Category: Resume Writing

Resume Writing for Sales Positions

A resume targeted for sales positions needs to address one critical performance goal – your ability to contribute to the sales growth of the company. This goes for business development, account management, customer service, agent/broker, or management positions.

A resume targeted for sales positions needs to address one critical performance goal – your ability to contribute to the sales growth of the company.  This goes for business development, account management, customer service, agent/broker, or management positions.  Being responsible for sales is not sufficient. To get attention and get hired, you need to show how you will add to top line revenues, and in turn, bottom line profits.

Sales positions typically have very specific, quantified goals and performance measures. This makes gathering the data of your past contributions easier than in some fields. If your company doesn’t measure you performance, you will need to gather this information yourself.

The first time your resume is read by an employer, the bar is set low. You need to show you have experience in the areas they want and indicate you were successful. This is pretty straightforward but is not a slam dunk. Part of the challenge is emphasizing your experience in each areas critical to the company. To do this, you need to customize your resume for each position.

The first step is to review the job description closely. Identify the sales activities that are important to the position. Drill down in detail. You need to be more specific than just saying you open new accounts and service existing accounts. Unfortunately, most sales professionals focus on just bottom line performance only and list a bullet under each job like this: “grew sales by 15% per year for 6 consecutive years.” This is good, but does not give enough information.  You should provide some context to the situation.  What challenges did you face, how did you achieve this performance and how did this compare to your goals?

There are a number of common activities that make a sales professional successful. Each position will require a different mix of these activities. Once you identify the important activities to the employer, detail them on your resume. Some elements to consider include:

  • Lead generation

  • Cold calling

  • Opening new accounts

  • Writing proposals

  • Estimating

  • Up-selling customers

  • Growing existing accounts

  • Providing customer service

  • Retaining customers

  • Rolling out new products

Each employer will have a different needs. Most have goals for growth – prospects they are targeting, markets they want to enter, growth with existing customers. In all likelihood, the company has goals in multiple areas.

You need to demonstrate your ability to succeed in these key areas. To do this, provide quantifiable performance measures. This requires going beyond the basic bullet “grew sales 15%.” How much cold calling did you do? How many leads did this generate? How many new customers did you add? What was the revenue of these new customers?

The story behind your answers to a set of questions like this can make an extremely impressive presentation. It will also set you apart from your competition.

Personal Information on a Resume

A resume is a presentation of a person’s professional background, demonstrating their capability and potential. It needs to sell the job seeker to a hiring manager and generate interest that will lead to an interview.

Some job seekers try to personalize their resume by including information unrelated to their career. This can include their age, family status, religious affiliation, hobbies, volunteer work or other details. The only reason to put something on a resume is to make it more effective – in other words – land an interview. By putting personal information on your resume, you are asking a hiring manager to make a hiring decision based on this information.

Do you think that having three kids, being an active fisherman or volunteering at a charity is a reason why a person would be a better quality manager, distribution supervisor or sales executive? There are much better reasons why to hire a person. For example, their experience in a similar job and their education are usually good criteria for making a hiring decision.

Including some personal details is not a major detractor on a resume. Just as a hiring manager won’t hire someone because they ballroom dance, they will not reject them for this either. The reason you want to omit personal information is that your resume is limited in length. The vast majority of resumes need to be two pages or less. There are exceptions to this rule, but they are rare. With only two pages to show your entire professional background, extraneous information needs to be avoided.

Every element of your resume needs to demonstrate your potential. If a detail doesn’t help you get an interview, you should put something else in it’s place. For example,

  • Expand the descriptions within your work experience by adding additional accomplishments.
  • List training classes and continuing education you have completed in your field.
  • Qualify the skills you list on your resume with examples of projects that demonstrate your skill level.

Adding information to your resume that could impress a hiring manager and eliminating informations that is far less important to your career will improve your chances of landing an interview.

5 Quick Fixes for Your Resume

The vast majority of resumes are ineffective. They look like every other resume and fail to give a good reason why the job seeker should be hired. If your resume isn’t getting much of a response, it probably needs a lot of work. You have a few options: hire a resume writer, become a resume writing expert so you can fix if yourself, or focus on the quick and easy changes you can make right now. This last option won’t perfect your resume, but it will help you make a lot of progress fast.

I’ve put together a list of the five easiest, fastest and most effective fixes. This list is far from being complete. It isn’t meant to be. It is just the changes you can make fast that will give you the most improvement.

