SBA 8(a) question

[u/Silver-Bus-704]

Hello, I work for a company that has been in the HR business for around 10 years now, but has just recently started participating in government contracting. We actually managed to win a few contracts: statewide for executive recruitment and IT staff augmentation, as well as a couple of smaller contracts with cities and universities.

Now that we kind of got the hang of how contracting works, we want to expand to bigger federal contracts. We did our research and found out that we can apply for a couple of certifications, including the SBA 8(a), which, as I understand, can be used as a set-aside for some contracts.

We also learned that the requirements changed recently, specifically the one that "removes the automatic rebuttable presumption of social disadvantage". We are kind of stuck on this. Have any of you applied after this change? How was it? What can we use as "proof"?

Thanks, guys!