2 min lesson
Stage 1 - Recruiter / talent screen
Name the parts in "Stage 1 - Recruiter / talent screen" and give the practical job of each one.
Step 1 of 2
The screen is a filter, not a deep dive. In thirty minutes the recruiter decides whether your numbers are real, your motivation is genuine and your story holds together well enough to spend a sales leader's time on.
Bring your numbers cold, the way a forecaster would. Vagueness here reads as a rep who doesn't actually know their own book.
- Quota & attainment
- Your annual number and your attainment percentage for the last few periods, including a down one if you had it.
- ACV & deal count
- Average deal size and how many deals you close a year - the shape of your motion, high-velocity or larger and slower.
- New logos landed
- How many net-new logos you've personally closed; Cursor wants hunters, not farmers.
- Ramp time
- How fast you got to full productivity in your last role - a proxy for how fast you'll ramp here.
Then nail why Cursor specifically. The trap is sounding like you're applying to every AI company at once. Tie your answer to how software actually gets written and to your own hands-on use of the product, not to generic AI hype.
“I've carried a developer-tools number for three years and run my own outbound the whole time. I also use Cursor daily on side projects - Tab and Agent changed how I read unfamiliar code. I want to sell the thing I already believe in, to buyers who'll see straight through a pitch and Cursor is the rare seat where that's the job.”