Sales Executive CV Example

A stronger, more engaging sales executive CV gives you the best chance of success. It can help you pass the ATS CV screening stage and impress the recruiter or hiring manager, increasing your prospects of reaching the interview stage. Let’s take a closer look at the key parts of a CV and how to develop them for maximum impact.

Key sections for a sales executive CV

How you approach writing your sales executive CV will vary according to your experience, your level and the details outlined in the job description.

At the end of the day, though, a sales executive CV is just a way to tell the story of how you’ve grown in your career. Regardless of your experience level, you want that progression to feel seamless and easy to follow for recruiters. To help you get there, we’re going to walk through each part of the CV step-by-step, starting with the basics in your header and working our way through to your professional achievements.

CV Header

At the top of your sales executive CV, add a header that establishes the design language of the document. Include the necessary contact information: your full name, email address, phone number and location. It's not typically necessary to include your full address. Additionally, listing your LinkedIn profile in your CV header can be valuable. It serves to provide more detailed information about your career journey, your qualifications and your industry standing, in an easily accessible way.

For UK applications, it's not usually a good idea to add a personal photo or any other personal details, such as your age, gender, nationality or ethnicity. These can risk introducing bias to the selection process and, as such, are often discouraged in job adverts under the terms of the Equality Act 2010.

CV Summary or Objective

The first section below your CV header is typically your CV summary. This short paragraph outlines some of your key skills, achievements and experience, so employers can quickly get an impression of whether you have the right credentials for the sales executive job. While a CV summary showcases your key skills and achievements in the context of your career to date, a CV objective provides an alternative approach. It focuses instead on your ambitions for the future, making it ideal for junior candidates without much work experience.

In your summary or objective, write up to three sentences outlining your key skills, unique personal qualities and career achievements or ambitions, taking care to always reflect the requirements listed in the job description.

A good CV summary will highlight one or two key skills that match those listed in the job description, and show how you've put them to good use in your career to date. You'll want to set yourself apart from other candidates by focusing on unique qualities or particular areas of strength that have shaped your career to date. Find an example below of a positive sales executive CV summary, characterised by evidence to support your claims and well-structured, easy-to-read sentences.

The sales executive CV summary above gives you an idea of what to avoid. The differences are subtle, yet significant. There are several factors that could make your summary less engaging. These include using long, poorly-structured sentences, failing to add evidence of your impact, being too generic with the skills you mention and not adapting your CV summary to specifically respond to the job description.

Professional Experience

A CV's work experience section is usually its most important element. Employers tend to value the work experience section, as it shows evidence of how you've put your relevant skills to good use in your career to date. Remember, it's essential to tailor this section to match the job description, including keywords and phrases to help employers see how you'll fit the role, and how you might put the required skills to good use in the future.

This section should contain a list of your most relevant previous jobs in the last 10 or 15 years. Add the job title, the name of the employer, its location and your dates of employment. Include detail in bullet points, outlining the skills you used in the role and the impact they made.

What differentiates one CV work experience section from all the others is the use of action verbs and quantifiable evidence in your bullet points. It should showcase how your actions led to positive outcomes for the employer, and show a progression in your skills throughout your career. Here's an example of best practice in a sales executive CV work experience section:

Above you'll find a less effective example of a sales executive CV work experience section. The work experience section could fail to make an impression if it's too generic, focuses on older or irrelevant roles or lacks tailoring to the job description. It's also important to avoid focusing too much on responsibilities that don't tell the reader anything of the value you added to the role.

Education

Your education section should showcase your most recent and highest qualifications, paying particular attention to anything that's specifically required for the role.

Working as a sales executive doesn't tend to require a specific degree. However, while employers may not request a degree in the job description, it can be useful to include other relevant qualifications, certifications or training in your CV's education section. These might include Strategic Sales Management Certification, or courses that show your skills, such as data analysis interpretation skills or lead generation strategy development.

