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Writing and Formatting Your CV for Job Boards
Page Overview:
At Aaron Wallis Sales Recruitment, we help you future-proof your CV by making it search-engine–friendly for modern job boards and recruitment systems. This page explains how applicant tracking software (ATS) parses your CV with approximately 96% accuracy, extracting your contact details, skills, job titles, and dates to populate recruiter databases and match roles automatically. To ensure your CV stands out and gets seen, we advise using a variety of keywords that reflect how sales roles are described (e.g., "business development," "prospecting," "sales representative") and sticking to TrueType fonts like Arial or Times New Roman for optimal parsing.
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With Job Board software becoming increasingly sophisticated, it's imperative that you re-write your CV with the Internet in mind - having a great CV and a great career is no longer enough. You must ensure that your CV is loaded with appropriate keywords and skill words to enable your CV to be found! You may also be interested in our keywords guide for CVs.
Believe it or not, the software that many recruitment businesses use, including Aaron Wallis, can read your CV and populate the recruitment database with your details and skills with 96% accuracy (that's 4% greater than average human accuracy!) The software then applies keyword matching and artificial intelligence to match candidates to vacancies.
Many job boards and direct employers are now adopting this software, making it more imperative than ever to re-write your CV for the digital age. Ensure it is loaded with keywords and skills to enable you to be found!
The most simplistic way to explain this is, let's say, for instance, that a company is looking to hire a web developer with 'Dreamweaver' and 'PHP Programming' experience. They will simply place these terms into a search and 'voila' up come candidates with both the requirements. Sometimes your CV contains things that can instantly ruin your chances. Check out our blog article on why your CV isn't getting you jobs.
Some of the most up-to-date 'CV parsing and searching' software, like we use here at Aaron Wallis, uses an algorithm to determine how relevant your skills are to a job. Believe it or not, it scans your experience, skills and length of time in each role and then predicts the likelihood of you succeeding in the role that we are searching to fill! Unfortunately, it is not so simple for sales professionals (or luckily for us as a specialist sales recruiter!). Firstly, consider the term sales – some refer to it as 'selling', others as 'business development', and others as 'prospecting and closing', etc. Then look at sales job titles. To one Sales Manager, a 'guy out on the road' is a 'Sales Representative', to another a 'Field Sales Executive', to another a 'Business Development Manager', and to another an 'Area Manager', etc. Therefore, you have to hedge your bets and include various keywords within your CV to be 'found' by recruiters and employers. Here are all the other essentials to include in your CV.
Getting your CV savvy for the digital age
One of the unique challenges you face as a sales professional is that your sales qualities cannot be assessed by recruitment software or job matching tools. This means that characteristics you possess, such as presence, personality, rapport skills, solution-providing ability, drive, passion, enthusiasm, creativity, determination and others, are missed due to artificial intelligence. This means that you need to use these kinds of expressions still to ensure the reader gets a flavour of the real you. However, having the most powerful CV imaginable, full of powerful words and amazing adjectives, is not enough if it doesn't contain suitable keywords; it will be lost in the pile.
CV parsing software, used by many of the leading recruiters, extracts your personal details and address from your CV automatically and populates their recruitment database. Therefore, to give it the best chance of success (and ultimately your best chance of success), place your name, address, Date of Birth, telephone numbers, etc. at the top of your CV. Your postcode is imperative as the software determines the best placed candidates using 'postcode lookup' processes. A neat little cheat would be to use the postcode of your employers, university and references to trick less sophisticated software into bringing your CV up as a result.
Use a standard TrueType font. Firstly, it looks better because it is a regularly used font, and secondly, all TrueType fonts will be picked up by OCR (optical recognition) software. Never send a 'hard copy' of your CV in a font that is not TrueType (most are nowadays in standard Office products and can be identified by a TT next to the font). You can't go wrong with Times New Roman, Arial, Franklin and Tahoma (and courier/century schoolbook, but they're looking somewhat dated now).
We also have a complete guide on how to make the most out of your CV.
"It was a pleasure speaking to Darren. Happy with my new role. Darren’s definitely best recruiter I’ve ever worked with, I highly recommend!!!"
Jamie Oliver
Date published: 3rd August 2025
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by Sophie Jones
Associate Director
About the author
Sophie Jones
Sophie is an Associate Director at Aaron Wallis, and her main focus is to help clients find the best sales talent while ensuring that candidates secure the best professional fit. Sophie doesn't just fill vacancies; she strives to understand her clients' business goals, and she identifies candidates who will not only excel in the role but also contribute to the company's long-term success. Maintaining open communication is crucial, and Sophie ensures that clients are well-informed throughout the recruitment process, addressing any concerns and ensuring that expectations are met. She's a trusted advisor, and her ability to build bridges, solve problems, and advocate for success makes her an invaluable asset in the World of sales recruitment.
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