Sales Development Representative Must-Have Resume Skills and Keywords
Are you interested in improving your job outlook and increasing your salary? How can you demonstrate that you are the most qualified candidate for a Sales Development Representative position? Of course continuing to gain experience working as a Sales Development Representative may be your best qualification, but there are other ways you can also develop your skills, like continuing education or volunteer opportunities. More immediately, however, you can be ready for your next opportunity or promotion by educating yourself about the duties, responsibilities, and required skills of a Sales Development Representative and making sure your resume reflects your experience properly.
We designed the ZipRecruiter Career Keyword Mapper to help you solve this problem and hopefully improve your resume. Using machine learning tools paired with industry research, our Marketplace Research Team helped analyze millions of job postings and resumes to identify the most important keywords related to Sales Development Representative jobs. Our goal is to help you discover opportunities to improve your resume or to help you understand what skills and qualifications you need to be a Sales Development Representative or to advance your career into beyond this role.
Employers require a broad range of skills and qualifications in their descriptions of Sales Development Representative positions. The top three keywords make up 42.55% of the total set of top terms. Look to the Resume Checklist below to see how Sales Growth, Collaboration, and Communication Skills shares stack up against the share from resumes. CRM, Innovation and Lead Generation represent an additionally healthy share of the employer Sales Development Representative job postings with their combined total of 29.4%. At 28.04%, SaaS, Scheduling, Sales Experience, and Customer Service appear far less frequently, but are still a significant portion of the 10 top Sales Development Representative skills and requirements according to employers.
Job seeker resumes showcase a broad range of skills and qualifications in their descriptions of Sales Development Representative positions. The top three keywords represent 42.18% of the total set of top resume listed keywords. Look to the Resume Checklist below to investigate how Customer Service, Collaboration, and CRM match up to employer job descriptions. MS Office, Social Media, and Scheduling represent a very decent share of skills found on resumes for Sales Development Representative with 29.71% of the total. At 28.11%, Communication Skills, Lead Generation, Technical, and Accountable appear far less frequently, but are still a significant portion of the 10 top Sales Development Representative skills and qualifications found on resumes.
Here is a simple table of the top 10 skills and qualifications as listed by employers in Sales Development Representative job postings since January of 2018, followed by the top 10 skills and qualifications most commonly listed by people who held the title of Sales Development Representative on their resumes.
Top Sales Development Representative Skills
Skills Required by Employers |
Share |
Sales Growth |
16.14% |
Collaboration |
13.43% |
Communication Skills |
12.98% |
CRM |
11.95% |
Innovation |
9.48% |
Lead Generation |
7.97% |
SaaS |
7.79% |
Scheduling |
7.08% |
Sales Experience |
6.59% |
Customer Service |
6.58% |
Skills Listed by Employees |
Share |
Customer Service |
18.39% |
Collaboration |
12.13% |
CRM |
11.66% |
MS Office |
11.06% |
Social Media |
9.88% |
Scheduling |
8.77% |
Communication Skills |
7.76% |
Lead Generation |
6.98% |
Technical |
6.92% |
Accountable |
6.45% |
Our Resume Keyword Checklist is based upon an analysis of the most commonly found terms within both job descriptions and resumes for Sales Development Representative positions. Our algorithm helps isolate phrases and patterns to identify the most frequently recurring and reused keywords from each data source, while correcting for uncommon and outlier results. Various heuristic methodologies are then applied to ultimately create two top 20 lists of the most important and significant skills, certificates and requirements found within Sales Development Representative job postings and resumes. We then merge the two lists together and use a combination of statistics and rules-based scenarios to create a list that is audited by the Marketplace Research team, and finally turned into the checklist you see below. Our hope is that knowing this information can help you make your best impression with your next potential employer.
Uncommon Keywords on Sales Development Representative Resumes
Job Descriptions
Resumes
Employer job listings often list Innovation, Sales Growth, Business Developement, Sales Experience or SaaS as requirements in Sales Development Representative job descriptions; however, candidates mention them far less frequently on their resumes. If you possess any or all of these experiences, including these keywords prominently on your resume when applying for a Sales Development Representative position may help you stand out more to hiring managers.
Common Keywords on Sales Development Representative Resumes
Job Descriptions
Resumes
Both employer job listings and resumes from people who’ve held the position of Sales Development Representative tend to always include skills and requirements found in this list. Whether you’ve only got Entrepreneurship, Communication Skills, Proactive, Qualifying Leads, Digital, Inside Sales, Lead Generation, Collaboration, Relationship Management, CRM, Detail Oriented, Scheduling, English Speaking, Technical or Database in your background and experience, make sure to highlight the term prominently on your resume. As a candidate you’ll be competing with many others who are bound to have as many as you (or more!) of these common resume keywords highlighted in their application for a job as a Sales Development Representative.
Uncommon Keywords on Sales Development Representative Job Descriptions
Job Descriptions
Resumes
Employer job listings seldom list Social Media, Mentoring, MS Office, Customer Service, Accountable or Facilitation as important skills or qualifications in Sales Development Representative job descriptions. Nevertheless, candidates mention them much more commonly in their resumes. If you possess any or all of these experiences, including these keywords prominently on your resume when applying for a Sales Development Representative position may go unnoticed or even discounted by hiring managers.
The most common important skills required by employers are Entrepreneurship, Communication Skills, Proactive, Qualifying Leads, Digital, Inside Sales and Lead Generation. These skills and requirements are just as likely to be mentioned by employers as well as on resumes of people that held a position as a Sales Development Representative, suggesting that having these keywords on a resume are important for success as a Sales Development Representative. Additionally, employer Sales Development Representative job descriptions list Innovation as a desirable experience, even though Innovation appears 3.36 times less on resumes, suggesting that it's worth considering including this term if you possess the experience.
Although you'd probably love to load up your resume with every possible keyword you can, employers tend to look for the things they specify in the job description. Our analysis suggests that highlighting too prominently terms like Social Media, Mentoring, MS Office, Customer Service, Accountable and Facilitation may be something to reconsider. These 6 terms appear 2.03, 2.10, 2.38, 2.48, 3.52 and 3.53 times less frequently, respectively, than in job descriptions for a Sales Development Representative position. This implies that highlighting any of these keywords on your resume may not be a great way to stand out to a potential employer.
Unless your resume has a good density of the following skills and experience listed, you may not be considered for the role of Sales Development Representative. Make sure to include a strong showing for the following keywords on your resume:
- Entrepreneurship
- Communication Skills
- Proactive
- Qualifying Leads
- Digital
- Inside Sales
- Lead Generation
- Collaboration
- Relationship Management
- CRM
- Detail Oriented
- Scheduling
- English Speaking
- Technical
- Database
Additionally employers frequently list the following as desirable qualities in a Sales Development Representative candidate, but they are far less common on most resumes:
- Innovation
- Sales Growth
- Business Developement
- Sales Experience
- SaaS
Finally people who held the position of a Sales Development Representative and list it on their resume are adding these terms that are less likely to be noticed by employers. You may want to consider downplaying these terms on your Sales Development Representative application:
- Social Media
- Mentoring
- MS Office
- Customer Service
- Accountable
- Facilitation
At ZipRecruiter, we understand better than anyone the importance of using the right keywords to describe your experience — it’s crucial to attracting the right employers! We built our business on the ability to effectively match job seekers with employers using AI-technology that understands your resume and how likely you are to be noticed by a potential future employer. Having a ZipRecruiter profile that showcases your most relevant skills and abilities can help you get recruited into a new role as a Sales Development Representative. Get started on your journey with a new ZipRecruiter Profile today!