i grew up in a small town in ohio, no college degree, spent my first five years working retail and then restaurant management. two years ago i decided i wanted to work in tech and didn't know where to start. i'm now an SDR at a Series B SaaS company and i'm six months away from an AE promotion. here is what actually mattered.
SDR is the most accessible front door into tech if you have zero tech background. the skills that matter most in an SDR role (persistence, communication, handling rejection, learning fast) do not require a CS degree. restaurant management taught me all of them. i was surprised how relevant my background actually was once i learned to translate it.
the translation problem is real. nobody in a tech hiring process will naturally connect 'managed a team of 14 servers during peak season' to 'can own a pipeline and manage complex relationships.' you have to make that connection explicit in your resume and in interviews. the story i told: i managed a high-velocity, high-rejection-rate environment with metrics (covers per hour, table turns, upsell rate) and i am applying the same operational discipline to a sales pipeline. once i framed it that way, i started getting callbacks.
the certifications question: i did not do a bootcamp or a certification program. i did read 'the challenger sale' and 'predictably revenue' and i subscribed to a few sales newsletters. i think the self-education matters less than the portfolio of conversations you've had. every informational call is a low-stakes sales call you're practicing.
the degree question came up twice. once in a phone screen that i didn't pass. once in an interview where i just said 'i don't have one' and the interviewer said 'okay' and moved on. most SDR hiring managers do not care about degrees, they care if you can hit quota.
what i wish i'd known: start at a smaller company. the training at a 50-person startup is worse but the ramp to AE is faster. i'd probably be an AE already if i hadn't prioritized a recognizable brand in my first role.
anyone else come from a totally different background into a revenue role? curious what the entry point was for you.