SDR and BDR interview questions, with a scorecard for hiring managers
Hiring SDRs on gut feel is expensive. The average SDR ramps in about 3.0 months and stays around 1.9 years (Bridge Group, 2025), so a miss costs you a quarter of ramp and a seat on the team. Here's a structured way to get it right.
SDR (sales development representative) and BDR (business development representative) are the same job at most companies: the reps who create first meetings for account executives. Some firms use SDR for inbound and BDR for outbound. Everything here applies to both.
The competencies to test
| Competency | What it looks like in the job |
|---|---|
| Coachability | Takes feedback and visibly changes |
| Resilience | Keeps quality up through a lot of rejection |
| Curiosity | Researches and forms a view of the buyer's problem |
| Verbal communication | Clear, concise and natural on the phone |
| Written communication | Short, relevant, error-free messages |
| Work ethic | A record of setting goals and hitting them |
| Organisation | Manages accounts, tasks and follow-ups without dropping any |
Adaptability is worth watching across all of them. Gartner's 2024 survey of 1,026 B2B sellers found those strong in tactical flexibility (adjusting their approach mid-conversation) were 3.4 times more likely to meet quota.
18 SDR and BDR interview questions by competency
Coachability
- Tell me about the most useful feedback you've had. What did you change?
- Tell me about a time you disagreed with feedback. What happened?
- How do you get better at something you're bad at?
Strong answers name specific feedback, a specific change and the result. Weak answers are vague or blame the person giving it.
Resilience
- Tell me about a goal you missed. What did you do next?
- Describe a week where almost nothing went right. How did you keep going?
- How do you handle hearing "no" twenty times in a day?
Strong answers show a routine for bouncing back and a focus on what they can control, without pretending rejection doesn't sting.
Curiosity
- What do you know about us, and what would you want to find out?
- Pick a company you'd like to sell to. Why might they need us?
- What's something you taught yourself recently?
Strong answers go beyond the homepage, form a hypothesis and ask good questions back.
Verbal and written communication
- Explain what we sell to me as if I were a busy finance director. You have 30 seconds.
- Walk me through how you'd write a first email to a prospect.
- Tell me about a time you had to persuade someone who didn't want to listen.
Strong answers are short, plain and about the listener, not the product.
Work ethic
- Tell me about a goal you set yourself and hit. How did you track it?
- What's the hardest you've worked for something, and why?
- What would your last manager say about your effort?
Strong answers include numbers, a plan and follow-through. Sport, study, part-time jobs and side projects all count.
Organisation
- How do you plan your day when you have more to do than time?
- Tell me about a time you dropped the ball. What system did you build afterwards?
- What tools do you use to keep track of tasks and follow-ups?
Strong answers describe a real system and what they do when it breaks.
The role-play exercise 📞
A live role-play shows more than any question. Send a short pack 48 hours ahead: a one-page product summary, a persona and a trigger. For example: a Head of Operations at a 300-person logistics firm that has just opened a second warehouse.
- Cold call, 8-10 minutes. The goal is a 30-minute discovery meeting. The interviewer plays the prospect and uses two or three scripted objections, the same for every candidate.
- Feedback, 5 minutes. Give one or two specific coaching points.
- Second attempt, 5 minutes. This is the coachability test: did they apply the feedback?
Score the opener, discovery questions, listening, objection handling, the ask and the improvement on the second attempt. If the role is mainly written outreach, swap in a timed exercise: a five-bullet research brief on a real company and a first email under 80 words.
A weighted SDR interview scorecard
Score each competency 1-5 against written anchors, then weight it. This version is illustrative; tune the weights to your motion.
| Competency | Weight | 1 (weak) | 3 (solid) | 5 (strong) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coachability | 20% | Defensive, no change | Applies feedback with some improvement | Asks for feedback, improves markedly |
| Resilience | 15% | No evidence of sustained effort | Consistent effort in one setting | Repeated success against hard targets |
| Curiosity | 15% | Surface facts only | Clear hypothesis tied to a trigger | Spots a non-obvious angle |
| Verbal communication | 15% | Scripted or unclear | Clear and conversational | Natural and concise under pressure |
| Written communication | 15% | Generic or error-strewn | Concise and relevant | Specific and compelling |
| Work ethic | 10% | No goals set or tracked | Sets and hits goals | Sustained over-achievement |
| Organisation | 10% | No system | Reliable basic system | Efficient system, adapts it |
A simple hire rule: a weighted score of 3.5 or more, coachability of 4 or more and no competency scored 1. For example, a candidate scoring 4, 3, 4, 4, 3, 4 and 3 in the order above lands at 3.6 and passes.
Red flags 🚩
- Blames managers, markets or products for every miss.
- Ignores the prep pack or invents facts about the target company.
- Talks over the "prospect" and asks few questions.
- Repeats the same mistake on the second role-play attempt.
- Reluctant to pick up the phone.
- Rude to coordinators or dismissive of junior staff.
How to reduce bias
- Use a structured interview. Same questions, same order, same exercises for every candidate. A 2022 meta-analysis in the Journal of Applied Psychology ranked structured interviews among the strongest predictors of job performance, well ahead of unstructured ones.
- Write the anchors before you interview, so "strong" means the same thing to everyone.
- Score independently before the debrief, then discuss. The loudest voice shouldn't set the score.
- Calibrate every quarter by comparing scores with how hires actually perform in months 4-6.
- Check the process with your People or HR team for local employment law and fair-hiring rules.
Sources
- The Bridge Group, SDR Models, Motions & Metrics 2025 Research Report
- Gartner, Sellers Who Partner With AI Are 3.7 Times More Likely to Meet Quota, 2024
- Sackett et al., Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection, Journal of Applied Psychology, 2022
Questions
What should I ask in an SDR or BDR interview?
Questions that test coachability, resilience, curiosity, communication, work ethic and organisation, plus a live role-play with a coaching round. Ask every candidate the same questions and score against written anchors.
What is the best way to test coachability in an SDR interview?
Run a short cold-call role-play, give one or two specific coaching points, then run it again. Whether the candidate applies the feedback is the clearest single signal.
Is there a difference between hiring SDRs and BDRs?
Usually not. Where companies split the roles, inbound SDRs lean on speed and qualification and outbound BDRs on research and resilience, but the same competencies, questions and scorecard work for both.
Should SDR candidates need previous sales experience?
Not necessarily. Coachability, curiosity and resilience often predict success better than prior SDR experience, and a good role-play shows them directly.
Related guides
SDR and BDR KPIs
What to measure, and 2024-2026 benchmarks to sense-check against.
SDR and BDR comp plans
OTE benchmarks for the UK, US and Europe, and how to design the plan.
SDR and BDR ramp time
A 30/60/90-day plan, ramped quotas and a certification checklist.
Turn this into a programme you can run
14 Notion modules and 6 working trackers for SDR leaders: KPI library, comp calculator, cadence builder, interview scorecard, tool scorecard and a 90-day roadmap. £49, one payment.
Benchmarks are starting points, not targets. Every figure shows its source and year; tune them to your market, deal size and sales cycle.