Do sales people write great resumes?
Friday, May 11th, 2012Do sales people write great resumes?
Clearly, not always.
Many of the top sales people we know are a little on the impatient side and don’t always provide details of what they’ve sold, who they sold it to and for how much. This basic information is replaced with sales activities performed at their previous employers, percentage of quota achieved and how many times they were sales person of the month.
I seldom read a sales resume that says the candidate was a mediocre performer and somewhere in the middle of the pack performance wise. Funny, huh?
For whatever reason, they feel a face to face interview will uncover their awesome communication skills. When given an opportunity to interview, they’ll stand out, they announce. Granted, sales people are communicators and that’s why they chose a sales career. I’d like to have a dollar for every sales candidate we interview that says “Just get me in front of the hiring manager and I’ll get an offer!â€
Recruiters can normally tell if someone else has written their resume and we often ask. The companies who write them use a couple similar boilerplate styles. That is essentially why we obtain Interview Notes with writing sample from sales candidates for our clients. Can you imagine hiring a salesperson based on a great resume and communication later to find they don’t write well? It’s a very embarrassing situation for hiring managers and HR.
Our methodology is to call the candidate for further details. I encourage our team to use the phone, and call the candidate as we obtain more information faster than reading and the discussion may generate referrals for our clients as well. This truly doesn’t take much longer than STUDYING the resume and you hear their phone skills to evaluate energy, professionalism and motivation for the opportunity.
Exceptions to this stigma are VP and Director level candidates who know the importance of getting in the door with a detailed resume. Those candidates always respond faster to our inquiries to form relationships for long term career advisory assistance and gain understanding of the job opening.
By the way, our customized interview notes separate us from many contingency firms who flip resumes with little interview time or evaluation. The writing sample lengthens our process some, although IT TAKES LONGER it is beneficial. Clients get to see why candidates changed jobs, salary history and why the candidate is a match for their company.
GOOD SELLING and GOOD LUCK in 2012!