How to Optimize Your Sales Resume

Optimizing your sales resume is key to accelerating your job search, no matter what stage in your sales career you are at. A one-size-fits-all approach to job searching is never effective!

According to Glassdoor , you have approximately 6 seconds to make an impression.

That’s how long recruiters and hiring managers spend on an initial scan, so it’s essential they see you are a culture and skills fit for the job in that initial scan.

If you’re like most jobseekers, however, time is not on your side! Customizing your resume each and every time you apply for a job is time consuming (not to mention tedious).

Creating a customized resume for every role may not be realistic for your search. So what do you do?

Create a Master Resume

The master resume is a document strategically designed to highlight your core value. Key elements of a master resume are the headline, summary, core competencies, and achievement-rich job bullets.

Your “master resume” is the base. This is not a targeted document; rather, it serves as the foundation from which you can quickly modify and edit based on positions you are applying.

What are the essential components of a master?

1) Professional Headline. Use something that can be quickly modified based on the job title in your target position.

2) Chronological Format. Recruiters immediately become suspicious (and often irritated) when they have to search out your most recent position. Play is safe and present the information in a logical, reverse chronological format.

3) Accomplishment Bullets. No matter what the position you are applying for, your ability to add value in previous roles will be your biggest selling point. Quantify value wherever possible, asking yourself how you improved, streamlined, automated, or improved profitability.

Once you have the master resume, you are ready to target. Read on to learn best practices for each section to modify your resume for maximum impact.

Headline

In your headline, you should be positioning yourself for the job you want, not the job you have. Include the title as your headline and add a sub-header below to showcase the top 3 qualifications for the role. To identify these skills, scour the positing, company website, and (I’d possible) the profile of someone currently in the same or similar role.

Summary

Your summary should be brief, no more than four lines of text as readers will skim or skip long paragraphs) and peppered with achievements.

In this sample, the reader quickly knows that they are being presented with a client-facing sales leader with experience in unified communications and cloud.

Rather than Senior sales leader with a proven track record of outperforming goals, try Senior sales leader who shatters goals by upwards of 115% for start-up and rapid growth medical device companies.

Integrate language that demonstrates culture fit, gleaned from the job posting or corporate marketing materials.

If you have done your due diligence and know the company is planning entry into a new market, include your expertise in doing just that.

Core Competencies

The skills section is perhaps the easiest area for customization. Use a word cloud or just manually review the position to identify the most important skills.

Take the time to order this section for maximum alignment and remember that the human eye reads in left to right in an F or E pattern when using columns so that the most important info is read first.

Job Bullets

Include the most relevant achievements based on the position you are applying for.

If the job you are applying for is focused on new business development and you have a mix of new business and account management experience, order your bullets accordingly and consider replacing adjectives or verbs to be more aligned with the goal of creating new opportunity.

A great way to add impact, ATS keyword density, and make it easier to shift targeting is to use a leading keyword for each bullet. The below sample showcases how this strategy is used effectively in a sales resume.

Depending on the company and role, you could easily swap out the headers, so customer engagement could become business development and executive alignment could pivot to consultative selling.

Put it All Together

At the end of the day, all the targeting and keyword optimizing is really aimed towards one goal: maximizing the likelihood that you will get called for an interview.

Make it easy for the hiring manager or recruiter to find important information with a clean format. Use white space, reasonable margins, font that is at least 10 point, and use italics, bold, underline, and other text embellishments strategically.

Reserve italics for information that is more background (it tends to get skimmed), bold for highlights, and underline rarely if at all.

Looking for a fresh perspective on your sales resume?

Schedule a Discovery Call

If you’re ready to accelerate your job search, schedule your consultation to learn about collaborating with an expert up-leveling your career in 2020.