Why University for Sales Jobs? Rethinking Recruitment and Assessment.

The Bias in Recruitment

When talking to businesses, I often hear, "Our sales candidates must have gone to uni (college for my US friends) to work for us. No exceptions." When I ask, "Why?" the response is always similar: "Well, our product is complicated, it takes brains to sell it."

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This Assessment is Flawed

The problem with this statement is that it's wrong, laden with bias, and ultimately incorrect in assessment for EQ, IQ, and all the great attributes that make awesome salespeople.

I didn't go to uni and can 100% sell complex solutions. I understand why businesses do this, but the problem is they're shrinking their talent pool to their own detriment, with longer hiring cycles and missed talent opportunities.

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A New Solution for Sales Jobs

A new solution is needed to address this issue, one that removes bias and focuses on the actual skills required for sales jobs. By eliminating educational barriers and using a skills-based approach, companies can more accurately assess a candidate's potential and suitability for the role. This not only shortens the hiring cycle but also ensures that the best talent, regardless of their educational background, is given the opportunity to excel.

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The meritt advantage

meritt leverages AI to revolutionise talent acquisition by integrating education and assessment, enabling companies to quickly and accurately identify top sales talent. By focusing on sales skills rather than formal education, meritt ensures a broader, more inclusive search, optimising the hiring process and enhancing team performance at a lower cost.

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What actually predicts sales success - and it isn't a degree

A degree tells you someone could finish a three-year course. It says very little about whether they will pick up the phone after three rejections, ask a customer the question nobody else asked, or take feedback and change by the next call. Those are the things that separate good salespeople from the rest, and they show up in people from every background - hospitality, sport, care work, the armed forces, retail.

The evidence is catching up with this. Employers from Merck to a growing list of tech firms have dropped degree requirements for sales roles in favour of skills-first hiring, and the candidates who come through often outperform traditional graduate hires. What they have in common is not a certificate - it is the four behaviours meritt assesses for: curiosity, coachability, communication and grit.

The point is not that university is worthless. It is that using a degree as a filter quietly screens out a huge amount of sales talent for a signal that does not predict the job. A skills-based assessment looks at the thing that actually matters, and it does it for every candidate the same way.

How to use AI to land a sales job without a degree

If you do not have a sales degree or much sales experience, your job is to translate what you do have into the language employers screen for. AI is good at that translation.

Paste your CV or a list of your experience into Claude or ChatGPT:

I am applying for an entry-level sales role (SDR) and I do not have a sales degree. Here is my background: [jobs, sport, volunteering, projects]. Pull out the strongest evidence of four things sales employers want - curiosity, coachability, communication and grit - and rewrite three CV bullet points so each leads with a concrete result. Be honest, do not invent anything.

Use it to surface the proof you already have, then practise telling those stories out loud. Employers running skills-based hiring, like meritt's assessment, are looking for exactly that evidence, not a certificate. You can browse roles that hire on skills on the meritt jobs board.