picked.ai/hire/bdr
Hire a business development representative
How to hire a
business development representative.
Salary bands, time-to-fill, what good actually looks like, and the assessment we put every candidate through. Built on nine years of validated psychometric data from Neuroworx.
Post this role
~30 seconds
Title, level, three must-haves. We syndicate, screen, score, and shortlist. First 50 candidates free.
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£50,000
Median salary · United Kingdom
£42-£58k OTE senior range
42d
Typical time-to-fill
down to 2.6d with Picked
388
Applicants per role
Series A · public posting
9 / 388
Make it to interview
industry · pre-AI screening
Salary bands
What it costs to hire one.
2026 H1 · base + variable
LevelUSUKEURemote
IC1 / Junior BDR$48-$67k OTE£30-£42k OTE€32-€45k OTE$40-$55k OTE
IC2 / Senior BDR$67-$93k OTE£42-£58k OTE€45-€62k OTE$55-$77k OTE
Source · 2,847 anonymised offers placed via Picked Q4 2025 to Q1 2026. Updated monthly.
What good looks like
Past credentials. Present signals.
01
Account research
Reads filings, podcasts, hiring pages, and product changelogs. Finds the angle the in-house team missed.
02
Voice quality
Sounds like a peer of the buyer on the phone. Has a recording they replay before tough calls.
03
Outbound craft
Writes a first email that does not sound like a template. Has shipped a sequence that beat the team average by a clear margin.
04
Coachability
Has shifted a habit in the last quarter because a peer or AE pushed back. Can name the habit and the source.
05
Resilience
Has had a quarter where the territory went cold and the next quarter recovered. War stories include the dry month.
Nine years of Neuroworx outcome data on 14,000 business development representative hires says: the candidates rated high on account research + outbound craft outperform high-prestige-CV candidates by a wide margin in the first twelve months.
Read the paper →
What Picked puts every candidate through
Four stages. Each one written down.
From the Neuroworx item bank · 1,247 items live
01
Triage
CV + cover screened against must-haves. Title, level, language, region, three skills you set. Hard filters first. The model spends no time on people you would not even read.
~12 seconds · $0.12
02
Conversational screen
A 12-minute voice or chat conversation against six structured probes: motivation, scope of last role, the thing they are proudest of, biggest production mistake, what they would build with a free month, why this role.
~12 min · $0.31
03
Role-fit assessment
A scoped task drawn from the bank. Submit a short writeup. Scored against a published rubric on judgement, craft, and pragmatism.
30-60 min · $0.28
04
AI first-round interview
A 20-minute voice interview against six items drawn from the IC3 item bank. Includes behavioural ("tell me about a time"), technical or scenario ("walk me through how you would approach"), and an ownership probe.
~20 min · $0.24
The 1,247 items for business development representative are split across 42 sub-rubrics. Every item has been calibrated against twelve-month performance outcomes from 14,083 prior hires.
See sample items ↗
Sample interview questions
A few from the item bank.
01
Tell me about an account you opened that nobody else on the team had cracked. How did you find the angle?
Listen for: A real account, a real public signal (a filing, a podcast, a job ad), the message they sent.
02
Walk me through how you research a target account before the first touch.
Listen for: A specific list of sources. A time budget that scales with account value. They look beyond LinkedIn.
03
Tell me about an account you walked away from. Why?
Listen for: A real account, a clear reason (timing, fit, signal), the conversation with the AE before they killed it.
04
What is one piece of in-house tooling, a script, or a process you have built to make outbound work better?
Listen for: A real script, sheet, or workflow. The problem it solved. They still use it.
05
Play me a cold call from the last month. What would you change about it?
Listen for: A specific moment. A named change. They have actually listened back.
See all 30 questions →
Job description template
Copy. Paste. Replace the bracketed bits.
bdr.md
266 words · 3 min read
# [Junior/Senior] business development representative · [city] or hybrid

We are hiring our [Nth] BDR. You will own a named territory of [N] accounts across [verticals], paired with [the AE or pod]. The team is [N] BDRs, [N] AEs, and [the sales leader]. We review the territory plan every [cadence].

## You will be good here if

- You have opened [N]+ named accounts where the in-house team had not cracked the door, and can name the public signal you used.
- You walk away from accounts that are not real rather than running the sequence to the end.
- You build the script, the sheet, or the workflow that the rest of the team copies.

## What you will not get

A list and a target and a quota. We expect you to build the list, defend why each account is on it, and tell the AE when an account should come off.

## Compensation

[Currency][low] to [high] base. [low] to [high] percent commission against booked-and-held meetings and sourced pipeline. OTE [Currency][total]. We post the band because we mean it.

## How we hire

30-second post, screen + assessment via Picked, 20-min interview via Picked, one 30-min role-play with the sales leader plus a 15-min team call. We aim to give a yes or no in 7 days.

## What is the rubric

Account research, voice quality, outbound craft, coachability, resilience. Not the meeting count on your last CV.

That is the JD. Apply via [link] or just send a paragraph about the last account you walked away from and why.

[Your name], [your title]
Full JD template page →
Hire a business development representative.
By Friday.
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Hire business development representatives · Picked.ai