7 Tips For The Perfect Tech Sales Resume
Recruiters only spend about six seconds reviewing your resume. So don’t waste hours deciding between 0.5 and 0.75 margins. Just make sure you follow these tips for the perfect tech sales resume:
- Keep it to one page
- Choose an easy-to-read font
- List your experiences in reverse chronological order
- Start each bullet point with an action verb
- Quantify whenever possible
- Don’t include any pictures or designs
- Make your tech sales experience most prominent
1. Keep it to one page
Your tech sales resume should be one-page, one-sided.
There are two reasons for this.
First, like we mentioned above, the recruiter is only going to look at your resume for six seconds or less, so they definitely won’t have time to flip the page over or scroll down to the second page.
Second, one page is more professional. Some argue that having two pages is OK. But one page is the standard.
Click here to read more from Indeed on the one-page vs. two-page resume debate.
2. Choose an easy-to-read font
No wingdings or curlicues.
If you’re not sure what we mean by “easy-to-read,” just stick to Calibri, Arial, or Times New Roman.
Click here to read more from Indeed on choosing the best font for your resume.
3. List your experiences in reverse chronological order
In other words, have your current position at the top, and work backwards from there.
You summer job in high school doesn’t matter nearly as much to the hiring manager as your most recent position.
4. Start each bullet point with an action verb
Here are some examples of action verbs:
- Managed
- Created
- Developed
- Sold
So instead of having a sentence that isn’t clear until the middle or the end:
The best month of my tenure at Widgets was when I booked $50,000 in revenue in January 2020.
You can start the bullet with a powerful action verb that gets straight to the point:
Sold $50,000 in revenue in January 2020 and earned the Top Salesperson award.
Click here for a list of 300+ action verbs from ResumeGenius.
5. Quantify whenever possible
This is especially important in tech sales.
Sales is a numbers game and tech is all about growth.
Use numbers to describe your experience instead of ambiguous adjectives like most, more, significant, etc.
6. Don’t include any pictures or designs
Leave this to the designers and the marketers.
7. Make your tech sales experience most prominent
Your resume will have to “stand on its own.”
In other words, you won’t be there to help explain it.
So don’t give the recruiter any excuse to think that you don’t have enough relevant experience for the job.
If you’re applying for a tech sales position, then 80% of your resume should be focused on your experience that is relevant to tech sales.
That doesn’t mean breaking tip #3 about having your resume in reverse chronological order.
For example, if you’re an industry-changer and you were most recently at an investment bank for two years, don’t put your door-to-door sales job from high school at the top of your resume.
But you can leave out certain experiences and include other more relevant experiences, and you can also add more bullet points to relevant experiences to make them stand out.
For example, if you had two internships in college: one was helping a startup with business development and the other was working at the biology lab on campus, then include the startup experience and leave out the lab.
If you don’t have any previous tech sales experience …
Don’t sweat it.
Just make sure to include your relevant non-tech sales experience and/or non-sales tech experience.
Even if your sales experience was something entry-level like in-store retail, door-to-door sales, or campus brand ambassador, this will show a sales hiring manager that you know what you’re getting into with sales.
The same concept applies to previous tech experience.
Even if you just had a summer internship with a startup, this experience tells the tech hiring manager that you’re familiar with the startup grind and the fast-paced, quick-pivot culture of tech in general.
If you don’t have any relevant experience in sales OR tech …
We’ve got you covered.
Click here for our Tech Sales Bootcamp.
Don’t worry too much about your resume.
Instead of trying to create the perfect resume, spend 1-2 hours getting the document to where it’s good enough, then spend that extra energy casting an even wider net in terms of the number of applications you’re sending out.
Click here to read more about sending out applications for tech sales job openings.
From there, use diligent follow-ups to guarantee responses from recruiters, instead of the less-effective method of sending out resumes and then waiting for a response.
Click here to read more about sending follow-up messages to recruiters.