How to hire a sales development representative (SDR): job description, interview questions, screening workflow

An SDR's whole job is getting told no, faster than anyone else on your team, and doing it again the next day without the quality dropping off. That's a specific kind of person, and it's not the same person who's good at closing a deal once it's in motion. A resume that lists "80 dials a day" and "20 meetings booked" tells you almost nothing about whether someone can actually run a cold sequence, write an email that gets opened twice, or stay useful on day 40 after three straight weeks of rejection. This guide screens for the two things that matter here: real outbound discipline, not activity metrics, and the resilience to keep it up.

Worth naming up front, because it's the most common mix-up in small-business sales hiring: an SDR is not a closer. An SDR prospects and qualifies, then hands the opportunity to whoever runs the deal from there, whether that's you or someone else on the team. If you're hiring the person who closes what your SDR books, see our guide to hiring a sales rep or an account executive. This page is for the role that comes before that one: the person who fills the pipeline in the first place.

What an SDR actually does at a small business

At a company with a full sales org, an SDR is one narrow slice of a much bigger machine. They work a defined list, follow a playbook a sales ops team built for them, hand qualified meetings to an AE, and their entire job stops at the handoff. A marketing team feeds them leads. A sales enablement team writes their talk tracks. If their pipeline dips one month, a manager two levels up notices it in a dashboard before the founder ever hears about it.

At a 10-40 person founder-led business, there's no machine. The SDR is often the only source of qualified pipeline the business has that isn't inbound or referral. There's no lead gen team feeding them a warm list. There's no sales ops function pre-building sequences. They're finding prospects, writing their own outreach, running their own cadence, and qualifying leads well enough that the founder's or closer's time on a call isn't wasted. If they go quiet for a week, the pipeline goes quiet with them, and there's nobody else generating it in the meantime.

That's what makes this hire harder to get right than the job title suggests. It looks like an entry-level role from the outside, and it's often filled at entry-level pay. But it demands real judgment about who's actually worth pursuing, real writing skill to get a cold email opened, and enough resilience to keep the volume up when most of what comes back is silence or no.

The core responsibilities, in practice:

• Building and working prospect lists against your actual ideal customer profile, not just anyone with a title that sounds close
• Writing and running multi-touch outbound sequences across email, phone, and often LinkedIn or social
• Qualifying inbound leads that come through the website or marketing, so the founder or closer only spends time on real opportunities
• Handling objections on the first call or first reply well enough to keep the conversation alive
• Booking qualified meetings and handing them off with enough context that the closer isn't starting from zero
• Keeping notes and pipeline stages current in whatever CRM or spreadsheet the business actually uses
• Adjusting messaging based on what's working, since nobody else is watching reply rates for them
• Absorbing a steady stream of rejection without the quality of their outreach dropping off

Job description you can post today

Copy this, then adjust the specifics (your ICP, your tools, your pay) to match your business.

Sales development representative (SDR)
[Company name] is looking for a sales development representative to build and run the top of our sales pipeline. You'll find the right prospects, get them talking to us, and qualify them well enough that our closer's time is spent on real opportunities, not tire-kickers.

What you'll do
Build prospect lists against our ideal customer profile and keep them current. Write and run outbound sequences across email, phone, and LinkedIn, and adjust the messaging based on what's actually getting replies. Qualify inbound leads from our website and marketing so we're not wasting sales calls on people who were never going to buy. Handle objections on the first call or first reply well enough to keep the conversation moving instead of losing it. Book qualified meetings and hand them off with real context, not just a name and a time slot. Keep our CRM current so pipeline status is never a mystery.

What we're looking for
Real, demonstrated comfort with cold outreach, not just a resume that says "prospecting" in the job title. Sharp written communication, since a cold email lives or dies on the first two lines. Genuine resilience: someone who can take a string of no's and not let it show up in the next call. Comfort with a CRM, or fast enough to learn ours in the first couple weeks. Curiosity about our product and our customers, not just a script they run on autopilot.

