Sales Management: How To Screen Sales Person's Resume

Sales Management | How To Screen Sales Resume Like A Pro – Employment History

April 16th, 2010

In our continuing series on screening sales resumes prior to interviewing, today we come to employment history – a critical component to analyze.

Remember that the goal here is to filter out the less than worthy candidates, before you take the time to do live interviews.

How many jobs has your sales applicant had…and for how long?

You can reference age on this one because this one is a biggie. If you see them changing jobs every two years, why would you think this applicant would stay working for you any longer?

They may have a fear of commitment or they may just get easily distracted. Either one is not so attractive to you.

The truth is that they may just wear out their welcome after a certain point in time. This will most likely be the case if they come to work for you. What you are really looking for here is what kind of person are they and time spent at previous employers tells you a lot about them and could mean any of those things previously mentioned.

To be fair, many salespeople get laid off, downsized or outsourced, so don’t necessarily jump to any firm conclusions here, but if you do choose to interview, this point should be addressed when you meet them face to face.

How long have they stayed at each position or company?

This is similar to the point above, but slightly different. The longer the candidate stays at any one given job, gives you an indication that either they were making such great money that they could never leave, they flew beneath the radar and were never found out that they were sleeping under their desk, or they really liked working there. I’d be willing to bet it’s the last one.

Look carefully at the job duties of the job they spent the longest time at. Their job duties and performance gives you a good indication of what they are about. If they were there for eight years and have no accolades in that time, then forget it – dump that resume.

Additionally, if there is a good track record, that longest stretch of employment tells you a lot about what they like and what drives them, whether its good or bad. Regardless, this is something you would need to ask them about by asking them: “you were selling for Crazy Coffins, Inc. for eight years, you must have really liked it there – what did you like so much about it”.

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Tell me your ideas on how you screen sales resumes by posting a comment below.