Nowadays marketing professionals covers a huge spectrum of roles – from SEO and PPC professionals to freelance copywriters and marketing assistants.
A marketer must be able to connect with the audience, whether it’s through words, images or the message.
It’s about identifying their target audience and crafting a story which resonates with them on a personal level.
These attributes will then encourage the audience to choose your brand when they want a particular service or product.
The only issue is; with there being so many different types of roles on offer, what sort of interview questions cover all the bases of marketing?
With this in mind, here are some of the best examples you can use to ensure you hire the very best marketing professionals.
How has your current role evolved since you started?
This interview question is a perfect one for assessing a candidate’s background and how far they’ve come.
Did they look for opportunities to develop themselves and increase their skills as time went on?
If a candidate can give you examples, you know that you’ve got a marketer who is willing to read, do their research, try new things and adapt to certain requirements.
All of which is imperative if they want to succeed in the marketing industry.
Why are you looking to make a change?
Following on from the previous question, this one ultimately tests a candidate’s ability to be positive when they are put in an awkward position.
Red flags include:
- Moaning about managers or colleagues – you don’t want a marketing professional who can easily become toxic within your business.
- Complaining about a lack of opportunities – on the flip side, if a candidate positively says that they are looking to learn new things and evolve, this could be deemed as a plus.
- Searching for the next ‘step’ in their career – this indicates that they might not hang around for long.
The best answer should involve mentioning how fantastic the opportunity is to work for your company and that the candidate wants to grow under your guidance for many years to come.
What are the most important skills you have learned that you would bring to this position?
This next interview question for marketing jobs is aimed at testing a candidate’s specific experience for the role itself.
Do they cover multiple areas such as SEO and copywriting?
Can you harness these skills to save your business money?
Can they bring something fresh to the table – whether that’s to the business’ strategy or work dynamic itself?
This question will give you a strong idea about who has the potential to be a manager one day.
If they like to lead from the front or state that they’re brilliant at running campaigns from start to finish, you might be onto a winner.
Describe your ideal work environment
Finding a candidate who fits into your work culture is arguably just as important as hiring someone with an abundance of skills.
Think of it this way, if they aren’t willing to socialise, work as a team and bounce ideas off other marketers, how do you expect to achieve great success?
This question challenges a candidate to state how they like to work.
Seeing as we spend most of our lives with our colleagues, they should be interested in working in a more open plan office environment.
A candidate who prefers peace and quiet in closed cubicle-style offices probably isn’t an ideal response for agencies.
However, corporate marketing teams may actually like this slightly more professional outlook – especially if the role is client-facing.
Tell me about a product or service that you have successfully marketed. What was your strategy?
The main objective of this interview question for marketing jobs is to test a candidate’s ability to conceptualise a project, execute it and analyse the results.
- Do they have a compelling and strong example?
- Have they gone into great detail about the campaign?
- Have they addressed any challenges they experienced?
- Do any of the techniques, strategies or software used relate to the job they are interviewing for?
This will certainly put the cat among the pigeons and help you identify who has the evidence to practice what they preach.
Tell me about a marketing project where one or more of your colleagues had differing opinions on what approach to take. How did you manage the situation?
As a whole, marketing can be rather subjective.
One professional might think a certain idea will work perfectly, while another may want to take a totally different direction altogether.
A sign of a top marketing candidate is one who can manage these conflicts and work towards a solution.
For example, can they do A/B testing to see which one works more effectively? Are they open-minded enough to try someone else’s idea?
How do they keep the peace and the attitude of the team positive?
This question is particularly effective if you’re looking to hire a more senior member of staff.
However, it’s certainly worth thinking about for junior roles too – as it can give you a clearer indication of the candidate’s potential to manage in the future.
Need more inspiration?
To give you a better understanding of a marketing candidate’s personality and other traits, here are a few other handy blogs I highly recommend:
