Salesforce is a sea of possibilities to support, organize and improve any business.
But, thrown in the middle of the sea with nothing but a lifebuoy, businesses are often lost and scared.
How do they transition from whatever system they have to Salesforce?
Which features do they need? Is Salesforce the right platform at all?
That’s where you come in.
As a Salesforce consultant, it’s your job to understand what problems hinder your clients’ performance and provide solutions using Salesforce.
Getting a job as a Salesforce consultant requires business knowledge, soft skills, and above all, expansive Salesforce knowledge. Can you:
- Set up a custom organization? Configure layouts, custom fields, user access and content?
- Migrate databases from other CRM software?
- Set up Workflow rules and fire off automated emails to customers of the business?
- Do live demonstrations and presentations to a company’s high executives board?
- Connect with several departments and get them to collaborate and work effectively?
Recruiters will heavily scrutinize you every step of the way, starting with your Salesforce consultant resume.
The fact is, a weak resume will never get you an interview, much less the job.
In this article, we’ll teach you how to construct an effective Salesforce consultant resume which gets more interviews and helps you land a better job each time you’re up for the challenge.
Here’s what this guide will teach you how to
- Review and analyze 8 Salesforce consultant sample resumes and find the areas for improvement
- Pick an effective resume layout which communicates the maximum amount of information in just one page
- Write an impactful resume header and summary which create an impact
- Properly articulate your work experience, providing facts and figures
- Position your Salesforce skills, business skills and problem solving abilities
- Find space for your Salesforce certificates and education
Need to see related salesforce resume examples?
- Salesforce Administrator resume examples
- Salesforce Business Analyst resume examples
- Salesforce Developer resume examples
- Salesforce resume examples
How to write a Salesforce consultant resume
You are critical to the success of your clients’ business ventures.
Naturally, this means they will only hire people with credentials which inspire confidence and trust.
Being a technology platform, strong technical skills are needed, as you will do a lot of configuration, setup and training with your client’s employees.
Obviously, you must know Salesforce like the back of your hand:
- What are the capabilities of the platform?
- What ready made tools and solutions can you offer out of the box?
- What custom applications can help your clients grow and optimize their operations?
- Where does Salesforce excel and what are its limitations?
That said, your daily job as a Salesforce consultant requires mainly soft skills.
Communication is the most sought after skill on Salesforce consultant resumes.
You will need to communicate daily with your clients, attend meetings, present strategies, interact with developers & administrators, negotiate, develop training programs and report constantly.
Finally, to get the interview, your resume must convey in depth understanding of how businesses work and how to elevate them to the next level using Salesforce.
It’s the junction of these three directions that makes up a great Salesforce consultant resume.
However, recruiters only spend a minute on each resume at best. You have just a few lines to grab their attention before your application ends up in the wrong pile.
The first step is to pick a proper Salesforce consultant resume layout.
Choose the best the Salesforce consultant resume template
There are several resume layouts to choose from:
- Reverse-chronological - a resume layout which displays your work experience at the top in a timeline format
- Functional - a resume layout which focuses on your skills and proficiencies
- Hybrid - a resume layout which focuses on what’s most relevant to the particular job offer - skills and work experience
A hybrid layout is suitable for Salesforce consultant resumes because it gives you the best chance to connect with your recruiter.
If it’s a business owner, they would like to work with somebody who already understands their pain points and can provide solutions which work immediately.
They don’t want to train you, but rather you train them.
On the other hand, a Salesforce consultant agency would much like to see consistent performance during your past employments. In this case, the reverse-chronological layout is more suitable.
Top 5 sections to include in your Salesforce consultant resume
- Resume header clearly listing your name, title and contact information
- Resume summary that strikes a chord with the job description
- Work experience section which demonstrates how you used Salesforce to solve problems for your clients
- Abilities section for your technical prowess and people skills
- Education and certification sections to back up your claims
Let's look at each Salesforce consultant resume sections in more detail.
What makes a great Salesforce consultant resume header
If you’ve ever dealt with CRM software, you’d know that incomplete contact details can mean failure to provide services to that particular customer.
What does it say about you if your Salesforce consultant resume header is missing a phone number?
If you can’t pay attention to your own contact details, how can you manage a customer database with thousands and even tens of thousands of records?
At the bare minimum include your:
- Full name
- Phone
- City and state
- Trailhead profile link
Let’s examine a couple of Salesforce consultant sample resumes.
So, what’s wrong here?