  • Add a Positioning Statement

Your resume should create a clear picture of who you are. Most resumes are just a listing of facts – names, dates and responsibilities. To be effective, you want to frame the image you create. Do this by adding a summary at the top of your resume that defines who you are, the value you bring and an idea of the type of position you are pursuing. Only half of all the resumes have an objective statement and even less provide a compelling positioning statement that sells the potential of the job seeker. Adding a couple sentences at the top of your resume is the fastest and possibly most significant improvement you can make.

  • Lead off with an accomplishment

After you add a positioning statement, include a bullet point with an accomplishment. Often, I like to see two or three accomplishments at the top of a resume and a lot more scattered throughout the work experience of the job seeker. If you have a resume devoid of accomplishments (this is very common), it could take a lot of time and work to put accomplishments throughout your resume. Don’t let this discourage you. Start with one accomplishment and put it at the top right under your positioning statement. If you have accomplishments on your resume, put one to three of them at the top. The beginning of your resume becomes an executive summary that provides a statement of who you are as a professional and an accomplishment that reinforces this.

  • Separate your responsibilities from your accomplishments

Within the descriptions of the positions you have held, you probably list a combination of responsibilities and accomplishments. You want to draw the reader to youraccomplishments – they are the details that will separate you from your competition. Emphasize your accomplishments by grouping them separately from your responsibilities. One format to consider is to put your responsibilities in a single, short paragraph and put accomplishments in a bulleted list. Most people are drawn to the bullets more than a block of text in paragraph form.

  • Add titles to your bullets

To emphasize the bulleted information even more, provide a bolded title for each bullet. The title should be short and should summarize the theme of the bullet. For example, I have added a title to each of the five bullets in this list. I could have just bulleted the five paragraphs without a title. Visually, this would have been much less appealing. (Note: If your resume doesn’t use bullets and is written in large blocks of text, change this first. It is unlikely that long paragraphs will be read. Break the text into small blocks.)

  • Add Employer Descriptions

There are over 20 million businesses in the U.S. No matter how many a hiring manager knows, the number is still a very small percentage of the total. It is likely many hiring managers will be unfamiliar with some of your employers. Provide a short sentence summarizing the background of the company, including the industry and size of the company.

If you act on all five of these recommendations, your resume will improve significantly. All five can be addressed quickly… for many people, only an hour or two can make a huge difference.

Sentence Structure

I updated some of my social media accounts this weekend. My motivation was twofold. First, some of accounts badly needed an update to the design and content.  I had not updated some of the information in the last couple years and it showed.  The second reason was motivated by one of the blog readers.  She pointed out that the writing style and sentence structure of my LinkedIn account wasn’t consistent.  When I reviewed, I realized this was a generous assessment – my LinkedIn profile was awful.

I had setup my LinkedIn account a couple years ago and used my bio from my website. My bio is written in a 3rd person style and this is suitable to a corporate website. On LinkedIn, the style should be more personal, and written in the first person. The same goes for other social media sites. I’m still working on updating and improving – these are going to be a work in progress. That’s a lot better than what they were, though… stale and out-of-date.

So, what does this have to do with a job search? The sentence structure of a cover letter and resume need to be written professionally and in a suitable style.

A cover letter is a business letter from you to another individual. As a result, it should be written directly in the 1st person. Do not refer to yourself in the 3rd person. It makes a very poor impression.

The resume should have a different style. It should be written in an implied first person. This structure starts with the personal pronoun “I” but this word is omitted. For example, “Managed the production department” is a sentence that has an implied subject – the “I” is left off the beginning of the sentence. This style is appropriate for a resume.

Write your resume in the 1st person but avoid using “I” or your name in your resume.

I’m still working on improving my profiles online. On LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/garycapone), I accept all invitations to connect and have over 2,500 connections. You can invite me to connect at [email protected]. I setup a Twitter account this weekend (www.twitter.com/garycapone). The other account I updated was Facebook. This is the one account I don’t accept every invitation. I’m limiting it to people I know and have established personal relationship.

The Two Ways a Resume is Assessed

The basic purpose of a resume is get you an interview. This is a simple goal, but one many job seekers struggle to reach.  The problem stems from how a resume is assessed.  A resume is usually assessed in two very different ways, but few job seekers design their resume to make the best impression during both of these assessment.

The first assessment your resume needs to pass is the initial screen. During this screen, the goal of the hiring manager is eliminate as many resumes as possible in a very short time. A hiring manager might receive a hundred or more resumes for a position. The goal at this stage is to reduce this stack of resumes down to a manageable number, perhaps the top 10 or 20.

