Sales Development Representative interview prep, what to expect

Most SDR hires have none, so managers are not screening for it. They look for three things you can show from any background: you can hold a conversation with a stranger, you keep going after a no, and you change what you do after feedback. Collect two stories with numbers from jobs, sport, societies or volunteering: one where you worked towards a target, and one where something went wrong. Then practise the mock cold call out loud, five times or more, with someone who pushes back. Finally, research the company the way an SDR would: who buys the product, and one reason to call that buyer this month.

Write only your first 20 seconds: the prospect's name, your name and company, why you are calling, one line about their business, and a specific meeting ask such as 15 minutes on Thursday. Then list the three brush-offs you expect: 'not interested', 'send me an email' and 'we already use someone'. For each, prepare one question to ask back. Run the whole call aloud with a friend at least three times, and have them hang up on you once. On the day, expect feedback after the first attempt and a second go; managers watch how much the second attempt changes.

It depends on what you want from the first two years. Larger sales organisations usually have structured training, a set call process and a known promotion path, which helps if you have never sold before. Startups often give you more range, such as helping write the email sequences or talking to the founders about the market, with less coaching and a less predictable path. In either case, ask in the interview how many SDRs were promoted to Account Executive in the last year, how long it took, and who coaches your calls each week. Those answers tell you more than the company's size.

Plan on one to two years. The Bridge Group's 2025 survey of 351 B2B companies puts average SDR tenure at 1.9 years, and promotions made up 16% of SDR attrition, down from 34% in 2020, so promotion is slower than it was a few years ago. The usual requirements are hitting your meeting target for several months in a row and showing you can run a discovery call yourself. It is a good question to ask in the interview: how many SDRs moved up last year, and what they had in common.

Keep it short: the assignments usually ask for 75 to 150 words, and buyers read on their phones. Open with a reason that is about their company, such as a new hire, a funding round or a product launch you found in research. Connect that to one problem the product solves, in their words. Make one ask, for a short meeting at a specific time. Leave out the list of features and the paragraph about your own company. If the task is a sequence of three emails, make each follow-up add something new, such as a customer example or a different angle. A line like 'just bumping this up' gives them no reason to reply.

No. The SDR role is where most people start in B2B sales, so managers hire graduates and career changers all the time. What they check is whether you can do the daily work: open a conversation with a stranger, ask for a meeting clearly, handle a no without getting flustered, and take feedback. The mock cold call and the email exercise test exactly that. Customer-facing jobs such as retail, hospitality or call centres help, as do sport and fundraising, because they give you stories about targets and rejection.

SDR loops usually take one to three weeks. The highest-value practice is the mock cold call, done out loud with someone who pushes back, followed by a second run after one piece of feedback.

Treating the interview like a general graduate interview. Polished answers matter less than the role-play: a candidate who asks for the meeting clearly and gets better after feedback beats a candidate with a perfect 'tell me about yourself'.

Most variation is at the edges. Major tech companies (FAANG, scale-ups, mid-size SaaS) follow processes within 1–2 rounds of what's described. Smaller startups often run fewer rounds (3–4) but the bar at each round is similar; less-tech-mature companies sometimes skip system design or behavioural rounds entirely. Read the posting and ask the recruiter on the screening call; they'll tell you what's coming.

This guide covers the general bar at Entry level. The free scan reads one real posting and opens the report right here: the questions that role and company will ask, a pay benchmark matched to the level and, with your CV, the gaps an interviewer will probe and a CV score. No account or email first; the report is on screen in about a minute.