A Note from Jeff Packard, CEO of BizFirst
I've seen the same movie play out dozens of times.
A small GovCon team runs a solid capture effort. The staffing plan makes sense. Key Personnel are lined up. Contingent offers get signed. Everyone feels reasonably prepared going into the proposal.
Then the award comes through, and everything starts to unravel.
Not because anyone screwed up. Not because the plan was naive. But because time passed, the world kept moving, and the hiring plan was never built to handle that kind of drift.
I've watched this happen often enough that it stopped feeling like bad luck and started looking like a structural reality of how GovCon hiring actually works.
This series is about that gap—the one between "we have a solid hiring plan" and "why is everyone suddenly unavailable?" I want to unpack why this happens so predictably and share what I've learned from helping teams navigate it in real programs.
Winning Was Supposed to Bring Clarity
For most small and mid-sized GovCon teams, the period right after award actually introduces more uncertainty than it resolves.
Between proposal submission and award, weeks or months tick by. During that time, hiring plans that felt solid start to loosen at the edges. Candidates who were enthusiastic during capture begin asking different questions. Salary expectations shift as the market moves. Onsite requirements become clearer—and sometimes less flexible than anyone originally assumed.
Here's the thing: silence during that waiting period doesn't preserve momentum. It creates a vacuum. Candidates notice when timelines slip or communication slows. They fill that vacuum themselves, usually by taking other offers or quietly rethinking their interest once the details finally firm up.
By the time the work is ready to begin, the market has already moved on. Timelines tighten. Delivery dates lock in. Program Managers start feeling exposed, even though the original plan was perfectly sound when it was built.
This isn't a planning failure. It's just how GovCon hiring actually works.
The Gap Nobody Talks About
Most GovCon hiring plans are created in good faith during capture, based on assumptions that seem reasonable at the time. Candidate availability looks stable. Compensation ranges make sense. Labor categories line up. Agency expectations seem clear enough to plan against.
The problem isn't the plan. The problem is the gap between proposal-time assumptions and award-time reality.
Inside that gap, candidates receive competing offers. Some drop out quietly. Others come back wanting to revisit compensation or employment structure now that the actual details are on the table. Requirements that were vague during capture become very specific after award, and not every candidate still fits cleanly.
I worked with a small GovCon that won a task order with a 90-day ramp. Three Key Personnel had signed contingent offers during capture. By award, two had accepted other roles. The third was still interested—but only after revisiting salary and onsite expectations once the
program details were finalized.
The hiring plan hadn't failed. Time had simply done what time always does.
Why Scrambling Usually Makes It Worse
When hiring breaks after award, the natural instinct is to accelerate everything. More outreach. More agencies. More pressure on internal recruiters. Faster interviews. Faster decisions.
Speed feels like control. In practice, it often creates new problems.
Rushed hiring increases the odds of misalignment. Candidates who are marginal fits slip through because there's no time to be selective.
Program teams inherit talent that struggles to execute. Early turnover creeps in. Delivery risk compounds. What started as a staffing issue becomes a program issue that's far harder to unwind.
I've seen teams recover from delayed awards. I've also seen teams spend months dealing with the downstream impact of talent decisions made under pressure.
The Teams That Stabilize Faster
Some GovCon teams navigate post-award volatility better than others. Not because they predict the future more accurately, but because they expect change and plan for it.
They assume pipelines will decay over time. They expect candidate drop-off and renegotiation. They accept that roles and labor category alignment might need to be revisited once billing structures and program economics become clearer.
Instead of treating recruiting as a one-time transaction tied to a requisition, they keep it active and aligned as the program takes shape. That includes staying in touch with candidates during delays, refreshing the pipeline as conditions change, and reassessing fit as more information becomes available.
This approach allows hiring to adjust as reality shifts, rather than resetting every time something breaks.
Recruiting as Execution Support
Post-award hiring isn't about filling seats. It's about supporting execution.
When recruiting stays aligned through award, ramp, and early delivery, teams regain control. Program Managers stop reacting. Hiring becomes more adaptive. Uncertainty doesn't disappear, but it stops driving every decision.
This shift is less about doing more recruiting and more about structuring recruiting differently. It's the gap many small GovCon teams are quietly trying to close, often without naming it directly.
This is where the BizFirst PartnerHire model makes a practical difference. Instead of recruiting that stops and starts with each contract milestone, teams get a Client Delivery Lead who maintains continuity from capture through execution. That person stays with your program as conditions change, managing candidate relationships through delays and adjusting the pipeline as requirements firm up. It's not about doing recruiting faster—it's about keeping it aligned with reality as your program evolves.
For teams navigating post-award hiring volatility, having recruiting support that can adapt usually matters more than having a perfect plan.
This article is Part 1 of a four-part series on why post-award hiring breaks down for SMB GovCon teams, even when planning is sound.
Next: In Part 2, we look at how these pressures show up differently for primes and subcontractors, and why your position in the contract structure matters more than most teams expect once execution begins. Click here to navigate to Part 2.
About the Author
Jeff Packard has spent more than a decade supporting talent acquisition for small, mid-market, and large GovCon teams, working across capture, post-award ramp, and program execution. Through BizFirst, he leads recruiting delivery for government contractors and commercial clients, applying the same execution-focused approach across both markets.
