Director of Business Development Sample

You have made a career out of driving revenue, increasing profitability, and creating growth and expansion strategies for a diverse set of businesses. The expertise that allows you to do these things comes from a range of skills that you can leverage as your career advances. It may surprise you to learn that the role of Director of Business Development isn’t an easy one to fill. This means that companies spend a great deal of time and resources finding the just right person to fill the seat. 

Likewise, because of the multifaceted nature of the position and the need for a combination of strategic thinking, leadership, and industry expertise, you may have a hard time telling your career story in a way that fits the bill. Your resume is the ticket! Just as you employ strategy to execute growth strategies, you must also be strategic in crafting your resume. To help you along, we’ve created this guide that contains an example Director of Business Development resume and some tips and tricks to help you tell your career story in a way that encourages hiring managers to call you for an interview. 

How to write a resume

When you’re applying for an upper-level position, like Director of Business Development, it’s critical to be able to highlight quantifiable career achievements to hiring managers. Analyzing your career achievements is the method they’ll use to determine whether you’re the right fit for the position they’re trying to fill. With that said, you have to go beyond a simple list of the jobs you’ve held. 

Pick the right format

It all starts with the format. The best options for your resume are going to be either the reverse-chronological, which focuses on career achievements as they relate to the roles you’ve held, or the hybrid (sometimes called combination), which showcases career accomplishments first and career history as an afterthought. 

In the Director of Business Development resume example that you’ll find in the next section of this article, you’ll find a reverse-chronological sample. The key difference is in how you lay out the information in each format type. 

The layout

Both formats will have the same basic layout that segments information in a way that’s easily skimmed by future employers. Let’s face it: there’s not a human being alive who is actually going to read your resume on the first pass. The hiring manager is going to quickly scan through the document to see if anything jumps out at them, and then they’ll read it. 

To make your career experience digestible, break it up into these sections:

• Contact information (both formats): Name, location, phone number, email address, and the URL to your optimized LinkedIn profile.

• Title (both formats): A one-line header that indicates the position you seek. Be creative, though; don’t simply put “Director of Business Development.” Instead, write something like, “Director of Business Development Leader Driving Double-Digit Revenues.” Give them a reason to stop skimming. 

• Branding statement (hybrid format): This is a one-sentence line that goes just beneath the title that allows you to showcase your personality and concisely summarizes your unique value proposition. Here’s an example, “Visionary leader and strategic thinker specializing in diversifying revenue streams and igniting profitable growth initiatives.” 

• Summary paragraph (both formats): This is your elevator speech and is the first real bit of information that future employers garner when determining what you’ll bring to the table for their company. Include your skills, qualifications, goals, and at least one career achievement. 

• Career achievements (hybrid format): Ordinarily, your next section would be the Professional Experience section, which lists the jobs you’ve held. However, if you opt to use the hybrid format, you’ll want to include an additional section that calls attention to your most important career accomplishments. This is not the place to put everything you've ever done – only the achievements that will truly set you apart from the competition. 

• Professional experience (both formats): Write out the jobs you’ve held in reverse chronological order, starting with the most recent job and working backward. Include details for no more than 10-15 years of experience. You can list older experiences to get credit for those years but don’t include bullet points. 

• Education: As you know, this is the place to list the degrees you’ve earned and any licenses, certifications, or relevant professional development classes you’ve taken. 

Customize it!

Once you get your resume written, you may feel an immense sense of accomplishment and think you can breathe a sigh of relief at being done. You’re not done, though. Gone are the days when you could send the same resume to every job and get a call back for an interview. Companies receive hundreds of applications for each open position and now use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to screen candidates and weed out those the system deems unqualified. 

Because of the rampant use of ATS for all resumes, even upper-level and executive resumes, you must tailor your Director of Business Development resume to each and every job, using relevant keywords that you dissect from the job description. As boring as it sounds, try to use the same language in the job description, as that’s likely how the text is programmed into the ATS. 

Director of Business Development Resume example 

What does all of this actually look like? Well, here is the Director of Business Development resume example that we promised you. Again, it is built using the reverse-chronological format, but you can easily add in the other bits mentioned above to transform it into a hybrid resume. Feel free to use this example as inspiration in writing your own resume. 

Quantify your achievements

Do you notice how many times there is a number mentioned in this resume? It is critical to add as many numbers to your resume as possible to indicate the amount of money you’ve brought in or the value of programs you launched or managed. When you quantify your achievements, you provide concrete proof of the impact you’ve had on other organizations. It makes it easy for prospective employers to imagine what you’ll bring to the table for their company. 

Key hard & soft skills for Director of Business Development

On top of quantifying your achievements, it’s also crucial to include both hard and soft skills in your resume. Yes, the number of new markets you penetrated in your last role is vitally important, but so is the collaborative work you performed to get your team on board with the concepts and tasks they’d have to perform to make that happen. 

A mix of skills

Hard skills and soft skills complement each other to allow you to do things like comprehensive problem-solving and strategic decision-making. Without the hands-on knowledge of hard skills and the personality traits behind soft skills, you would be a very ineffective Director of Business Development. 

If there’s one thing that holds true, that’s the unmitigated and rapid changes occurring in the world of business. By fusing hard skills with soft skills, you demonstrate to hiring managers that you bring a well-rounded ability to ensure organizational growth and success.

Key hard skills for Director of Business Development:

• Market and financial analysis

• Sales 

• Negotiation

• CRM Software

• Contract management

• Competitive analysis

• Market entry strategies

• Digital marketing

Key soft skills for Director of Business Development:

• Communication

• Negotiation

• Leadership

• Adaptability

• Relationship-building

• Empathy

• Networking

• Critical thinking

Summary & Last Words

Crafting a compelling Director of Business Development resume is about more than just listing your work history. It's about telling a compelling career story that showcases your ability to drive revenue, lead strategic initiatives, and build valuable relationships. Your resume should not only detail your achievements but also convey your unique value proposition.

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