A note from Jeff Packard, CEO of BizFirst
Over the years, I’ve watched the same pattern repeat itself across SMB GovCon teams. A capture effort runs well. The staffing plan makes sense at the time. Key Personnel are identified. Contingent offers are signed. Everyone feels reasonably prepared. Then the award comes through, and the plan starts to strain.
Not because anyone failed to do their job or made careless assumptions, but because time passed, details emerged, and the hiring plan was never designed to absorb that kind of movement. I’ve seen this often enough that it stopped feeling like an exception and started looking like a structural reality.
This series is meant to unpack that gap and share what I’ve learned from partnering with teams to navigate it in real programs. The goal is to explain why this happens so consistently, and why the forces behind it show up differently as contracts move from capture to execution.
Winning a contract is supposed to bring clarity
For many small and mid sized GovCon teams, the period after award introduces more uncertainty than resolution.
Between proposal submission and award, weeks or sometimes months pass. During that time, hiring plans that once felt solid begin to loosen. Candidates who were enthusiastic during capture start asking new questions. Salary expectations shift as market conditions change. Onsite requirements become clearer, and in some cases, less flexible than originally assumed.
Silence during that period does not preserve momentum. Candidates notice when timelines slip or communication slows. They fill the gaps themselves, often by taking other offers or rethinking their interest once details finally firm up.
By the time work is ready to begin, the market has already moved. Timelines tighten. Delivery dates lock in. Program Managers start to feel exposed, even though the plan itself was sound when it was built.
This is not a planning failure. It is a structural reality of GovCon hiring.
The gap no one really talks about
Most GovCon hiring plans are created in good faith during capture, based on assumptions that are reasonable at the time. Candidate availability, compensation ranges, labor categories, and agency expectations all appear stable enough to plan against.
The problem is not 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 asking to revisit compensation or employment structure now that details are clearer. Requirements that were vague during capture become specific after award, and not every candidate still fits cleanly.
I worked with an SMB GovCon that won a task order with a ninety 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 had not failed. Time had simply done what time always does.
Why scrambling usually makes it worse
When hiring breaks after award, the instinct is often 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 misalignment. Candidates who are marginal fits slip through. 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 is far harder to unwind.
I have seen teams recover from delayed awards. I have 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 may 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 is not about filling seats. It is 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 does not disappear, but it stops driving every decision.
This shift is less about doing more recruiting and more about supporting recruiting differently. It is the gap many SMB GovCon teams are quietly trying to close, often without naming it directly.
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. In Part 2, we look at how these pressures show up differently for primes and subcontractors, and why context and contract position matter more than most teams expect once execution begins. Link to Article 2 here: Why Post-Award Hiring Gets Harder for Primes and Subs (in Different Ways).
About the author
Jeff Packard has spent more than a decade supporting talent acquisition for SMB, Mid-Market, and Large GovCon teams, working across capture, post-award ramp, and early and late program execution. Through BizFirst, he also leads recruiting delivery across multiple talent markets, including commercial and enterprise environments, applying the same execution focused discipline used in government programs.
