Business growth is your domain. Market research, business strategies, and client relationships are built effectively with you on the business development team.
Have you prepared your resume for the next step in your growing career? If not, draw an inspiration from our job-winning resume examples.
Being ready to take on business strategy is one thing, but navigating the hiring process can feel like a whole other complex task you have to take on. Our online cover letter generator and entry-level business development resume templates will help you through this process as we teach you to display your top skills effectively.
What Matters Most: Your Entry-Level Business Development Skills & Experience
When first entering the business development field, deciding which skills to put on your resume can be challenging. Do you include your negotiating abilities or your market analytics knowledge?
A good way to decide is to analyze what the company outlines in the business development job description. For example, if you notice an emphasis on database management, your knowledge of CQRS and market research strategies would be great to include.
Here are some popular entry-level business development skills to get you off to a good start.
9 popular entry-level business development skills
- Market Research
- Contract Negotiations
- Lead Generation
- Strategic Planning
- Microsoft Office
- Google Analytics
- HubSpot
- CQRS
- RabbitMQ
Sample entry-level business development work experience bullet points
When applying to an entry-level position, finding the right examples from previous work experience can feel tricky. Don’t sweat it. You have many possibilities to include here, like internships in business dev or experience working in other industries where technical proficiency is required.
Aim to quantify the company-wide impact you had with numbers. With your knowledge from pouring over hours of data in Google Analytics and HubSpot, you should know what metrics business leaders want to see.
Additionally, remember that concise descriptions are the most impactful. For example, one sentence on how you used RabbitMQ to manage data systems 40 percent more efficiently will go a long way.
Here are a few samples:
- Used Microsoft Office to create a detailed presentation of data collected during market analysis to assist decision-makers in identifying 7 untapped niches in the industry for product launches.
- Helped 3 new clients during the intake process by educating them about services offered and answering questions, boosting satisfaction scores by 33%.
- Analyzed data in HubSpot from lead generation campaigns and identified how to keep consumers more engaged during lead nurturing, increasing conversions by 54%.
- Helped launch a new marketing campaign that generated 1,004 high-quality leads, with 51% resulting in closed transactions.
Top 5 Tips for Your Entry-Level Business Development Resume
- Consider including an objective
- A resume objective can work well when applying to an entry-level business position. For example, two or three sentences about how you’re a motivated professional looking to break into the business dev field to utilize your strategic planning skills would work well.
- Focus on technical skill
- Business development requires many technical skills in analytics and top software like Help Scout and Zuper. Emphasize those types of skills and how they can help business processes run more effectively whenever possible.
- Always proofread before submitting
- You wouldn’t want to present inaccurate data to business leaders making critical decisions. The best resumes make the best first impression of your accuracy and abilities, so check for and correct any grammatical errors.
- Keep descriptions concise and understandable
- Not every hiring manager will know as much about data chains and messaging brokers as you do. Aim for simple one-sentence descriptions like how you used Axon Framework to process data sets 45 percent more efficiently.
- Use action words
- Action words like “analyzed” and “created” will make your resume sound more engaging and impactful to hiring managers. For example, you could say you created a 50 percent more efficient email campaign using Lavender.
Aim for one page full of relevant information about your business dev skills. If you’re struggling to complete an entire page, include an objective, hobbies/interests, or volunteer work on your resume template. Even experiences like volunteering at a homeless shelter and accurately managing resources could show applicable skills.
Even though it’s entry-level, you should still have a cover letter. Use your cover letter to get more personal and fill in extra details about your passion for business or the skills that have equipped you to manage data accurately.
Entry-level applicants with less experience can benefit from including a hobbies/interests section. For example, being a member of the Future Business Leaders of America organization in college can help show your passion for business development.
Stephen is the co-founder and CEO of BeamJobs. He started his career in data fulfilling the dream of little kids everywhere: working for an insurance company. He then moved on to work in edtech for a company called Chegg before venturing out to start BeamJobs. Things have come a long way after countless “learnings” (fancy word for mistakes), and BeamJobs has now helped 2.5M+ people create their perfect resume. Stephen and BeamJobs have been featured on awesome sites like Business Insider, Chicago Tribune, Dallas News, Baltimore Sun, the Daily Press, Zendesk, HubSpot, and loads more.
