Account Executive CV Example & Writing Guide

The full CV example

Fictional throughout. Copy the structure, then replace every figure with one you can defend in a first interview.

This example person is not real. Naomi Adeyemi, Fernhill Analytics and Bayline Telecom are invented for the page, and so is every number in it. Replace this block with your own name, city, email, phone and profile link.

Why this CV works

Five things a strong AE CV usually forgets, and how this one handles them:

• The quota is printed next to the attainment, every time

  "CAD 850k new ARR quota and closed CAD 1.02M, 120%" tells a reader what kind of seller this is. 120% of CAD 250k is a transactional SMB motion and 120% of CAD 3M is enterprise, and the interview loop and the peer group differ for each. A percentage of a target the reader cannot see is decoration.

• Three years of attainment sit on one line, including the bad one

  "FY2023 86% of CAD 580k" is in the second bullet rather than quietly missing. A reader who sees FY2024 and FY2025 but no FY2023 assumes the worst about FY2023. A miss next to two years of recovery on the same territory is a stronger story than two clean years with a hole in the middle.

• Self-sourced pipeline is separated from what marketing handed over

  "41% of closed revenue, up from 19%" answers the question behind every AE interview: can this person still create a deal, or have they been closing inbound for three years? The trajectory matters as much as the share, because it shows a decision rather than a lucky territory.

• The deals have a shape, not just a size

  24 deals, CAD 47k median ACV, 74 days single-site against 130 multi-site, 4.2 contacts on won deals against 1.8 on lost. Those figures together describe a repeatable motion, and a sales manager can tell in seconds whether it maps onto theirs. One revenue figure cannot do that.

• The ranking claim carries its denominator

  "Ranked 4 of 31 quota carriers" and "Summit Club 2025 (8 of 46)" are checkable. "Top 10% nationally" is not, and every reader knows how easy it is to pick the cut that makes the number work. The group size costs three words.

Professional summary examples

Entry level

A first AE CV has no attainment history, so the number is activity plus whatever you actually closed. Say what the target was, not only what you did against it.

Mid level

Quota, attainment, deal count, ACV, self-sourced share, cycle. Six facts in three sentences, each one narrowing which jobs you fit.

Senior

Senior AE summaries trade deal count for deal complexity. Naming the buying process you can survive beats another attainment percentage.

Experience bullet examples

Thirteen rewrites, weak form and strong form. Every figure here is Naomi's and invented for this page: your own CRM has the real ones, and a borrowed number does not survive the first question about how the territory was built.

Weak

Consistently exceeded quota.

Stronger

Carried a CAD 850k new ARR quota in FY2025 and closed CAD 1.02M, 120%, across 24 deals at a CAD 47k median ACV.

Why

The honest version always carries the quota size. Attainment without it is a percentage of something invisible.

Weak

Achieved 140% of target.

Stronger

Attainment by year on the same territory: FY2023 86% of CAD 580k, FY2024 110% of CAD 640k, FY2025 120% of CAD 850k.

Why

One line does the work of three bullets. Include the year you missed; an absent year reads as one you would rather not discuss.

Weak

Top performer in the region.

Stronger

Ranked 4 of 31 quota carriers on attainment in 2021 and 8 of 46 in FY2025.

Why

Top 10% of a team of nine is not a ranking. Give the position and the size of the group, or leave it out.

Weak

Generated new business pipeline.

Stronger

Self-sourced 41% of closed revenue, up from 19% in my first full year, by working 40 named accounts by hand instead of waiting on the marketing queue.

Why

Split self-sourced from marketing-sourced explicitly. A hiring manager assumes the worse split when you do not.

Weak

Closed large enterprise deals.

Stronger

Closed the two largest deals in the segment's history, CAD 210k and CAD 164k, both multi-site with a VP Operations as economic buyer.

Why

Deal size plus who signed. "Large" is relative to a company the reader does not know; a figure and a title are not.

Weak

Maintained a healthy win rate.

Stronger

Held a 26% win rate from qualified opportunity onward against a team median of 21%, on 92 qualified opportunities in FY2025.

Why

Win rate needs the stage it is counted from and the volume behind it. Six from twelve is not the same claim.

Weak

Managed the full sales cycle.

Stronger

Ran a median 74-day cycle on single-site deals and 130 days on multi-site, reported separately after the blended figure hid which deals were slipping.