In this review, the hiring manager will often have a few criteria that are critical to the position. These critical elements could be educational, work experience or skill requirements. Usually, two or three criteria are sufficient to reduce the resumes down to the top 20.

As a hiring manager does this initial screen, they may only give a resume a 15 to 30 second look. That’s all that is needed to look for two or three main elements. For example, if a hiring manager requires an MBA for a position, it only takes a few seconds to see if the resume lists an MBA.

The common pitfall many job seekers fall into is not making their qualifications with critical elements of the job very prominent on their resume. The education of a job seeker is usually easy to find, since it is in a section of its own. Work experience and skills are not always as clearly identifiable. For this reason, it is extremely important to look at the requirements for a position and make sure you show how you meet these requirements.

If you have the experience that a company wants, it should be clear and easy to find. With hiring managers only spending 15 to 30 seconds on your resume initially, they can only do a quick scan. They will not read every word. Important details of your background need to be prominent. If they are buried in large blocks of text, there is little chance they will be read.

The second assessment is a detailed look at your resume where the hiring manager attempts to learn as much about you as they can. All of the resumes in this group meet the minimum basic requirements for the job. The goal now is to identify the best of the group.

In this detailed assessment, demonstrating qualifications isn’t sufficient. All of the candidates at this stage will satisfy the basics and many will have a background very close to the target of the hiring manager. The candidates that rise to the top and get interviews demonstrate a pattern of success. The key is showing how the job seeker contributed significant value to their employers.

Most job seekers focus on experience. This focus leads to an emphasis on the responsibilities they held. Because their competition for a position held the same responsibilities, this does not differentiate them. Usually, it only gets them past the first screen – the 15 second look. When they are looked at in the second assessment, they get passed over. There will be candidates that emphasize the value they have provided in their careers. By doing these, these individuals rise to the top of the pile and get invited to interview.

When you write your resume, you need to work to make your resume standout in both assessments. Ensure that your resume demonstrates your basic capabilities very clearly and includes detailed examples of your contributions to your employers. If you do both of these things, you will have more success than most of your competition.

Your Resume’s Executive Summary

I’m a big fan of starting a resume with a summary statement. A summary statement gives a job seeker the opportunity to create a very strong positive impression in just a few lines. The summary statement is also the grabber that motivates the hiring manager to read your resume closely, rather than just skim it fast.  Developing a good impression and grabbing the reader can make a huge difference in the overall effectiveness of the resume.

Today, I read an article on resume writing that offered some great advice but differed on the importance of a summary statement. The article gave three reasons to avoid an objective or summary statement:

  • You don’t want one

  • You don’t need one

  • You don’t have room for one

All three of these statements sound good.  Unfortunately, they are misleading.

You don’t want one:  If you don’t want to include a summary, you don’t have to have one. This goes for anything on your resume. The problem with this is that a good summary statement will make your resume more effective. Deciding you don’t want one is tantamount to saying you don’t want to maximize the effectiveness of your resume.

You don’t need one:  As I said, you don’t have to include a summary. It’s not a required element of resume. The basics that are essential to a resume are your name, contact info, education and work experience. Everything else that you may include is designed to help sell your potential to an employer. The resume police won’t hunt you done if you don’t have a good summary statement, but your odds of landing an interview may be lower without one.

You don’t have room:  The third point is the one that I really have trouble with. The more information on your resume, the more important it is to have a summary. If you have no experience to write about, there’s nothing to summarize. On the other hand, if you have 30 years of experience, a summary can help frame your potential and build interest in reader to look closely at your resume.

A good summary statement is similar to an eye catching headline in a newspaper or an action packed opening scene of a movie. Both of these are designed to grab the attention of the audience quickly with the most exciting information.

The key to an effective summary statement is to present a summary of the most important information to the hiring manager. You want to get the hiring manager excited and interested.

The term objective statement is misleading for many job seekers. Hiring managers want to know what type of position you will consider accepting – not what your goals, wants and desires are. Focus on the elements of your background that help sell you to an employer. This short sales pitch should generate interest in reading your resume closely. If you do this, you will be far ahead of most job seekers.

Superhuman

Thursday night, I watch “The Real Superhumans and the Quest for the Future Fantastic” on the Science Channel. The show profiled individuals with abilities that are incredible and verge on superpowers. It was very interesting. When the show started, several of the people profiled in the show were presented in 30 second teasers. The purpose of the teasers was to get the viewer excited about the show and motivate them to keep watching. It obviously worked with me.

The teasers were very similar to a cover letter, the executive summary on a resume, or the tell me about yourself answer in an interview. The first person the show presented was the Iceman. The teaser showed the Iceman running on a snow covered road wearing only shorts. He didn't have shoes, a shirt or a hat – just running shorts.

