Once you start getting resumes for an open sales position, it is important to look for specific details. All too often, sales managers look for the wrong things in a resume and they end up with the wrong candidate for sales jobs. Let’s take a look at the things you do want to look for in a resume for sales jobs employees.

1. Statistics.

An experienced sales person will have a wealth of statistics from their previous employment. If they’re not sharing them, that’s a bad sign. Ideally, you should look for sales jobs candidates that list how many products/services they sold during their tenure at the company and how well they improved over time. This provides you with a view of their track record, as well as their ability to self-motivate and meet goals, two very important characteristics of sales people.

2. Accomplishments.

When you’re applying for sales jobs, it’s only natural to want to list the accomplishments and achievements you’ve earned over the years. Once again, an experienced sales jobs candidates will know this and will include this information on their resume. Look for solid accomplishments that can be quantified, and accomplishments that led to the bettering of the company they used to work for. These items will clue you in on whether or not the candidate is invested in their own job and in the company they work for, traits you definitely want in someone applying for sales jobs positions.

3. Past Successes.

Sales jobs candidates should list the companies that they’ve successfully sold products to, if they were in a B2B sales environment. If the sales person wasn’t in B2B, then they should include other successes such as client retention and clues that give you insight into their ability to build relationships with their prospects.

All three of these things give you important hints about the candidate as a person and will help you narrow down which ones you actually want to interview for sales jobs positions. If you don’t see any of these items on a resume, it’s best to just keep looking.

Now that’s we’ve gone over what you should be looking for, let’s take a quick moment to go over a few things that really don’t matter all that much on a resume for sales jobs positions.

1. Past titles.

Titles are truly a dime-a-dozen and some companies hand them out like candy. Yes, vice president in charge of allocation may sound impressive, but if they don’t have the statistics to back up their nice sounding title, simply put, they’re probably padding their resume to sound more important than they actually are.

2. Education.

Yes, education is very important, but when it comes to sales jobs, you’re looking for ingrained abilities and natural traits, not a degree. Some of the world’s best sales people didn’t go to college — they simply know how to connect with people and how to close a sale. You can teach a lot of things, but you can’t teach what simply comes naturally to true sales people.

Make sure you are looking for what matters when you begin the process of filling sales jobs. Chances are, the right person is probably right under your nose. You may need to revise your hiring process to ensure that these traits do not get passed over.