When adding your qualifications to your education section, choose the highest relevant qualifications, and list them in reverse-chronological order, starting with your most recent. Add the name and level of the award, the institution, its location and your dates of study or graduation. If you have space or if you particularly want to emphasise your qualifications, you could add one or two bullet points under each entry, highlighting specialist areas of study, projects you worked on, awards you won or societies you were a member of.

If the job description requires any specialist certifications or licences, you may wish to add these in your education section. If you add these, it's also a good idea to include the expiration date of the licence or qualification, if it has one.

Skills

The skills section of a sales executive CV provides space for showcasing the key skills and qualities that set you apart as a candidate. You'll want to only include the most relevant skills, so review the job description and list hard and soft skills that match the requirements, while reserving some space to mention your own unique characteristics. For a sales executive CV, it's essential to include relevant skills for the role that match your skill set, such as resilience and CRM software platform expertise, to impress the reader and show you're qualified for the sales executive position.

Hard Skills

Hard skills refer to the technical and specialist skills required for the everyday duties of the job. They might include specialist knowledge, or the use of certain software and equipment. You can gain these skills through study, training or industry experience, and they might require a licence or certification. For sales executive jobs, essential hard skills from your career-to-date might include sales forecasting modelling proficiency, and customer relationship management expertise. Review the job description, and include four or five key hard skills in your CV that show employers you're capable of completing the key duties of the role.

The best hard skills to include are typically listed as 'essential' or 'required' in the job description. Aim for a mix of the most desirable skills, together with those you have the highest proficiency in. For the best chance of success, you'll want your strongest skills to match closely with those most desired by the employer.

Below, you can find the types of skills typically featured in the hard skills section of a sales executive CV:

Soft Skills

Your soft skills list should contain a list of your personal strengths that make you suitable for the role, and a good fit for the team and the organisation. In contrast to hard skills, these tend to be transferable and applicable to different roles and levels. As a result of rapid technological changes in the world of work, soft skills are becoming ever-more valued by employers. Soft skills can also be particularly valuable for junior or entry-level roles where candidates haven't necessarily had the time to develop hard skills and career achievements.

Adopt the same approach as you did with your hard skills list, reviewing the job description to understand the requirements, before assessing which soft skills you can provide evidence for throughout your sales executive CV. Your soft skills list should reflect the job description as closely as possible, while also reflecting your strongest, unique talents and personal qualities. Aim for a list of around five key skills.

Consider the following soft skills that frequently appear in a sales executive CV.

Language Skills

Adding foreign language skills to your sales executive CV can be a valuable addition that reflects well on you as a candidate. Even if language skills aren't listed as a requirement in the job description, if you speak a foreign language, it can be beneficial to add it to your CV. Within this section, list the foreign languages you speak to a reasonable degree of competence, together with an indicator of your skill levels.

There are a few acceptable ways of citing your foreign language proficiency levels. The simplest way is to assign a basic descriptive word to indicate your skills, such as:

• English: Fluent
• Spanish: Intermediate

You could otherwise use an internationally recognised language standard, such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). This assigns your language skills a standardised level of competence, as follows:

• A1: Beginner
• A2: Elementary
• B1: Intermediate
• B2: Upper intermediate
• C1: Advanced
• C2: Proficiency

Certifications and Licences

To showcase additional qualifications and training beyond the basic requirements for the role, consider adding a certifications section to your CV. It can be a valuable way of differentiating yourself from other candidates and showing employers your dedication, motivation and commitment to professional development. In addition, the certifications section can be a valuable addition to your sales executive CV if you're applying for a role that cites certain certifications or licences as a necessity in the job description. These might include roles where the use of specialist software or equipment forms part of your everyday duties.

Take a look at this list of example certifications and licences for sales executive candidates:

Additional Information

Optional sections can be useful to add to your CV, to provide additional evidence that you have the skills for the sales executive job. Consider including a few optional sections to your CV if you think you need to provide extra information to prove your credentials. These sections can be particularly valuable if you lack relevant work experience, such as for entry-level roles, or if you're changing careers to a completely new field or specialism.

