Most "state of hiring" takes are one person's opinion. This one isn't.

Over the last few months, 100+ SDR and BDR roles were posted directly inside our communities: roughly 60+ across SDR Leaders of USA and 50 across EMEA, by the leaders actually doing the hiring. That gives us something rare: a live, unfiltered view of how the two markets really hire, straight from the people writing the job specs.

We pulled the numbers from both sides of the Atlantic. Here's what the data says, and what to do about it.

This is the cleanest contrast in the whole dataset.

In the US, remote is the default. "Fully remote" outnumbered hybrid and in-office combined, and the in-office holdouts skew to big brands (Salesforce Tower, four days a week) and founding seats where proximity genuinely matters.

In EMEA, hybrid is the default. When a model was stated, hybrid 2–3 days per week was the norm (Amsterdam, London). Fully remote exists but it's the minority, and true five-day in-office is rare.

For SDR leaders: post a five-day in-office role in the US and you're fighting the market. In EMEA, expecting fully remote may make you the outlier. Match your work model to your market or budget for a longer, harder search.

Even EMEA's top-end SDR OTE (roughly £70K, or $89K) lands around the middle of the US range. Different markets, different cost bases, but the nominal gap is real if you hire across both.

The counterweight worth knowing: transparency itself splits along the same line. Uncapped commission is increasingly standard in US posts, while EMEA comp data was far sparser: only around 4 of 30 posts named figures. If you're an EMEA leader publishing real numbers, you're already differentiating.

The US spread is wide: NYC, SF Bay Area, Boston, Toronto, Atlanta, Chicago, Austin, Seattle, Denver, Dallas, with Canada heating up.

EMEA is a different shape. London dominates with roughly half of all postings, followed by Paris, Amsterdam, Munich, Barcelona, Dublin, Stockholm and Lisbon. And there's an interesting quirk in the data: many DACH-market roles are physically London-based, with German-speaking SDRs sitting in UK offices selling into Germany.

For SDR leaders: if you're hiring for DACH, don't assume you need a Munich office. The talent concentration says otherwise.

This was the #1 recurring theme in EMEA job specs and basically absent in the US.

German is the most in-demand skill by far, appearing in 10+ posts. As one leader put it, "Amsterdam is crying out for German speakers." French comes second, then Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Arabic and the Nordic languages.

In EMEA, a second language is often worth more than a year of experience. In the US, the equivalent lever is simply drive.

For SDR leaders: if you're building an EMEA team, language coverage is a pipeline capacity decision, not an HR checkbox. Price it into comp accordingly.

Both continents agree on one thing: background matters less than hunger.

US posts named hospitality, retail, mortgage and teaching backgrounds explicitly. "We care less about background and more about drive." EMEA had an ex-Arsenal youth footballer, an ex-lawyer who relocated from Melbourne, and specs stating outright "no prior SDR experience needed if humble + hungry."

For SDR leaders: your next best hire may not be in a sales job today. If your sourcing only scans for "SDR" in the current title, you're competing for the same shrinking pool as everyone else.

Before anyone assumes both markets are moving at the same speed on AI: they're not.

In the US, AI-native firms are hiring hard (Vapi, Planhat, Browserbase, Naologic) and "AI curious" is now appearing as an explicit criterion in mainstream JDs (Workiva, Planhat). In EMEA, AI-native companies are hiring too (Abnormal AI, Stacks.ai, Valona), but not a single EMEA post listed AI skills as a requirement.

The US is roughly one cycle ahead on baking AI into the SDR profile. If history holds, EMEA specs will catch up within the year. Get your team ahead of the requirement before it becomes one.

This is what a real network looks like: warm intros flowing in both directions, across companies and across continents. And this summer we're taking that network on the road. The Takedown Tour, a hackathon-style build series from Apollo and SDR Leaders of USA, hits Austin in July, Denver in August and San Francisco in September. You bring the GTM problem that's costing your team time, and we build the workflow that solves it live in the room: your laptop, your data, your real ICP, building alongside Dale Thorn, your chapter heads and the Apollo team. You don't watch a demo. You leave with a working solution. 25 seats per city, and that's it.

The thread running through all of this: the US and EMEA are not one market with an ocean in the middle. They hire differently, pay differently, and value different skills. The leaders who win are the ones who play their own market instead of importing someone else's playbook.

One question before you go, and just hit reply: US friends, is your next SDR hire remote or in-office? EMEA friends, how much is a second language really worth on your team right now? Best answers get featured next issue.

Hiring? Drop your role in your region's channel. Looking? This is the warmest job board in sales, on two continents.

See you on the road!