IT Sales Resume: What to Look For In a New Hire

Never had to recruit before? Drowning in a sea of applicants and need to review each IT sales resume so that you can decide whom to interview? It’s not an easy job.

Most advice that you get will tell you to go through the resumes dispassionately and without emotion. But as a small business owner who’s going to work closely with any new hire, you need to adopt a slightly different attitude.

These are some of the criteria that I’ve used for the initial sift in the past. I hope that these tips will help you to decide which questions you need to ask yourself whilst carrying out the initial sifting:

1. Prioritize skills, attributes, and attitudes that are most important – Make a list of all that is most important for the role and fit into your style of working or business culture.

2. Assess if the applicant displays continued professional development – Self-motivation is vital in both sales and technology roles, but a hunger for self-improvement and lifelong learning is necessary.

3. Consider the length of tenure at previous employers – The usual advice is to avoid applicants that have hopped from job to job in a short period. I don’t think that’s entirely sound, as applicants can bring a wealth of knowledge and diverse experience to a role. An individual who has had an extended tenure in any role may be stuck in their ways. You have to look at each history individually.

4. Evaluate whether their interests/hobbies align with the role – Some hobbies go well with your job. If your hobbies and interests mimic what you do in your work life, then that, to an extent, indicates that it is a subject you are passionate about and immersed in.

Don’t forget that once you have each IT sales resume in its allotted pile, you can then take the ones in the “yes” pile and the “maybe” pile and make a quick phone call to each applicant to judge further how suitable each is for the position.

This will save you a lot of time by further weeding out the applicants that are not the right fit before they get to interview.

How do you tackle the recruitment process for your business? Share your thoughts with us in the Comments section.