And if you'd like more tips on making your CV stand out, explore our career resources. They’re designed to help you showcase your strengths and boost your chances of landing the job.

Hobbies and Interests

Hobbies and interests are a legitimate way to showcase your skills, if you have any hobbies relevant to the role. In addition, you can use hobbies and interests to show elements of your personality that might not shine through otherwise, giving you a chance to offer something different to most candidates. However, a hobbies and interests section will only make an impact with the reader if the skills you showcase are relevant to the role. As such, only include this section if it helps you fulfil requirements of the role that you've been unable to show elsewhere.

Achievements

Creating a section for your achievements and awards can help you draw attention to the things you're most proud of in your career to date. In your list, add any awards you've won, industry recognition or key career milestones that tell a story about your suitability for the role and place you ahead of other candidates.

Volunteering

Another alternative to showcasing your skills and experience through work experience is by adding a volunteering section. This can give you a valuable showcase of your skills, particularly if you're a junior candidate or career changer without much relevant work experience. For this section, use a similar structure to your work experience section.

List your job title or a description of the role, the organisation name, its location and the dates you occupied the role. Use bullet points to show employers how you put your skills to use, and any positive achievements from your time in the role.

Most impactful action verbs for a sales executive CV

Adding strong action verbs to the bullet points in your CV's work experience section is a great way to focus on the key skills required for the job, while showing the impact you've made. Start each bullet point with an action word that reflects the job description, so the reader can easily identify your best qualities. Remember, it's essential to evidence any action verbs you add to your work experience. This will help show your achievements and the impact you made in previous roles. Use past tense for action verbs that describe previous roles, and present tense for your current position.

Sales executive CV example

Now that you're aware of the key steps to creating a winning sales executive CV, you can review a complete example to see how a final CV looks:

If you want to get a feel for how your CV will look once you finalise its design and layout, check out our CV examples for inspiration.

Guide to CV ATS optimisation

Many employers now use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to assist with managing the recruitment process. One of the key elements of most ATS apps is the ability to scan CVs and rank them according to their likely match to the job description. By assuming this role in the recruitment process, ATS apps can reduce the amount of time employers need to spend reviewing CVs. With hundreds of applications for a single vacancy becoming increasingly commonplace, this increased efficiency is extremely valuable for employers.

With ATS apps becoming more prominent, it's essential for candidates to optimise their CVs to increase their chances of passing the initial screening stage. You can read a list of the top tips for ATS optimisation below:

• Include keywords and phrases from the job description that are easy for ATS apps to identify, and help make you appear a strong fit for the role.
• Use standard CV headings that clearly identify each section, such as 'work experience', 'education' and 'skills'.
• Opt for a simple CV layout with consistent formatting, avoiding any special design elements that could make your CV harder for ATS apps to scan.
• Select a widely-used font in either serif or sans serif style, with a font size between 10 and 12 for body text and 14 and 16 for heading text.
• Use bullet points throughout your CV in place of full sentences. This serves a few purposes, reducing the overall length, helping keywords stand out and making it overall more scannable by ATS apps.

There are lots of things to think about when crafting an effective, engaging sales executive CV, but ATS compatibility is something that's easy to overcome. Use one of our expert-designed, ATS-compatible CV templates and remove the stress from creating a CV that puts you in the frame for the role.

Key takeaways for a successful sales executive CV

To stand out from the crowd with your CV, tailor your approach to each individual application, incorporating keywords and phrases that match the job description. Pick a CV format that matches your experience level, and focus on showing the reader how you've developed relevant skills and put them to good use to add value for previous employers.

Finally, building your CV using Jobseeker's HR-approved CV templates can help to catch the eye of recruiters and hiring managers, making your application stand out and giving you the best chance of gaining your dream job.

Sources:

1. Barnet Council (UK local government), Recruitment tips: How to write a supporting statement
2. Jobseeker, Recruitment Statistics