Has Sales Recruitment Stopped Evolving? What Job Descriptions Reveal About a Broken System?

Scroll through today’s job boards and you’ll notice a familiar pattern: sales and business development roles that could have been written ten years ago — or twenty. The language changes, the platforms evolve, but the DNA remains the same. “Drive new business,” “identify prospects,” “develop your own go-to-market plan.”

On the surface, it sounds like ambition and initiative. But underneath, it reveals a deeper issue — many businesses haven’t adapted their sales process to the way buyers now make decisions.

Sales Roles Still Assume the Old Game

Sales job descriptions are a window into how an organisation thinks about growth. And too often, they show how little has changed.

In today’s environment, buyers research, compare, and shortlist partners long before a salesperson enters the conversation. Yet job ads still describe roles where the BDM is expected to “hunt” and “build pipelines” through their own approach.

That means the organisation itself doesn’t have a clearly defined, scalable game plan. It’s asking individuals to create their own version of success rather than building a unified, data-informed system that reflects how modern buyers actually buy.

A Symptom of Management Mismatch

Expecting every new BDM to “own” their market strategy might sound entrepreneurial — but in reality, it's chaos disguised as autonomy.

Without alignment to a central sales methodology or buying journey, businesses experience inconsistency, poor collaboration, and leadership headaches. Every rep interprets the mission differently. Every campaign becomes a one-off experiment. And management ends up measuring activity, not progress.

When “Self-Starter” Becomes “Set Up to Fail”

A common red flag in these listings: “Applicants must define and execute their own go-to-market strategy.”

In other words, there’s no system, no process, no enablement. A business hoping for growth from that model isn’t planning for success — it’s unknowingly setting the stage for confusion and underperformance.

Autonomy is important, but alignment is essential. The most successful growth teams operate from a shared go-to-market system that integrates sales, marketing, and CX around the same customer journey. That structure gives individuals room to execute creatively, but within a framework designed to scale and adapt.

Why It Matters More in Uncertain Conditions

When market conditions tighten — and they always do — this lack of cohesion becomes painfully visible. Businesses with solid, integrated sales systems adapt. Those relying on individual heroics and ad-hoc process tend to fall apart.

The difference isn’t just method — it’s mindset. A coherent sales system treats new business development as a function that reflects how customers actually buy, not a lone activity performed in isolation.

In short: outdated job descriptions don’t just make recruitment harder — they reveal a deeper strategic flaw. Modern business development demands more than self-starting salespeople; it requires a system that’s ready to sell the way today’s buyers buy