Sales Associate Resume: Examples, Skills & Job Description

The position of a Sales Associates covers a bunch of job responsibilities, but the main focus is on customer service; from greetings to sharing product knowledge and closing sales, this role is all about making customers have a smooth and pleasant experience when shopping or browsing. Which is of significant importance when 91% of customers report being more likely to make another purchase with companies after having a good customer service experience.

Looking to craft an effective resume for a sales associate position? Look no further than this juicy article that’s packed with advice on how to write a sales associate resume, what prime skills you’ll need to emphasize, and some stellar examples to get the inspiration flowing.

How to write a sales associate resume

Successful sales associate resumes provide insights into who you are as an individual, your academic and professional background, and your experience in sales.  In short, a sales associate resume should address the following criteria:

• Why are you suitable for the position (in terms of skills and personality)?
• In what ways will you provide value for the company (with regards to personality traits, experience, and methods)?
• Your contact information.

Without any further ado, let's get into how to write a convincing sales resume!

1) Craft a Succinct Resume Header

The resume header typically include your contact information and your career objectives or resume summary.

A sales associate resume title or headline is a short (50 characters max.) caption that showcases your strengths. This is usually tailored for the position you’re applying to by inserting keywords related to the duties outlined in the JD.

Here's a headline formula for you to try out:

Applying the formula, let's look at some examples:

After crafting the headline for your resume, remember to add your contact info in:

A sales associate resume summary highlights your most impressive achievements while outlining your career objectives and vision. And it’s short, only being around 2 to 4 sentences, like the retail sales associate resume summary example below. 

2) Add Essential Skills to Your Sales Associate Resume

Whether they’re highlighted in a separate section or dotted throughout the sales associate resume, it is imperative that candidates mention some of the top 10 hard and soft skills for a sales associate in their resume. 

3) Tailor Your Work Experience Section to the JD

When describing your work experience in a sales associate resume, retail sales associate resume, or any resume actually, it’s imperative that you use action words. More often than not, these are dynamic verbs that put you in the drivers’ seat for your skills and achievements. 

Not sure what an action word is? Here are 10 power verbs to give you an idea:

Now, let’s see if you can spot all the active verbs in the following sales associate resume example.

4) Don't Forget Your Education Background

Including your educational background on a sales associate resume is usually only recommended if you’re in the early stage of your career. For these entry-level candidates with little experience, the education section can be used to highlight relevant coursework or studies relating to the industry and position.

For professionals with more than 10 years of experience, adding your university isn’t required unless you have a Master’s or PhD, or are applying for an academic role.

Additional Information

Individuals are made up of much more than just professional and academic experiences, so give employers a more comprehensive view of you by including additional information on your sales associate resume. Extra information can include things like awards, certifications, volunteer work, references, and extracurricular activities.

How to format a sales associate resume

1) Distinguish Between a CV and a Resume

You may have been told that ‘CV’ and ‘resume’ are interchangeable terms. News flash: they’re not (actually, this depends on the country you're at as well), hence why you need to know the difference between a sales associate CV and a sales associate resume. 

Names aside, the main difference between the two is the content. Where CVs offer insight into all aspects of academic and professional experience, resumes focus solely on what’s relevant to the position in question. As such, resumes are recommended for sales associate positions that explicitly ask for previous experience. 

While CakeResume has loads of resources for writing CVs, this particular article is about sales associate resumes. 

2) Choose the Right Resume Format

Choosing the right format is key to creating an outstanding sales associate resume, but which one of the most common resume formats is right for you? The answer: it’s entirely dependent on your work experience.  

• Chronological, or “reverse-chronological”, resumes list work experience in reverse chronological order from most recent/present to oldest. In this way, this type of resume format is most suited for showcasing the full extent of your career path.
• Functional, or “skill-based”, resumes classify your work experience as different skills, making this format great for jobs that prioritize skills and specializations over years of experience.
• Combination resumes are a hybrid of the above two resume formats, which is ideal when you want to share both your career path and skill-based scenarios.

It’s also important that you use a well-formatted resume featuring:

• Professional font: While Ariel and Times New Roman are among the preferred choices, there are actually many acceptable resume fonts.
• Proper margins: Make sure that nothing stands out the wrong way - literally - by following margin formatting best practices.
• Headers and bullet points: These are essential for clarity and structure, but can be overdone; yes, there’s a science behind how many bullet points to have in a resume. 
• Maximum 2 pages: A resume isn’t an essay, it’s a detailed snippet of you. This means that, even if you have a truckload of stuff to add, the resume length should still be under 2 pages.

3) Use the Right Template

What’s possibly more important than choosing the right sales associate resume format? It’s using one of CakeResume’s own templates, of course! With 10+ professionally designed resume templates that are ATS-compliant and perfect for any sales associate resume, you don’t have to search hard for style and suitability.

4) Tailor Your Resume to the Job

It goes without saying that the best sales associate resumes are those that are tailored specifically to the job in question. An easy way to do this is by taking elements or keywords from the job description and inserting them into your resume, but more about this in a bit. 

For example, let’s say that the JD for a sales associate position at Dunkin’ Donuts includes responsibilities like:

From these two responsibilities, you can pick out the keywords “customer service” and “communicate”, from which you can create sentences that showcase your own customer service skills and communication skills, such as:

5) A Cherry On Top: Create an Outstanding Cover Letter

In addition to inputting all the relevant skills into a sales associate resume, applicants also need an outstanding cover letter to nail their application for a sales associate position. Use CakeResume’s article on how to create the perfect cover letter for sales associates for example samples and clear guidelines on crafting your masterpiece. 

Sales associate resume design and format examples

Now, let's look at some resume designs for inspiration!

Sales associate resume - Chronological format

Sales associate resume - Functional format

Sales associate resume - Combinational format

Conclusion

So, to recap: in this article, we’ve covered how to write a sales associate resume from top to bottom, starting with the resume title, profile and summary, going all the way down to sales associate resume skills, working experience, education, and additional information. 

Of course, the way you organize all that depends on your resume format, for which we’ve provided three key sales associate resume examples (in chronological, functional, and combination formats). 

For more information and useful tips and tricks on how to structure, format, and craft the best resume, look no further than Cake, where you can create a resume with our free online resume building tool! Start now.

— Originally written by Eva O'Mara —