Sales Recruiting Blog

Building Your Resume

Having looked at hundreds of thousands of resumes and having interviewed thousands of sales reps I feel pretty confident talking about how to build your sales resume.  Let’s start with the ways not to build your sales resume.  The biggest kiss of death is to have too many jobs on your resume.  I question the sanity of hiring managers who would hire a sales rep that has a track record of spending 1-2 years at each sales job, especially if we are talking about a sales rep that is 10 years out of college.  Another great way to stall your upward progression is to leave your current employer and join their competitor in the same role just to pick up a slightly higher base salary.  Both of these situations go back to the same root usually - boredom or believing that your lack of success as a sales rep is due to the company that you work for.  Here is what I look for when I am trying to find the next star for one of my clients…

Upward progressions are the single best way to build your resume and what I wake up in the morning to find in a sales rep for my client companies.  These can occur while working for the same company such as, raises, promotions, higher earnings, calling on larger clients, etc..  They can also occur by taking a step up with another sales organization.  A wise sales rep will plot out their career path and progress towards higher responsibility, higher earnings and/or bigger challenges.  The path to bigger challenges and higher pay and consequently, a more impressive resume is rather straight-forward.  The goal is to sell bigger ticket items to larger companies and to higher level decision makers.  All other things being equal, you make more money selling to CEOs than HR Managers, for example.  When interviewing with a company ask the recruiter or Sales Manager how this new sales job will advance your career.  Find out what the career possibilities are in the future.  There is nothing wrong with staying in the same role within a company for 10 years if that makes you happy and the wise sales rep will consider this.  This is especially true if your sales territory is set up so that you have the opportunity to call upon larger clients or your company is releasing more expensive services and/or products.  If your sales role does not have that type of opportunity you are probably stalling your sales career.  When it comes time to interview you will find yourself qualified for the same sales jobs after 10 years that you could have won after 5.

Getting back to planning out your career use this litmus test to determine whether or not you want to accept that sales job offer that you just received.  Will this position offer you an upward career track within the company or the experience to win a better position within another company? Speaking from my own experience, I have stayed fresh and enjoyed sales recruiting for over 11 years because I have moved up market and now work on higher level sales positions and I have the experience to bring higher value to my clients.  It would take an incredible opportunity for me to want to give up the strategic partnerships that I have built with my clients.  Good luck building your sales career.