The usual SDR job post is written to maximise applications. That is the wrong objective function. Application volume costs you screening time and, worse, fills the role with people who did not know what they were signing up for and leave in month five.
Write it to select.
Name the hard parts explicitly
The SDR job involves a lot of rejection, a lot of repetition, and long stretches where effort and outcome are uncorrelated. Everybody knows this. Omitting it does not hide it; it just means the candidate discovers it in week two.
Say it plainly. Candidates who are put off by an accurate description were going to be put off by the job. The ones who read it and still apply have selected themselves, which is the only screening that happens before you spend time.
Publish the numbers
Three that matter, and most posts include none:
- Compensation, base and realistic on-target, not the top decile figure.
- The target, in whatever unit you actually measure: meetings held per
month, opportunities sourced.
- What percentage of the team hit it last quarter. This one is unusual and
it is the single most credibility-building line you can write. A candidate who sees "60% of the team hit target last quarter" learns more about your management than any culture paragraph.
Describe the day, not the mission
"You will be the front line of our growth engine" tells a candidate nothing. "You will make around 50 calls and send around 60 emails a day, spend the first hour on research, and have two coaching sessions a week" tells them whether they want the job.
Include the tools. Candidates with experience will recognise them and calibrate instantly.
Say where it leads, honestly
The default promise is AE in twelve months. If that is not true at your company, saying it produces a hire who leaves angry.
Say what is true: how many SDRs got promoted last year, into what, and after how long. If the honest answer is "two of nine, in about eighteen months," that is still a better post than an aspirational one, because it attracts people who can plan.
And note that AE is not the only exit. The research and operations tracks are real paths, and naming them widens your candidate pool to people who would never apply to an AE-track post. See the three SDR roles.
Cut the requirements that do not predict
Most SDR job posts carry requirements that correlate with nothing: a specific degree, a fixed number of years, industry background. They shrink your pool along axes that do not predict performance, and they disproportionately screen out people who would be good at it.
What does predict, roughly: comfort with structured repetition, how somebody responds to being told no, and whether they ask questions in the interview. None of those are on a resume, which is what the interview is for.
The test before you post it
Would a good current SDR on your team read this and recognise their job? If not, you are writing a recruitment ad, and recruitment ads produce churn.
Where this sits
Hiring is Mastery in the Tenbound Pipeline Architecture Standard. It is also the point at which most team problems are actually created: a mis-hire is diagnosed as a coaching problem for two quarters before anyone revisits the job description.
Related: challenges building an SDR team and where SDRs should report.