The teaser explained that the Iceman was running in Lapland, a location above the arctic circle. Let's look at the initial statement of the narrator:

It is January and the temperature is -26 degrees Celsius. This man has been running on ice and snow, barefoot, for over one hour. He does not have frostbite. He does not have hypothermia and he feels no pain. He has the power to live in the cold. To withstand temperatures so frigid others would die. He does this by willing himself to heat up.

Looking at this, the Iceman is positioned very clearly. The teaser leads off with an accomplishment. Running in freezing temperatures barefoot for an hour. This was presented to get attention fast. The teaser then explains the significance of the accomplishment – no frostbite, hypothermia or death. Finally, it gives an explanation of how he achieves these results – he wills himself to warm up.

When you write a cover letter or resume, you want to grab the hiring manager's attention quickly. Most people provide facts about their background, but little in the way of accomplishments. This is how most people would present the introduction to their resume.

Experienced at enduring cold conditions. 10 year track record of successfully running in cold weather. Able to warm up my body at will. Experienced swimming in near freezing water.

This teaser doesn't generate much interest. It's a set of facts that don't qualify the talent of this individual. A person in a polar bear club that runs around in a pair of shorts and then jumps in a local river for a few seconds every winter could have a similar start to their resume. The teaser in the show made it absolutely clear that the Iceman was far from ordinary – separating him from everyone else on the planet.

Another thing the teaser did was present the title of the individual – Iceman – before the teaser. This helped to create a single image of the individual that could be remembered. It is very helpful if you can generate a word or phrase in the mind of the hiring manager that they can use to remember you and your background. Something that symbolizes why you are exceptional.

If the teaser for the show was in fact a resume, cover letter or interview answer, it would go too far. I don't recommend giving yourself a nickname like the Iceman. Supply Chain Superstar, Manufacturing Man, or The Energetic Engineer would all come across very badly. What you need to do is create a picture of one or more accomplishments that is so clear and impactful that the hiring manager develops their own phrase to remember you.

Another noteworthy aspect of the teaser was the choice of people to profile. The Iceman was the first. There were other people in the program whose abilities are arguably much more impressive. So, why was the Iceman picked to be first?

The Iceman's ability and accomplishments were very easy to demonstrate quickly. Some of the abilities presented later in the show took several minutes to explain. They were too complicated to capture in a word or phrase. The Iceman, with just a nickname and a few sentences, could be presented very clearly.

This is a good lesson for your resume and cover letter. The most impressive accomplishment from your background may not be the best to present first. A less impressive accomplishment that can be read and understood very quickly could be more effective. The reason for this is the same as the reason the show had the teaser – motivate the hiring manager to read the rest of the resume. If the most impressive accomplishment is so complicated that the hiring manager doesn't understand it quickly, they may move on without ever getting it. This makes it completely ineffective.

When to Use Abbreviations and Acronyms

Each industry has specific terminology and language that is common within the industry but unknown outside the field. This jargon can be so common in an industry that some practitioners forget that others outside the field have never heard many of terms.

When you write a resume, this can lead to a big mistake. Using too much jargon can make your resume unreadable for hiring managers in another industry.

The easiest way to confuse a reader is with unnecessary abbreviations and acronyms. A reader may be able to figure out the basic meaning of a technical phrase but an acronym is often impossible to decipher. This makes it important to avoid acronyms.

When you have the choice of writing a multi-word phrase that is specific to your industry or writing the acronym, use the phrase. If it is a phrase you are going to use repeatedly, you can put the acronym in parentheses and then use the acronym later in your resume. By doing this, you define the acronym for the reader.

The one use of this technique that I absolutely hate is when a person writes out a phrase, provides the acronym and then never uses the acronym or phrase again. The point of including the acronym is to make the text more concise by only writing out the phrase once. This only works if you have a long phrase that you use often and can replace with the acronym. If you don't use the phrase multiple times, there is no benefit to adding the acronym. It actually makes the text less concise.

If you have one technical phrase you want to use in your resume, this isn't a critical concern. The real challenge is integrating multiple terms and phases. The more jargon you use, the less comprehensible your resume will be. A hiring manager doesn't want to spend a lot of time figuring out what your resume means. If they can't see the value you offer quickly, your resume might get discarded.

As a general rule, try to keep the number of highly technical terms to one or two per paragraph. More than this, and the terminology may detract from the impression you make. 

If you are seeking a position within the same industry, this is less of a concern. It is critical to limit the technical terminology, jargon and acronyms when you are attempting to change industries. 

