After posting a new position on a job board or company website, you will often become inundated with resumes, phone calls and emails. It can be time-consuming and tedious to sort through the large volume of resumes and inquiries, even with a large staff. Use these three indicators to quickly discern top sales talent from candidate resumes and determine whether a candidate will move forward in the hiring process, or get moved into the ‘no’ pile.
Type of Salesperson
Before diving into a pile of resumes, you need to know what type of sales position you are looking to fill. Sales positions are often split into two different categories; hunting and farming. The hunting role will involve generating new business, cold calling, prospecting and soliciting. A farming role has more interaction with existing clients, expanding client sales volume, and account management. When discerning whether a candidate is a hunter or a farmer, look for keywords to match these descriptions. For example, a hunter’s resume might have keywords like ‘generating new business’ and ‘prospecting new clients.’ On the other hand, a farmer’s resume will use the keywords ‘expanding client base’ and ‘account management.’ Scanning candidate’s resumes for these keywords will ensure you find the right type of salesperson for the open position.
Sales Performance Keywords
In addition to selecting farming and hunting keywords, you should also be searching for keywords that indicate sales success. For example, a top performer might use descriptions like ‘President’s club’, ‘quota achievement’, and ‘exceeded quota’. The best resumes will provide specific examples and hard numbers to support their success. ’100% against quota’ and ‘150% against quota achievement’ provide more credibility than just ‘achieved quota’.
Sales Tenure
One of the best indicators of a top sales performer is good tenure. If a sales rep has spotty tenure or gaps in their resume, it’s an automatic red flag. Sales reps who are successful and meeting their quota are not going to jump around from job to job. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, but when you are pressed for time to fill a position, spotty tenure is generally a good indicator of an under-performing salesperson.
Spelling and Grammar
These days, a sales rep’s position requires a lot more writing than it did in the past. Whether it’s sales emails, writing content and blog posts, or posting on social media, sales reps need to be able to effectively communicate with their customers and clients. And a spelling or grammatical error is a quick way to lose credibility and trust with your potentials prospects. As a recruiter, look out for these types of errors on a resume because it shows the sales rep is not very conscientious and may have trouble and make these mistakes in the future.
Before you start evaluating sales resumes, make sure you understand what type of salesperson you need to fill the role. From there, look for keywords and tenure to determine if a sales rep is a top performer. Not only will these indicators save you time and effort, they will also help you find your ideal candidate
