How to Hire a Sales Development Representative: A Step-by-Step Guide for Small Hiring Teams
SDR hiring is volume hiring: the role has high turnover by design, the candidates are early in their careers, and the difference between a good hire and a bad one shows in ninety days. This guide is the process for hiring SDRs who ramp, and for building the team around them so they stay.
- Build the machine before the first SDR: A defined buyer, a message that has worked at least once, a sequence, a CRM and someone who will coach daily. The role description is the first screening step, and it decides who applies.
- Hire for method and coachability, not personality. Extroversion predicts almost nothing about outbound success.
- Source where sales development representatives already are: people who have persuaded strangers for a living: retail, hospitality, fundraising, recruiting, and recent graduates with a plausible reason for wanting a sales career.
- Screen every CV against a written rubric of the four things the job cannot be done without, then interview for evidence: what the candidate built, decided or fixed, scored against notes written before the interview.
- Decide within a week of the final interview and make the offer with reasons. The common mistakes below, starting with hiring SDRs before there is a message that has worked, then blaming them for the silence, are how good candidates are lost.
The process
- 1
Build the machine before the first SDR
A defined buyer, a message that has worked at least once, a sequence, a CRM and someone who will coach daily. An SDR hired into a company with none of these will be blamed for the absence of all of them.
- 2
Hire for method and coachability, not personality
Extroversion predicts almost nothing about outbound success. Persistence with a method, comfort with rejection, and the habit of applying feedback predict most of it. Interview for those.
- 3
Source widely and score a work sample
Retail, hospitality, fundraising, recruiting and campaigning all teach the job's core skill. A one-hour prospecting exercise on three real accounts, scored against a rubric, is the most predictive thing in the process.
- 4
Screen against a rubric, not a feeling
Write down the four things the job cannot be done without and score every CV against them before reading any further. Three minutes per CV with a rubric beats fifteen without one, and the decisions can be explained afterwards.
- 5
Interview for evidence
Every interview question should ask for something that happened: a system, a deal, a decision, a failure. Score answers against what a strong one contains, written down before the interview, so two interviewers agree.
- 6
Decide fast and tell everyone
Candidates judge a company by its process. Decide within a week of the final interview, tell the ones you passed on, and make the offer with the reasons you chose them. The best candidates have other offers.
Where to find candidates
- People who have persuaded strangers for a living: retail, hospitality, fundraising, recruiting
- Recent graduates with a plausible reason for wanting a sales career
- SDRs at companies with worse coaching or a worse product who want to move
- Referrals from your current SDRs, who know who works hard
- A posting honest about the activity expected and the path to account executive
Mistakes that lose good candidates
- Hiring SDRs before there is a message that has worked, then blaming them for the silence
- Interviewing for charisma and getting reps who cannot take a no
- No daily coaching, so ramp takes six months instead of two
- A quota set before anyone has hit anything, then missed by everyone
- Promising promotion to account executive in a year with no plan to deliver it
Running it well
The interview is short and mostly practical. A prospecting exercise on real accounts, a live role-play scored on recovery from the first objection, and a conversation about coaching they have received and what they changed. Personality questions add noise.
Ramp is where SDR hiring succeeds or fails, and it is a management problem, not a hiring one. A new SDR needs a working sequence, listening time on live calls, daily feedback for the first month and a realistic ramp quota. Companies that provide these see new SDRs booking meetings in weeks; companies that do not see them leave in months.
Be honest in the posting about the activity and the path. SDRs know the job is calls and emails; what they want to know is how many, with what support, and what comes after. Answer all three.
Frequently asked questions
How many SDRs should we hire at once?
Two or three, so they learn from each other and so one departure does not empty the function. One SDR alone in a company is a lonely and short-lived arrangement.
What should the quota be?
Derived from what one person has actually achieved with your message, with a ramp period. A quota with no data behind it will be missed and demoralise the team.
Should SDRs report to marketing or to sales?
To whoever will coach them daily. In most small companies that is the sales leader; where marketing owns the pipeline and has the time, it can work there.
Related guides
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