Sales Development Representative jobs

What the job actually is

Generate and qualify leads through outbound prospecting, cold calling, and email campaigns. Partner with Account Executives to build a strong sales pipeline and drive revenue growth.

Typical setup: an entry-level role, full-time, hybrid workplace.

What a day actually looks like

You start around 8am reviewing overnight email replies and intent signals in Apollo or 6sense, then build your call list for the day. Most of the morning is a call block, commonly 40 to 60 dials plus 30 to 50 personalized emails and a batch of LinkedIn touches, all logged through Outreach or Salesloft into Salesforce. Midday you sit in a team standup, review Gong recordings of your best and worst calls, and prep research on the next day’s target accounts. Afternoons are a second call block, confirming meetings you booked so they actually show, and a quick sync with your AE about lead quality. You end the day updating sequences and checking where you stand against your monthly meetings quota.

What hiring teams expect

The responsibilities that show up in real postings for this role:

• Prospect into target accounts via cold calls, personalized email sequences, and LinkedIn outreach
• Qualify inbound and outbound leads against ICP and qualification criteria before handing off to Account Executives
• Book and confirm discovery meetings for AEs and hit a monthly meetings-set quota
• Research accounts and buyer personas to personalize outreach in volume
• Log all activity and keep lead and contact records clean in Salesforce
• Collaborate with marketing on lead follow-up SLAs and campaign feedback

Qualifications

Experience: 0 to 2 years in sales, customer-facing work, or internships. Education: Bachelor's degree preferred but increasingly optional at many tech companies.

Attributes interviewers probe for: resilient, goal-oriented, excellent communicator, organized, competitive.

Tools of the trade

What this role actually works in day to day:

• Salesforce
• Outreach
• ZoomInfo
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator
• Apollo.io
• Gong
• Chili Piper
• Slack

How success is measured

The numbers this role is judged on:

• Qualified meetings booked and held per month
• Sales qualified opportunities (SQLs) created
• Pipeline value generated
• Daily activity volume (dials, emails, social touches)
• Meeting show rate and conversion to opportunity

How to break in

The entry paths that actually work:

• Apply directly: this is the standard entry point into tech sales and most postings require no sales experience
• Complete a tech sales bootcamp or certificate (CourseCareers, Aspireship, or similar) to signal commitment
• Translate any customer-facing work (retail, restaurants, recruiting, military) into activity and quota language on your resume
• Prospect the hiring manager the way you would a customer: a good cold email or video to them often beats the ATS pile

How hiring usually works

A recruiter runs the first 20 to 30 minute phone screen, followed by a hiring manager interview and then a mock cold call or written outreach exercise, sometimes with a final team or values round. The resume matters less than demonstrated hustle, so direct outreach to the recruiter or hiring manager materially improves response rates. Cycles are fast, often 2 to 3 weeks end to end, and ghosting after the recruiter screen is common.

Companies known for this role

Examples of companies that regularly hire this profile: Salesforce, HubSpot, Gartner, ADP, Samsara. Use them to calibrate your target list, then build your own tier of companies that fit you.

Worth knowing

It is a proving-ground role with real burnout and turnover, and AI tooling is raising the bar: teams hire fewer SDRs but expect each one to run smarter, more personalized outbound.

Words that show up in postings

The terms current postings use. Work them into your bullets where they are true of you.

• Salesforce
• Outreach or Salesloft
• Cold calling
• Cold email copywriting
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator
• ZoomInfo or Apollo.io
• Lead qualification (BANT)
• Multi-channel sequencing
• CRM data hygiene
• AI prospecting tools (ChatGPT, Clay)
• Objection handling
• Pipeline generation
• Clay enrichment workflows
• Gong
• HubSpot
• 6sense or Bombora intent data
• Video prospecting (Vidyard)
• Prior SaaS internship

Purple: asked for in most postings. Outlined: nice to have.

Interview questions to prepare for

1. 1Do a mock cold call and pitch our product to me right now.
2. 2Walk me through how you would prospect into a target account you know nothing about.
3. 3Tell me about a time you faced constant rejection and how you handled it.
4. 4Why sales, and why an SDR role specifically?
5. 5What would you do if you were at 50 percent of quota with a week left in the month?