• We have a flexible benefits programme which currently includes things like gym memberships, cycle to work schemes and the ability to buy extra annual leave at the start of the year.

• We’re a social bunch and have a variety of interest groups including Film Club, BIT Kids for our parents & 5-a-side team to name a few. We have even kept most of our activities going virtually!

• We have a great office in Westminster, which has an amazing coffee machine and fridges stocked full of soft drinks!

How to apply

We use a platform called Applied to reduce bias in the recruitment process. You will need to answer a few work-based questions which will be anonymously marked by members of our team. Our selection is based on performance in these questions, rather than looking at your CV. 

Candidates with the top scoring answers will be invited to a structured interview where you get to meet some of the team. At the interview stage you will be asked questions that reflect the role and also to complete a work-based task, so you have the chance to demonstrate your skills. It’s at this stage we first see your CV. We always give all applicants feedback, no matter what stage your application reaches.

Key dates

• Role closes: Monday 1st November at 12.00pm BST (midday)

• Task and Interviews (remotely): Week commencing Monday 8th November

• Second round interviews (remotely): Week commencing Monday 15th November

All dates are subject to change (but we'll try our best to not change them!)

Please note:

You will need to have the right to work in the UK in order to be able to undertake this role. We will ask all applicants short-listed for an interview to provide evidence of their right to work during the recruitment process. If you do not have the right to work for BIT but are the most suitable person for the role we will explore with you whether sponsorship may be an option. However, this may not be possible for all roles.

Some of the personal data you provide to Applied when you apply for a role with The Behavioural Insights Team will be passed on to The Behavioural Insights Team for the purposes of (a) reviewing your application; (b) inviting you for interview; and/or (c) offering you a job and getting you set up as an employee/contractor. For full details on how BIT collects and uses your personal data please visit our website - https://www.bi.team/bit-global-recruitment-privacy-notice/ 

If your application is not successful, any personal data provided to us by Applied (including any personal data relating to equal opportunities monitoring as set out above) will be retained by The Behavioural Insights Team for no longer than 6 months after the application deadline has passed (other than in exceptional circumstances where we may need to retain your personal data for longer), at which point your personal data will be securely deleted. We only keep your information for that period in order to allow us to comply with relevant legal obligations.