Hiring a sales development rep
Every applicant hit quota. Almost none of them say what the quota was, whether the leads were inbound, or how many calls it took. The CV format for this role is a claim without a denominator, and the difference between the two candidates it hides is enormous.
"Achieved 112% of quota" is a number with the important half missing. It doesn't say whether the pipeline arrived warm from marketing or was built from a cold list, whether the quota was ten meetings a month or fifty, or whether the territory was established or brand new. An inbound order-taker and a genuine outbound prospector produce identical CV lines, and only one of them can do the job you are probably hiring for. The classic false positive is a strong number from a company with a famous brand — where the logo was doing the prospecting.
From a quota claim to a guide, in one conversation
For a sales role Selene goes after deal size and cycle, then the thing that actually decides this hire: where the pipeline comes from.
Deal size, cycle, and where the pipeline comes from
Selene asks about deal size and sales cycle on any sales role — those alone reward almost opposite backgrounds. For an SDR specifically she pushes on lead source, because inbound-qualifying and cold outbound are different jobs sharing one job title.
One sentence changes the guide
Sales ads ask for "a proven track record". This answer asks for something narrower and far more predictive: whether someone keeps going when the day has stopped rewarding them. It also quietly demotes the most impressive-looking thing on many SDR CVs — the famous employer.
Exceptional, not just good —
“Everyone is keen in week one. I want the one still dialling at four o'clock on a Friday in month six.”
→ Sustained activity evidence became a must-have; brand-name employers stopped carrying weight.
What the guide ends up measuring
Six criteria, weighted toward what someone did rather than where they did it. Note that the quota claim itself isn't a criterion — the numbers behind it are.
Nothing to gate on — the filtering is all judgment
No licence, no certification, no availability constraint: every applicant goes straight to being read. That puts the entire burden on the guide, and makes the weighting above unusually consequential — because the default weighting for this role, which rewards the biggest stated number, selects almost exactly the wrong person.
Scored on the numbers behind the claim
Selene never receives the candidate’s name or the raw CV. She scores a blind, structured profile, with any stated age, sex, nationality and religion stripped out before scoring runs.
On a discipline where CVs lean hard on employer names and round numbers, what is left is the activity evidence — and where the denominators are missing, she says so rather than assuming.
How the blind scoring works →What stays with you
Selene's half
- Pinning down whether this is outbound or inbound-qualifying, and building the criteria to match
- Reading all 120 against the same guide, blind, with the evidence attached
- A ranked shortlist, ordered by evidence rather than by claim
- An interview brief that asks for the missing denominators by name
Yours
- Getting reps to apply — Selene doesn't post to job boards or source candidates
- Any role-play, mock call or written outreach test
- The interview, and hearing them actually pitch
- The offer, the commission plan, and every call that matters
Nearby roles
Brief her on your outbound motion
Cold outbound or inbound qualifying, £4k deals or £90k ones — the guide diverges hard on which one you meant.