For a start, the phone number is missing. This shows either ignorance or lack of attention. Both will lose you the job immediately.
Even worse, the title is wrong.
Salesforce Specialist may well be the same as a Salesforce consultant.
But automated HR software can easily discard this resume and nobody will bother to check in the rejected pile.
Make sure you use the same words you read in the job description.
This sample is way better!
The title uses the proper keywords and adds further details about the daily responsibilities of the candidate.
The applicant has listed their phone and their Trailhead profile. Salesforce has its own education platform.
Anybody who claims to have in-depth knowledge will have a ton of badges in their Trailhead account.
If you have a GitHub profile or a personal website, include that one too.
Now that you have your recruiter’s, it’s time to produce a real impact with your summary.
How to write a Salesforce consultant resume summary or objective
The resume summary is arguably the most important section. Recruiters often just scan the header and summary to judge whether you’re relevant to the job offer.
If you don’t catch them here, it probably doesn’t matter what you say in your work experience section.
Here are the basic rules you need to follow in your summary:
- Keep it short and concise
- Use keywords from the job description
- Include your Salesforce experience and business skills
- Include your Trailhead certification
Review the following Salesforce consultant resume samples. Notice the structure used in each one.
2 Salesforce consultant Resume summary examples
We’ve seen worse summaries, but this one is hardly impressive.
First, it confuses the reader whether the applicant is a Salesforce consultant or a Salesforce Administrator.
The first encompasses the second, but not the other way around. Administrators usually lack the business skills necessary to take charge of the Salesforce integration and strategy.
Second, the applicant describes their experience somewhat, but where they could have included some of their skills and proficiencies, they wasted precious space to talk about their previous employer.
The second sample is the same length, but holds much more information about the applicant and their Salesforce abilities.
There is no doubt that this candidate has plenty of experience. They mention some of their technical skills and business skills - a good range of activities covering most aspects of a Salesforce consultant’s job.
Having six out of nine Salesforce consultant certificates guarantees they have significant knowledge of the platform and exposure to all the tools businesses might need.
2 Salesforce consultant resume objective examples
Not a senior? It’s okay, everybody starts somewhere. Preferably you have a couple of years of experience as a Salesforce Administrator or Salesperson.
Key things to add in your objective section are your Trailhead badges and certifications. They back up your work experience and provide a solid foundation to build up.
A Salesforce consultant is a specialized business consultant. You may or may not have business skills right now, but you will be expected to train and learn how businesses work and how you can make them better.
Make sure you reflect on that in your objective.
Check out these Salesforce consultant resume objectives.
The above objective is not ideal. The writing quality can be improved significantly. Writing is one of the top skills wanted for Salesforce consultants.
The main problem with this objective is the lack of confidence. A Salesforce consultant must inspire confidence in their clients, not doubt.
Let’s see a better example.
This Salesforce consultant resume objective is slightly longer, but within reasonable limits. However, it’s focused and provides three times more information.
The applicant has listed their years of experience, background, relevant skills and has quantified their Salesforce knowledge with badges and certificates.
This objective sets the stage perfectly for the following experience section which will expand on all of the things listed.
Check out how that works below.
What do employers look for in Salesforce consultant resume experience?
For a start, let’s talk about what reviewers are not looking for in your resume experience section:
- Generic job descriptions
- Vague items that carry no information
- Contradictions and confusing information
- Walls of text
If you make your reviewer bored while reading your work experience, chances are you’re not going to get the job.
Instead, focus on your achievements and quantifiable results. Provide a scale for the impact you produced for your clients and how they benefited from your efforts.
Just like with other sections, brevity is your friend.
Salesforce consultant experience samples
- •Consulted clients on the capabilities of Salesforce and helped them transition to the platform.
- •Creating and setting up new organizations in Salesforce for clients.
- •Provided custom solutions to unique business challenges.
- •Wrote instructional manuals and trained personnel to use the tools in Salesforce.
- •Attended meetings with key stakeholders and reported progress on integration and development.
This is a classic example of copy-pasting generic descriptions. Even if the applicant wrote it themselves, it reads just like the thousands of Salesforce consultant resume examples online.
There’s nothing to capture the attention here and the reviewer will be utterly unimpressed upon reading.
Let’s see how we can make it more punchy.
- •Performed GAP analysis to identify flaws within business management systems and wrote detailed recommendations on how to improve efficiency and automate some of the office work.
