By John Reilly

As well as Marketing and Analytics people, I’ve recruited Business Development folk for a long time and a lot of sales talent is still passed over by hiring managers after just an initial view of their CV yet with sales people in particular, there is a need to look deeper.

When I launched Reilly People after a sales career, salespeople I’d worked with often sent me their CVs in the hope I’d help them find a better job. I noticed that the very effective ones, the salespeople I knew to be genuine talent and really good at their job often had worse looking CVs than those who talked the talk better than walked the walk.

 CVs are an imperfect means of candidate appraisal and that is never more the case than with salespeople who for some reason, I think mainly cultural, are often much better at selling their services than selling themselves. I speak here particularly about UK candidates because in this country many of us have been told since young not to ‘blow our own trumpet’ so salespeople, often highly adept at pitching out and singing the praises of their employer, suddenly come over ‘ever so 'umble’ when asked to pitch themselves. Since a CV is essentially a pitch document, this means they can fall at the first hurdle, which is not only a problem for them but also the hiring manager, who has missed out on a quality candidate.

The problem at the heart is dull responsibility-led CVs instead of much more informative achievement-led CVs. Managers love metrics and not unreasonably want a numeric picture of what salespeople achieved in their last role but often lose out on talent because this information is missing from a CV.

A thorough interview with a salesperson is vital, drilling down into their targets; their working methods and their KPIs. I’ve often uncovered gems because I looked further than the CV; salespeople whose marketing of themselves stood in stark contrast to their sales achievements.

Salespeople aren’t marketers. Don’t judge them solely by their CV marketing. Time is always valuable and it’s tempting to dismiss applicants after a cursory fifteen second CV glance but taking the occasional chance and interviewing a few more people than you planned can reap rewards.

Good salespeople have always been hard to find. Don’t make it harder by not looking beyond a CV.