Schedule
[Insert hours, e.g. full-time Monday-Friday, in-office or remote, or the days/hours this role covers]

[Insert pay, per your company's policy and any applicable state salary transparency requirements]

10 interview questions, and what a good answer sounds like

1. Walk me through your actual outbound sequence at your last role, touch by touch.

You're checking for a real process, not a summary stat. A strong answer names the channel mix, the rough cadence (how many touches, over what stretch of days), and what changed at each step, not just "email then call then email again." A candidate who answers with "I made about 60-80 touches a day" and can't describe what those touches actually were is describing a metric, not a method. That's the gap this question exists to find.

2. Read me the opening line of a cold email you're proud of, and tell me why it worked.

This tests writing skill directly, on the spot, instead of trusting a resume claim. A strong answer produces something specific and can explain the reasoning: why that line, why that hook, what it was testing for. A candidate who can't produce an actual line, or gives you something generic like "I introduce myself and the value we provide," hasn't actually written outreach that got results. This is one of the harder things to fake live.

3. Tell me about a prospect who ignored your first two touches. What did you do on the third?

Most outreach gets ignored, and what a candidate does after silence is more revealing than what they do on touch one. A strong answer describes changing the angle: a different value prop, a different format, referencing something specific about the prospect instead of repeating the same pitch louder. "I just followed up again" with no change in approach is a weak answer. It tells you they run a script, not a sequence.

4. Tell me about the worst rejection you got prospecting, and what you did right after.

This is the resilience question, and it needs a real story, not a platitude. A strong answer names something specific, a prospect who was rude, a string of no's in one day, and describes what they actually did next: made the next call anyway, reviewed what they could improve, didn't let it bleed into the next conversation. "I don't really let it get to me" with nothing behind it is a weak answer. Everyone in this job gets told no. What matters is whether they can name a moment it actually stung and how they moved past it.

5. How do you decide a lead isn't worth pursuing, and how fast do you make that call?

Qualification discipline is half the job, and a bad SDR either chases everything or gives up too soon. A strong answer names real criteria tied to your ICP: budget signals, a title that actually has buying power, a stated need versus a vague "sounds interesting." A candidate who says "I try to talk to everyone who responds" has no filter, and a candidate who says "if they don't reply to touch one I move on" is quitting before the sequence even starts.

6. Someone pushes back with "we already have a vendor for this" on a first call. What do you say?

Objection handling on the very first no is where most cold calls die. A strong answer doesn't argue or immediately pitch harder. It asks a real question, something like what's working or not working with the current vendor, and looks for an opening instead of a fight. "I'd just explain why we're better" is the answer of someone who hasn't actually had this conversation many times. A candidate with real reps handles it more like a conversation than a rebuttal.

7. Walk me through how you'd research a prospect before the first touch, if you had five minutes.

Five minutes is a realistic constraint for anyone running real volume, and the answer shows whether someone personalizes at all or just runs a template. A strong answer names a fast, repeatable check: company site, a recent post or news mention, the prospect's role and what that role likely cares about. "I just use the same template for everyone" tells you their reply rates are probably low, and that they don't know why.

8. What's a piece of outreach you sent that flopped, and what did you learn from it?

Every SDR who's done real volume has sent something that went nowhere. A strong answer owns a specific example, names what was probably wrong (too long, too generic, wrong angle for that persona), and describes what changed after. A candidate who claims everything they've sent has worked well, or blames the list instead of the message, is either inexperienced or not being straight with you.

9. How do you decide what to hand off to the closer, and what do you make sure they know before that call?

This checks whether a candidate understands the handoff is part of the job, not the finish line. A strong answer names the context they pass along: what the prospect cares about, what objections already came up, what the actual next step should be. "I just book the meeting and let the closer figure it out" is a weak answer. It means every meeting your closer takes starts colder than it needs to.

10. If your numbers were down for two weeks straight, what would you actually change?

This tests whether a candidate diagnoses their own performance or just works harder at the same thing. A strong answer breaks the funnel down: is it the list, the message, the channel, the qualification bar, and picks one thing to test differently. "I'd just push more volume" without naming what's actually broken is a weak answer, and it's a preview of how they'll handle every slow patch after this one.

A scorecard you can score candidates against

Ten questions only help if everyone in the room is listening for the same thing. Score every candidate on the same signals instead of comparing gut feelings about who sounded most "hungry."

How to screen SDR candidates without losing a week to it

Truffle is a candidate screening platform that combines resume screening, one-way video interviews, and talent assessments, so you can build a workflow that actually tests prospecting skill instead of trusting a resume that lists the right buzzwords.

