Ever been frustrated that you have been submitting your CV to live roles but don’t seem to be getting the call back and interview invites you would like? Perhaps your CV isn’t quite grabbing people’s attention. Here are my 3 top tips to get more calls back after you have submitted your CV.

In my last blog I spoke about identifying the types of roles that you want to start looking for in order to make your next sales career move. In this blog I want to give you a few tips on how to write a sales CV that gets you interviews.

I see lots of CV’s every day and there are a few things that any employer or recruiter is looking for when they are scanning CV’s.

Tip 1 – Current / Past Employer details – The companies you have worked for may be well known in the sector they are in but its highly likely that the person reading your CV doesn’t, so, make sure that you put one or two sentences into your CV on what it is that the company actually does. It’s quite simple to do, go onto LinkedIn and look at the companies page, it will describe what they do, cut and paste in the most relevant parts, that way when an employer is looking they can see straight away if the company background is relevant and invite you to interview. If they can’t see what the company does, its likely your CV goes to the “Not Sure” pile and trust me, that pile very rarely gets a second look.

Tip 2 – Responsibilities, targets and achievements. Really important this one, less is better regarding responsibilities, 3 – 5 bullet points of the key outcomes your role had to achieve, making sure the first bullet point states the primary purpose of the role. Then below the bullet points put the revenue and KPI targets you were set and then how you went to these targets year on year. I guarantee if you have these you will get invites to interviews. By the way, very few people hit their target without fail consistently every month or every quarter so if you have some poor months or a bad quarter, don’t hide it, be honest. If there were extenuating circumstances for not achieving put them in (be careful not to use blame or excuses however!)

Tip 3 – Reasons for moving – If you have a few short stints or long stints then a short move, be sure to put in a RFL (reason for leaving) this is helpful in explaining moves and also to set some context around why you may have had some short stints. Once again, if there are no reasons then your CV will go into the “Not Sure” pile and like I said earlier, very rarely does this pile get a second view.

So there you have it, some tips to improve the look and content of your CV and also to help improve your conversion rates from application to interview invite.

Credit: Charles Noyce LinkedIn Post