A thought-provoking salary survey

Posted by Jon
Some fascinating perspectives at the UKAPMP conference from our good friend Martin Smith, who runs Bid Solutions – the world’s leading specialist bid/proposal recruiment consultancy.

Martin presented the findings from the latest UK salary survey – conducted in partnership with UKAPMP. Here are a few of the (fascinating) conclusions, with my own observations in brackets:

• 800 people responded to the survey; between them they had 214 different job titles. (No wonder people out there struggle to understand the value we bid/proposal folks bring, if we can’t even agree what to call ourselves).
• Average base salaries are down a little over 8% since the last survey in 2008. (Clearly, there’ll be downward pressure in a tight economy, but are we doing enough to promote the value we bring?)

• Average salaries for men: £53k. For women? £41k. That’s a scary 28.6% difference. (Something that merits a more detailed discussion at APMP, to see if there’s anything we’re doing systemically as a profession that could be discriminatory?).
• Heads of Bid Management reported average salaries of £74.6k. (That’s not really commensurate with the salaries of many sales people, or truly senior managers. Again, are we justifying our value and being taken seriously?). And 90% of those at that level are male. (That surprised me, being not entirely aligned to my personal experience working with many brilliant female ‘Heads of’ – but see above re discriminatory practices. Time for APMP to get some teeth?).
• “There have been a lot of redundancies in the past four years, so a lot of people have decided to go freelance”. Average contractor day rates are £556. Those on three – six month engagements found that 91% of their contracts were renewed.
• As one would expect, there’s a direct correlation between salary and APMP accreditation. The most senior folks, holding Professional, averaged £67k. Practitioner: £61k. Foundation: £48k. (Interestingly, that to me is self-fulfilling – the more senior qualifications attract the more senior staff, rather than it proving that accreditation leads directly to pay rises. But more worrying was the significant number of senior people who viewed accreditation as “not applicable”).

​If you’d like to read more, head to the survey page on the Bid Solutions site, where you can download the full report and also create bespoke reports. And if you’re recruiting staff, or seeking jobs, then I’m sure you’re already chatting to Bid Solutions: if not, why not?!
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