Create a compelling CV

Your CV is your own personal sales and marketing document. It is also a sample of the quality of written material an employer might expect you to send to customers, colleagues or your team.

It is impossible to consider online job hunting without a first class, standard CV that you are happy for any potential employer to see. E-recruitment and the development of candidate databases and screening technology have changed the way in which recruiters use CVs. As well as filling current vacancies, they use them to spot potential recruits. This is especially the case for sales jobs where recruiters want to attract passive jobseekers who arent desperate to move on but are open to other opportunities.

No one looking for a top sales job can afford to get a CV wrong. It must be accurate, honest and clearly presented. Your aim is to highlight the sales skills, management experience and business acumen that you have acquired and that employers seek.

To ensure you have a winning CV you need to:

• Take care over the style and layout
• Include all relevant information
• Avoid any gaps
• Tailor it to each vacancy, where possible

Style and layout
Make sure your CV has the maximum input on a busy recruiter who probably has only two minutes to read it.

Always check the job advertisement for information about how the recruiter wants your CV presented: most recruiters will only accept CVs as word documents. This makes it easier to store and share the data with other managers who have a stake in the job.

Dont forget the basic rules - your CV should be clear and concise and ideally no more than two sides of A4. It needs to be easy to read on screen as well as on paper and it needs to be scannable. Dont use too many fancy fonts or colours to highlight odd bits of information these are just distracting. Use a minimal amount of bold text to signpost different sections of the CV.

Be wary of including a summary statement about yourself and your sales skills at the top of the CV. You are inviting interviewers to challenge it. It will be like a beacon to them and they will expect you to back the statement up with concrete examples and prove that you can deliver.

Information to include
Personal details include your name, address and telephone numbers so that you can be contacted at any time. Put this information upfront so that it is easy to retrieve the CV. You do not have to mention your age or marital status but include your nationality as it confirms that you are eligible to work in the UK. If you are not British it could be an added bonus to a business that might be looking to grow new markets. Make it clear that you have the right to work here.

Education candidates looking for their first or second job should list their education before their work experience. Starting with the most recent, list academic qualifications plus any business or professional qualifications. Employers want bright, thinking people on their sales teams so dont hide good grades if you have them. Include dates when you studied and/or qualified.

Older, more experienced job hunters should keep this section brief and include it after employment history. List only relevant professional business, sales and marketing qualifications first followed by your degree, if you have one, including when, what and where you studied. If you finished school after A-levels and your grades were good then include them. Its enough to say how many GCSEs or O-levels grades you acquired without giving more detail.

Work experience once again list this in reverse order with your current or most recent job first. Recruiters want to know:

• Where you worked
• When you worked there
• The job you did
• What you sold
• The value of your sales
• Who you sold to make it clear if your buyers were at director level

• How many people were in your team
• Whether it was field or telephone sales
• The size of your budget

Most important of all, include your major achievements. Did you meet and exceed targets, build new business, develop new markets or deliver profit to your company? There is a sense that major brands sell themselves. If you have worked in sales for a well-known name, think more broadly about your achievements, and be sure to flag up any successes you had selling a product or service that was not a major brand.

If you are hoping to move into another sector, think carefully about how the sales skills you have acquired will transfer to another market. If you are looking to move into a sales management role, highlight any management experience you have had whether its with a project, people or finance.

Keywords e-recruiters use keywords to search CVs for possible interviewees. These are a set of words or short phrases that capture the business skills and experience they are seeking. For sales and management roles these could include:

• Account management
• Networking
• Negotiation skills
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Field sales
• Telemarketing
• People management
• Financial planning
• IT skills
• Business development

They might also cover industry and market experience such as financial, pharmaceuticals, construction or FMCG.

Keywords vary from job to job and it is not about making sure every possible one appears in your CV they have to be appropriate to your experience. You can make keyword technology work for you by studying the jobs you are interested in on salestarget.co.uk. The phrases used in job descriptions are likely to be the ones employers scan CVs for.

Other skills always include other skills that might be useful to an employer. The obvious ones to include are languages and driving, as well as more unusual skills such as sports coaching. They also show you to be a well-rounded candidate.

Hobbies these are not going to get you the job but do offer insight into the sort of person you are and the salesperson or manager you might become. If you enjoy activities that are competitive or challenging in some way, thats great but dont make it up. Hobbies are often the subject of ice breaker questions in an interview and you dont want to be caught out.

Avoiding gaps in your CV
Make sure there are no gaps in your CV they simply invite the recruiter to guess what you have been up to and come to an unfavourable conclusion. If you have spent time out of work for whatever reason, use your CV to put a positive spin on it. A concerted period of job hunting was about reappraising your career and finding the right job for you. Meanwhile time out bringing up children will have enhanced your time management and negotiation skills.

Tailoring your CV
Always review your CV if you are using it to apply for a specific job. The aim is to match your skills and experience to those the recruiter is seeking by, for example, rearranging some of the information to highlight more relevant skills.

Background research is essential if you are going to get this right. Corporate websites and trade press will help you research the business and the market in which it operates. The most important information will be in the job description.

Covering letters
When you apply for a job through salestarget.co.uk, and upload your CV, you will be asked if you would like to include a covering message. This is another opportunity to highlight why you are the best person for the job. Make the most of it.

Most e-recruiters encourage jobseekers to include some form of covering letter with their application and it is essential you include one if for some reason you are sending a standard CV.

The secret of a good online covering letter is to keep it short a few sentences only and to the point. Include your contact details and your full name. Make it clear what job you are applying for and emphasise one or two points that illustrate why you are the ideal sales candidate. Your CV must back up any value statements you make about yourself and your skills.

Before sending you application, check whether or not the covering message is supposed to be sent within an e-mail or as an attachment.