7 Mistakes To Avoid When Hiring Sales Development Representatives (SDRs)

Expanding your sales team should correlate directly with the growth of your organization – but it all comes down to hiring the right people. Building a killer sales team starts with filling the roles that generate opportunities at the top of the funnel: Sales development representatives (SDRs). But despite often being labeled as an “entry-level sales role,” hiring talented SDRs is extremely challenging, and it’s easy to get wrong. From placing too much emphasis on verbal communication skills to hiring an uncoachable SDR,  here are the seven biggest mistakes we see companies make when hiring entry level sales candidates.

Overvaluing charisma.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make while evaluating sales candidates is valuing schmoozers over executors. In other words, the most charismatic candidate is not always the best candidate for the job. Instead of assessing solely on verbal quickness, you should be looking for traits that foreshadow day-to-day success, like tenacity and self-awareness. While it’s important for sales candidates to have strong verbal skills, make sure your interview process doesn’t overvalue charisma.

Not screening for the right things.

Great sales hires are competitive, hard-working, able to take rejection, and possess a high level of perseverance. However, interviewers can fail to properly screen for these attributes if they like the candidate. Craft behavioral questions that can screen for attributes like grit and work ethic, otherwise you might find yourself with a likeable SDR who isn’t actually the right fit for your organization.

Another thing that’s essential to screen for: long-term sales fit. The candidate you are interviewing might be interested in this specific role, but do they indicate a long-term interest in client-facing or results-based roles? Screen candidates not only for attributes that foreshadow sales success, but also for their interest in sales and the likelihood that they can grow with your organization.

Undervaluing writing skills and designing a poor assessment.

Writing is an essential skill for SDRs to have, but it’s often overlooked in the interview process. Assessing verbal communication skills is important, but it’s equally – if not more – important to design a writing assessment for your entry-level sales candidates. Your SDRs will be spending significant time reaching out to prospects over email, making writing speed and quality essential components of success in this role.

To effectively assess candidates on their writing skills, you need to design an assessment that mimics the job they would do if they were hired. You could ask the candidate to write a mock outreach email within a time limit, for example, allowing you to assess their writing ability under pressure. It’s OK if the candidate’s prompt isn’t perfect, but their writing ability should clear a certain bar determined by your organization.  

Not screening for coachability.

Entry-level hires are only as good as their ability to grow. To evaluate if a candidate is coachable, you should screen for their ability to receive and implement feedback. At RippleMatch, we incorporate feedback into our sales assessment process. When looking over a candidate’s writing assessment, we provide suggestions for improvements and give the candidate the opportunity to make adjustments. Pay close attention to how a candidate responds to feedback. Are they defensive? Do they make relevant adjustments? It can give you an idea of how a candidate might operate on your team.

Taking bad notes.

You might think you will remember the highs and lows of a candidate’s interview, but chances are, the specifics will slip your mind. Taking vague notes, especially if you’re moving through a significant number of candidates, will make things more difficult when you’re deciding to move forward with a candidate or not. Using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) (we like Greenhouse) can help you keep track of feedback on candidates. We input detailed notes and a scorecard for each candidate immediately after each interview and reference those notes throughout the process.

Being lazy with references.

If you really like a candidate, it can be easy to to approach a reference as an affirmation of what you already know. However, you should approach references with the same kind of scrutiny that you approach interviewing. Ask revealing questions and follow-up on anything that gives you pause. A so-so review from someone that a candidate recommended you talk with is a big red flag. Finally, backchannel reference whenever possible. It’s often more revealing to talk to people they have worked with, but didn’t put forward themself.

Consistently hiring people similar to yourself.

If you aren’t aware of your own biases, you might end up with the wrong candidate because they have the right similarities to you. It’s normal to gravitate toward people with similar interests and experiences, but in hiring, it can lead to a homogenous organization and keep you from bringing on the absolute best person for the job. If you find yourself gravitating toward a certain kind of candidate over and over again, ask yourself why. You might realize that your judgement is actually colored by your past experiences and is keeping you from building the best team possible.

Hiring for this entry-level role isn't easy – but if you focus on the right skill sets and check your own biases, you'll increase your chances of securing the right candidates.