Resume Order

The order of the information in your resume makes a significant impact on its effectiveness. The top of the first page will be read the most closely. Often the reader will only scan the remainder of the resume. This makes it essential to convey the most important information at the top.

A hiring manager might have two or three requirements for a position that a job seeker must have. The other requirements may have some flexibility, but the two or three most important often cannot be compromised. When the hiring manager looks at a stack of resumes, these key requirements are the focus.

To ensure that you don't get rejected for a position that you are qualified to do, you need to highlight these requirements at the top of your resume. The challenge many job seekers face is knowing what highlight at the top.

Recent College Graduates

When you graduate, a company will hire you for your potential, not your experience. This makes it essential to highlight your education. A good order for a recent college graduate's resume would be:

  • Education

  • Skills

  • Work Experience

  • Activities

Professionals in a Technical Field

Technical fields often prioritize technical skills over all over attributes. When you write your resume, you should emphasize the skills that are most critical to the position. A good order for a resume would be:

  • Technical Skills

  • Work Experience

  • Education

  • Other Skills

Professionals in Non-Technical Fields

In a non-technical field, your experience and ability to do a job is most important. This information should be emphasized first. A good order for a resume would be:

  • Work Experience

  • Education

  • Skills

Over the course of your career, the order of your resume will change. I see resumes from experienced professionals that keep the same information at the top of the resumes.  This is a mistake.  Continue to revise your resume to emphasize the most important information to the hiring manager.

Prioritize Information on Your Resume

When you write your resume, you need to select the most important information to emphasize.  Your resume will be judged on the most prominent content.  It is not unusual for a resume to be rejected in the first 30 seconds it is read.

How Resumes Are Screened

When a hiring manager has a lot of resumes to review, the first priority is to identify the top contenders and eliminate the rest.  If a job seeker has a background that is clearly not a fit, it’s discarded immediately.  The content in the top half of the first page of the resume may be the only thing read.

If you present information at the top of your resume that is unrelated to the position you are pursuing, you run the risk of getting rejected before the hiring manager reads your entire resume.

Example

A resume I received recently demonstrates how prioritizing poorly can hurt the overall impression.  Below is the professional summary from the top of the resume (with some identifying information deleted):

PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATIONS

A dedicated, forward-thinking professional with experience in sales management, recruiting and supervising staff and interior design.

  • Communicates effectively with diverse professionals and workforce, analyzing and evaluating situations quickly to provide options for resolution.
  • Led division to ##% sales growth within # months with a closure rate of ##%.
  • Experienced Kitchen Designer, familiar with all major brands of solid surface and natural stone.
  • Learns new information easily and applies knowledge in practical manner to meet goals and objectives.

 

The structure of this section doesn’t guide the reader to a single impression.  It starts by stating the individual is a “dedicated, forward-thinking professional.”  This isn’t a bad way to start, but it isn’t great either.  Dedicated and forward-thinking are good qualities.  They don’t do a lot to separate the job seeker from other candidates.  Vague qualities like this just don’t do a lot.

The next phrase lists three areas of expertise – sales management, recruiting and supervision.  This starts to build an image of the job seeker.  The sentence ends with an add-on: “and interior design.”  This confuses the presentation.  Just when the job seeker establishes an image of a sales manager, they through in interior designer.

The four bullets do little to clarify the situation.  The first bullet is another general list of skills that are difficult for a hiring manager to assess the potential value.  The second bullet reinforces the sales management experience with a  specific accomplishment that is impressive.  The third bullet then goes back to the interior design skill set.  Finally, the fourth bullet gives general skills

The content of the resume’s summary isn’t a problem.  The issue is how it is presented.  Changing the order and emphasis can make a big difference.  For example, the resume could be rewritten to emphasize the sales management background:

PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATIONS

Successful sales manager, experienced in recruiting and developing sales teams within the interior design field.

  • Led division to ##% sales growth within # months with a closure rate of ##%.
  • Communicates effectively with diverse professionals and workforce, analyzing and evaluating situations quickly to provide options for resolution.
  • Dedicated, forward-thinking and adaptable professional, capable of learning and applying new information quickly to meet goals and objectives.
  • Experienced Interior Designer and Kitchen Designer, familiar with all major brands of solid surface and natural stone.

 

This emphasizes a sales management career and makes a clear presentation for this field.  The information is almost identical to the original presentation.

If the job seeker wanted a role as an interior designer instead of sales management, the summary should be written to emphasize this experience and deemphasize the sales management experience.