What Sales Rep Title Will Generate the Most Traffic to Your Job Posting?

Great research and post over at OnGig related to which Sales Titles generate the most traffic to job postings.

You can click on the image to the right to blow up the pie charts to a more readable view.

To summarize what OnGig found, here's some numbers on the most prevalent sales job titles and the traffic they generated.  Take a look and we'll talk about it after the jump:

Sales Associate:

# of Google Searches per month:  37,900

# of Results on Indeed.com: 148,582

Sales Representative:

# of Google Searches per month:  15,800

# of Results on Indeed.com: 42,775

Account Executive:

# of Google Searches per month: 13,300

# of Results on Indeed.com: 16,312

Business Development Manager (BDM):

# of Google Searches per month: 8,000

# of Results on Indeed.com: 4,638

Salesperson:

# of Google Searches per month: 6,700

# of Results on Indeed.com: 5,229

What's it all mean? Go read the OnGig post for greater depth, as they have quality insights into the trends into the sales world. Here's my thoughts:

—Sales Associate is going to net you people who want to work in retail. If that's not you, don't use the title.

—When comparing Sales Representative vs Account Executive, I would tell you that the higher end the sales position, the more it leans to "account executive".  My experience is that the AE title delivers more white collar sales pros who are "hunters" vs "farmers" in sales world.  Also notable is that while there's almost 3X as many Sales Rep positions as there are AEs, the search traffic is the same – meaning there's no penalty for using the AE title if a hunter is what you're after.

—Business Development Manager (BDM) – if your intent is to find an independent sales pro, be careful with manager titles in the posting. Better to use Sales Rep or AE to clarify what you're looking for, then give them whatever title you need to in your company's convention of titles once they are hired and in the door.

—Not listed here but a problem – the use of Account Manager as a title. If you're looking for a hunting sales rep and post using the AM title, you're inviting relationship people who aren't used to hunting to apply for your role. You'll either tell all of them no or make an ineffective hire – either way you lose, so stay away from that title if closed new business is your goal.

As with all job postings, title matters. So does a clean, effective job posting that allows people to see what's most important to you, and most importantly – opt out without applying if they aren't a fit.

Be clean on title and what's most important to you early in the posting, and your false positive hires will go down.

Happy Hunting!