SDR postings tend to pull a wide, uneven pool: some candidates with real reps behind them, plenty who've inflated a short stint into "20+ meetings booked monthly," and a fair number who've never actually run a cold sequence but can talk about "hustle" convincingly for twenty minutes. A workflow that filters for the real thing, sized for a founder with no sales manager to hand this to:

• Resume review, weighted toward specifics over buzzwords. Look past "results-driven" and "self-starter" for actual detail: what channels they worked, what kind of company they sold into, how long they were actually in the seat. Resume screening software surfaces the candidates whose experience is concrete, so you're not reading through generic sales-speak on every application yourself.
• A one-way video interview before you schedule a call. Ask 2-3 of the scenario questions above on video, especially the rejection story and the cold email opener. Both put real prospecting instinct on display in a way a resume bullet never will. A one-way video interview lets you hear how someone actually handles the moment, before you commit live time to it.
• A sales assessment before the live interview, not after. A resume can claim "cold calling expert." A structured assessment tests how someone actually reasons through objections, prioritization, and real sales scenarios. Our sales assessment is built around exactly that kind of evidence, scored the same way for every candidate.
• A reference check that asks specifically about volume and resilience, not just "would you rehire them." Ask a past manager whether this person actually hit their activity targets consistently, and how they held up during a slow stretch. That answer tells you more than almost anything on the resume.
• A short paid trial task for finalists: a mock cold call or a written email sequence against your real ICP. Give them a realistic prospect profile and ask for a three-touch sequence, or run a five-minute mock cold call live. This is where everything from the earlier steps gets confirmed against the actual work, not a description of it.

AI surfaces the evidence, resume detail, video responses, assessment results, side by side, so you're not trying to remember which candidate said what. It doesn't decide who gets the job. You review it and make the call, especially on a role where the difference between a real closer of the funnel's front end and someone who just talks well is easy to miss on paper and expensive to miss in practice.

3 questions from the skills check we'd actually run for this role

A skills check for an SDR only means something if it tests actual prospecting judgment, not general sales trivia. These three are adapted from Truffle's sales assessment, scaled to the kind of scenario a small business's SDR runs into every week. Try them yourself before you decide what "qualified" looks like for your opening.

The point isn't these three questions specifically. It's that a structured skills check like this surfaces real prospecting judgment, which is a far harder signal to fake than a resume line about "consistently exceeding activity targets." Truffle's AI scores and surfaces the results against the bar you set. You still make the call on who clears it.

Common hiring mistakes for this role

Hiring for closing skill when the job is prospecting. A candidate who interviews like a natural closer, confident, persuasive, good at handling a live objection in the room, isn't automatically good at the unglamorous discipline of running 60 touches a day for weeks with a low reply rate. Those are different muscles. If your interview only tests charisma, you'll keep hiring people who get bored of the prospecting seat and either underperform or leave for a closing role within a few months.

Trusting activity metrics on a resume without asking how they were produced. "80 dials a day" and "20 meetings booked monthly" are easy to write and hard to verify from a document alone. Some candidates padded those numbers, and some hit them running a process that wouldn't survive contact with your actual ICP. Always ask for the sequence behind the number, not just the number.

Setting the comp and caliber bar at odds with each other. Founders often want someone with real closing instincts, sharp writing, genuine resilience, and enterprise-adjacent polish, at entry-level SDR pay. That combination is rare, and chasing it usually means a slow search, a compromise hire, or both. Decide upfront what you're actually paying for and set expectations that match it.

Skipping the work sample because the conversation went well. A candidate who's personable and quick on their feet in an interview can still write a flat, generic cold email or freeze on a live objection. This is one of the few sales roles where you can test the actual output directly, a mock call, a written sequence, in under an hour. Skipping that step and deciding on interview rapport alone is how a "great conversation" turns into a quiet, empty pipeline six weeks in.

Building the process in a spreadsheet with no consistent bar between candidates. When there's no dedicated recruiter and no time to specialize, it's tempting to just take notes after each call and go with a gut read. That works fine for one or two candidates. It falls apart once you're comparing candidate six against your memory of candidate two from two weeks ago. Score everyone against the same signals, on the same scorecard, before you decide.