Why

Cycle length tells a manager whether your motion fits their forecast rhythm. Splitting it by deal type reads as someone who watches their own pipeline.

Weak

Built relationships with key stakeholders.

Stronger

Averaged 4.2 contacts engaged on closed deals against 1.8 on lost ones, and stopped forecasting single-threaded deals above 50%.

Why

Multithreading is the most-claimed and least-evidenced skill in sales. The contrast between won and lost deals is the version that means something.

Weak

Handled procurement and legal.

Stronger

Cut the security review stage from a median of 3 weeks to 6 days by writing a 9-page answers pack with our CISO and sending it before it was requested.

Why

Procurement and security review are where mid-market deals die in the last fortnight of a quarter.

Weak

Used Salesforce to track opportunities.

Stronger

Kept next steps and close dates current on every open opportunity and finished FY2025 with commit calls inside 8% of what actually closed.

Why

CRM hygiene only matters through its output. A manager cares that your forecast was right, not that you filled in fields.

Weak

Worked a difficult territory.

Stronger

Finished FY2023 at 86% of a CAD 580k quota after the patch was split mid-year and 14 named accounts moved to a new hire; rebuilt pipeline to 3x coverage by Q2 of the following year.

Why

How to write a missed year: attainment, cause in plain language, what you did next. Do not write "challenging market conditions" and do not reach for a softer word than missed.

Weak

Ramped quickly in a new role.

Stronger

Closed a first deal in month 3 and hit 86% of a full annual quota in the first year, with no pro-rating.

Why

Ramp is worth a bullet when yours was fast, because it is what a manager is buying when they hire an experienced AE.

Weak

Sold to a range of industries.

Stronger

Sold into manufacturers and healthcare networks of 200 to 1,500 employees, with a VP Operations as economic buyer and a BI director as champion in most deals.

Why

Segment, size band and the two personas you sell to: the fastest way for a reader to judge whether your experience transfers.

Skills that belong on this CV

Education and certifications

Degree, institution and years, under experience, and that is all it needs to be after your first sales job. What is worth a line is prior work in the industry you now sell into: an AE selling clinical software who spent three years in a hospital has a discovery advantage worth naming.

Certifications

• Sales methodology certification (MEDDIC Academy, Challenger, Sandler or similar) - Useful when the advert names the methodology, because the team then runs its pipeline reviews on it and you speak their language from week one.
• Vendor product certification for the platform you sell - Worth a line for technical products, where it says you can hold the second-call implementation questions without pulling in a solutions engineer.

Nobody hires an AE for a certificate. Attainment history, self-sourced pipeline and deal shape are what get read. Two lines at most.

How an ATS reads this CV

Appliora's ATS Checker runs 14 checks on an uploaded file and shows the text its parser extracted. Four of them matter most for a sales CV.

• Bullet quality

  The heaviest content check, and one an AE CV should pass easily. It counts how many bullets carry a figure and how many start with an action verb. A sales CV with no digits is its own kind of red flag: the job produces a measured number every month, so a page without one looks like a choice.

• Format traps

  The quota attainment chart is the classic sales CV trap. A bar per year, a percentage above each bar, a coloured gauge for club membership: none of it is text, so the parser reaches that section and finds a heading with nothing under it. Write the attainment history as plain text lines and keep the graphic for the copy you send a hiring manager directly.

• Consistent dates

  Sales careers carry short stints, from bad territories and from companies that miss a raise and cut headcount. Put months as well as years on anything under eighteen months, and keep two roles at one employer as two dated entries under one company name so the promotion shows.

• Recognised sections

  AEs invent headings: "Wins", "Track Record", "Numbers". A parser matches conventional section names, so keep Experience, Education and Skills, and put the attainment history inside the experience entry it belongs to or in a clearly labelled block near the top.

Templates that suit this role

• ATS Clean

  Plain single column with conventional headings, so the attainment lines and quota figures survive a portal upload intact.

• Swiss One Page

  Disciplined one page for an AE under six years, where the argument is quota, attainment and self-sourced share and a second page would be padding.

• Two Column Pro

  For the copy you email a hiring manager. Keep the attainment history in the main column and the sidebar for tools and languages, so nothing load-bearing sits in the narrow track.

Related roles

• Sales Manager
• Customer Success Manager
• Marketing Manager