How to Build an SDR Hiring Process
Jack Knight
Sep 2, 2024
TL;DR:
The SDR lifecycle is so short that managers need to constantly hire and train new reps. If not done correctly, and because of the growing trend of job-hopping, the hiring and onboarding process can be very time-consuming and costly for companies.
Although, in today's market, it is easy to find multiple candidates for a job posting, it is hard to identify the great ones. Getting a good feel for each applicant's skills and character has become even harder in the remote culture.
To recognize a promising candidate, it is important to pay attention to things such as their CV, whether they are doing the job to get the job, and if they are capable of differentiating themselves from other candidates. Ask them questions such as what motivates them beyond money and how they work in a team environment, and always ask for examples after each question.
The role of an SDR is an entry-level position that many people apply to in the hopes of quickly climbing up to other sales and marketing-related roles.
The average lifetime of an SDR is about 1 to 2 years, and you couldn’t say that it’s a particularly loved position. And that’s why SDR managers need to constantly be on the lookout for new SDR hires.
But how can you make sure that you are finding the best candidates? How can you get access to the best talent? And, how can you make sure that you’re bringing in good, hard-working, and motivated team members?
Especially in the emerging remote work culture, it is harder to get a good feel for each candidate’s skills and character. With the body language missing, you just have to trust your gut, and hope that you are bringing in the right people.
3 Main Challenges of the Hiring Process
It is time-consuming and expensive
When you start hiring new SDRs for your sales team, you want to make sure that you are being as efficient as possible, financially and time-wise.
Not everyone understands how many costs actually go into the hiring process, so here is a general breakdown:
Recruitment costs. You need to take into consideration any possible expenses you might have when adding your job posting on different platforms, or if you choose to create online ads for your open position.
Also, the cost of an Applicant Tracking System should be counted as part of the recruitment costs, and some companies may even use outside recruitment agencies which can become costly.
Internal recruitment and HR costs. Your recruiters and your HR department might have to spend hours reviewing CVs or interviewing candidates. The hiring process is costing your company a lot of money and time.
Interview process costs. The interview process does not only take up your recruiters’ and your HR department’s time, but it will also eat up big chunks of your and leadership’s time.
This time is crucial, because you are busy doing other things, like training and coaching your team, staying on top of their productivity, and tracking KPIs. You don’t want to waste a lot of time reviewing candidates, and you don’t want the leadership’s time to be wasted either.
Assessment tool costs. You might decide to use different assessment tools, such as cognitive tests, personality assessments, and skill evaluations to save up your time, but these tools can absolutely add to the financial strain of the hiring process.
Onboarding costs. You will be spending a lot of time onboarding your new SDRs. Training and coaching them might take a while, and all the software and tools that will help with the process will also add new expenses.
Also, another big fact that you need to keep in mind is that new SDRs will probably result in lost productivity. It might take months before they actually start performing well and bringing in good deals.
Other costs. Some companies like to perform background checks on their new employees. Some need to pay for relocation packages. You, most likely, will need to provide your newcomers with new office equipment and software.
All of these costs add up, making the hiring process actually very expensive. So you want to get it right.
Hiring remotely is tricky
The good news is, that with today’s market, once you post a job opening you will get over 100 candidates in just a few days. In that pool of candidates, there will be many people with experience and a great set of skills, and there is no doubt you will be able to find just the perfect fit for your team.
So what is the problem then?
The issue is that finding and identifying the perfect SDR can be hard, especially in a remote setting.
Normally you would have face-to-face interviews where you could read the candidate’s body language. You could determine a lot by the effort they put into their presentation, by the way they carry themselves, and by their level of confidence and nervousness. You can immediately see how they interact with your team and you can assess how well they communicate with everyone.
When you have to find candidates remotely, you lose all of that. Sure, you still get to have a Zoom interview, but it isn’t the same. It’s not as personal, you don’t get to see their body language and their full reactions. It’s way harder to read someone through a screen.
So the challenge is to find ways to not only find good candidates that tick all the boxes on paper but to be able to identify the great candidates that will actually be able to deliver and bring in results.
Job-hopping is more common
Job-hopping. You probably see it happen more and more.
The newer generations, like Millenials and Gen Z, are hard to satisfy. They seem to be constantly on the lookout for better opportunities when it comes to their salary, work-life balance and flexibility, remote work, company culture, career advancement, and more meaningful work tasks. They don’t feel the same type of loyalty towards companies as people used to.
The issue is that, as mentioned before, you don’t want to go through hiring and training someone just for them to leave within the next 6 to 12 months. You will be losing time and money if that happens.
How to Build an SDR Hiring Process
Take advantage of an Applicant Tracking System and recruiters
You will probably get hundreds of applications, so you don’t want to go through all of them on your own.
The first step would be to have an ATS to automatically go through the applications and the CVs, to weed out any irrelevant ones. Then, the company’s recruiters should check out all the applications that got through the ATS, and either interview them or have them send over a quick video where they answer some questions.
This is also the stage where the recruiter will send any cognitive or qualitative tests to the candidates to understand if they have the basic skills you’re looking for and to see if their personality and values match with the current team.
The recruiter’s job is to narrow down the huge list of applicants and send you only the ones that would fit the company’s higher-level needs. So they are almost like a gatekeeper who keeps out all of the junk that still passes through the ATS filter.