- •Oversaw the transition to Salesforce CRM of a database containing 45,000 entries for current and past customers. Reduced customer processing time by 28% using Salesforce Sales Cloud.
- •Created a unique Email marketing automation strategy which increased returning customers by 12% during the first two months and projected up to 25% in the first six months.
- •Wrote instructional materials and hosted training sessions with personnel to help them onboard faster and improve their performance.
- •Eliminated bottlenecks and order backlogs and freed 8% of the workforce’s time to process new orders, allowing the company to grow without having to hire new employees.
This one looks way better right?
The Salesforce consultant has included the majority of their daily responsibilities and at the same time has provided the results of their work.
It looks like they really helped this business solve inefficiencies by switching to Salesforce. Often times, technology is the limiting factor for business growth.
At the same time, the candidate has interweaved their business and soft skills without explicitly talking about them:
- Gap analysis
- Business management
- CRM and sales
- Email marketing and automation
- Analytics
- Writing
- Training and onboarding
Business owners don’t come looking for Salesforce because it’s popular and has cool features.
This Salesforce consultant understands their job is to provide solutions, clear blocks and bottlenecks and this is clearly demonstrated in their work experience.
Salesforce consultant skills for resume
Salesforce consultants have a fine mix of skills and abilities.
Of course, advising businesses on Salesforce and leading their onboarding project is impossible without in depth knowledge of the platform and hands-on experience with the vast variety of tools and features.
However, this is a business oriented job. Recruiters will be looking for strong business background and soft skills needed for your daily responsibilities.
You will be communicating with higher management, stakeholders, sales managers, marketing managers, IT managers and developers and down to individual operators and personnel.
It’s your job to talk their language, negotiate and serve as a bridge uniting the whole organization for the common goal - success.
A skills section divided into three columns or rows is fitting. Analyse the job description and extract the required or expected skills. Make sure to add those too.
Top Salesforce consultant soft skills for resume
- Communication
- Writing
- Presentation skills
- Teamwork / Collaboration
- Building relationships
- Problem solving
- Analytical thinking
- Creativity
- Organization
- Self motivation and drive
Top Salesforce consultant business skills
- Sales
- Customer service
- CRM
- Project management
- Planning
- Documentation
- Innovation
- Business development
- Business intelligence
Top Salesforce consultant hard skills for resume
- Salesforce
- Lightning
- Apex
- Visualforce
- SOQL
- Analytics software
- Email marketing software
- Web development
- Data processing
The best way to put certificates on your resume
The Trailhead platform is the closest thing to formal education on Salesforce.
Developed by and for Salesforce professionals, the certificates issued by Salesforce are the industry standard for demonstrating knowledge and proficiency.
Obtain as many as you can and display them prominently in your resume.
Top Salesforce consultant certificates
- Community Cloud Consultant
- Education Cloud Consultant
- Einstein Analytics and Discovery Consultant
- Field Service Lightning Consultant
- Marketing Cloud Consultant
- Nonprofit Cloud Consultant
- Pardot Consultant
- Sales Cloud Consultant
- Service Cloud Consultant
Does your resume need an education section?
Formal education is always welcome. Salesforce consultants benefit from a wide range of Business, IT and Computer Science degrees. They lay down a good foundation and will help you become a better Salesforce expert faster. So if you have any of those, make sure you put them in the education section of your resume.
You will communicate with top officials at your clients’ organizations. They will have better reception towards a well-educated, rounded off professional.
That said, don’t allocate too much space for education on your Salesforce consultant resume.
Include the standard information:
- Title and level of degree
- Date of graduation
- University
Key points to remember when writing your Salesforce consultant resume
- Business owners will rely on you to steer their company in the right direction using Salesforce.
- Your resume must be well crafted and inspire confidence and trust.
- Avoid unnecessary information. Be focused and optimize your word usage.
- Pay attention to the language in the job offer. Use phrases and keywords that are mentioned there.
- Choose the appropriate resume layout. Usually a hybrid layout works best for Salesforce consultant resumes.
- Make sure all relevant contact details and links to your TrailHead and GitHub accounts are included in the header section of your resume.
- Use the summary section to introduce your best skills and abilities and create a positive impression.
- In the work experience section, focus on the results of your work and how they align with the business goals of your clients.
- As a Salesforce consultant you’re the bridge between business, technology and people. Your resume must demonstrate abilities in all three directions.
- Don’t forget about your Salesforce certificates. They are the de facto standard in your industry.