How to go about the hiring manager interview
It’s the recruiter’s job to find good applicants, but now it’s your job to find the great ones. What you have to do is to check if they can actually do the job. Do they have the skills and the personality for it? Are they actually qualified to do it? And do they show promise?
Here are a few things you should be looking for:
1. What is their CV like? Sales is about sticking out. About being different and using all the tools in your arsenal. A sales candidate’s CV should help them differentiate. It should have a little bit of color and a headshot. It shouldn’t be a boring black-and-white CV that could’ve been made in the 90s.
2. What types of questions are they asking you? Usually, we will be the ones asking the questions, but many underestimate the value of asking “Do you have any questions for us?”.
The types of questions the candidate asks are a great way to understand if they really care about the position or not.
If they ask generic questions, like what is the culture like, or what are the next steps, and they don’t show any interest in the position or the company, that is a big red flag.
3. Did they do their research? Researching prospects and companies is an essential part of an SDR’s job, so you want to check if the applicant has done their research when it comes to your job posting.
Did they look into what the company does or what are your values? Did they read the job posting carefully? Do they know anything about you and your accomplishments within the company?
If they come into the interview with any of this information, you can assume that they will be doing their research as an SDR as well.
3. Are they doing the job to get the job? Similarly with the research, you want to ask yourself, is the applicant doing the job to get the job?
Are they cold-calling you about the position? Did they send you a DM on LinkedIn or an email? How are they handling your objections?
In a position like that of a sales development representative, it should be an immediate disqualifier if the candidates have not done any of the above. They should be treating you like a prospect to prove that they can do sales.
What should I keep in mind when coming up with interview questions?
The interview is not so much about the questions themselves, but more about identifying key traits and qualities.
1. Give them the opportunity to sell themselves. Following the same logic as before, you want to see how well they are able to sell themselves. Ask them questions about their skills and experiences and see how they answer.
It’s not so much about the actual skills and level of experience, but more about how they deliver their answers. Do they sound confident and convincing? Or are they extremely nervous, insecure, and doubtful?
2. Find out what motivates them beyond money. Are they goal-oriented? Why are they truly applying for this position? Where do they want to be in a few years from now? These questions can help you understand them better, and it will help you know what their true intentions are when it comes to this position.
3. Ask about how they handle failure and rejection. Failure and rejection are a huge part of sales, and it can become mentally straining very fast. Not everyone can handle getting rejected time after time, so you need to make sure that you are hiring someone who can not only handle rejection but also bounce back from it even stronger.
4. Learn if they are good team players. This goes without saying, but sales is a team sport. Keeping a healthy team-oriented culture is super important, so everyone who joins the team should be comfortable with working within one.
5. Always ask for examples. Now you might get applicants who will have the perfect answers to all your questions. They might claim that they have all the required skills and attributes, and they might even have experience. But this doesn’t mean that they will actually deliver.
Examples are your friend here. Ask them to give you a little example after each question. Ask them to explain a time when they actually did fail, and how they dealt with it. Or how they handled a disagreement with a colleague.
This way, you can gain better insight into whether they can actually walk the talk.
Use Assessments
Before you go onto the next stage, you want to be absolutely sure that you are only sending the best of the best candidates to leadership. Because at the end of the day, your goal is to try to save time, right?
Each candidate you send over to the leadership will take up to 30 to 45 minutes of their time, so you don’t want to be wasting it.
Assessments can help you identify some crucial things, like, are they compatible with the remote working environment? Do they take initiative? Are they comfortable asking questions? Do they have problem-solving skills? And are they willing to go above and beyond to produce the best possible results?
You can ask them to do assignments, such as mock calls, the 30-60-90 day program, and other relevant projects.
Why is the leadership interview important?
Whether it’s the VP of sales, the director of sales, or any other figure from leadership, their role is to interview the last candidates and see who would be best for the role.
Usually, the VP of sales, for example, has been in the game long enough to know how to hire, so they will probably be able to identify things that you couldn’t, like the smallest of details that could make a huge difference.
You want to treat all candidates with respect and consideration
It’s easy to become very robotic throughout the hiring process and to forget that you are dealing with actual human beings. So don’t forget to make this as smooth and easy as possible for them too.
Keep them in the loop about how long the interview process is, how many stages there are, and how soon they should expect to hear from you.
Also, be transparent with them. If you already know that you won’t go forward with them, why not tell them there and then? Offer them some feedback and advice on how they can improve.
These people have probably been looking for a job for a while, putting in all this effort only to get rejected again and again, and most companies don’t even go through the trouble of sending them a rejection email. So these people never find out what they need to work on, and they just wonder why they can’t land a job.
So let them know why you won’t move forward with them, and give them feedback. It’s the humane and ethical thing to do, and who knows? They might even objection-handle you so well that you might reconsider your decision.
Building a Great SDR Team
Building a great SDR team actually starts with you.
You might have the best candidates in the world, but what matters is how you lead them. Are you worthy of being followed? Are you building a healthy and productive culture? Are you setting an example based on what you are expecting of them?
If you don’t hold yourself to a standard of excellence, your team won’t do so either.
Also, finding SDRs for your team is not so much about their hard skills and experience. Sales is an entry-level job in the end.
What you want to be looking for is passion, drive, and motivation. What is their personality like? What are their life goals? How do they take feedback, and are they willing to improve? Are they coachable? And what’s their work ethic like?
These attributes are more important than their work experience and background.
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