- Tell me how you got started in your career.
- What makes you passionate about this work?
- How has your skillset grown over time?
- Are there skills you’d like the opportunity to develop in the future?
- How did you learn about this open position?
- What can you tell me about our company?
MARKETING INTERVIEW Questions & Answers! (PASS your Marketing Executive Interview!)
5. Where do you see yourself in five years?
With this question, your interviewer is hoping to get an idea for your career ambitions. They want to know whether you’re looking for a fast track up the corporate ladder or whether there might be other training or schooling you’re interested in pursuing.
Try to craft an answer something like this:
“This would be my first professional marketing position, and I want to work hard and learn everything I can. In five years, I hope to have had one or two more senior marketing positions and determine what area of marketing I would like to specialize in.”
18. What marketing content gets the best results?
The candidate should be able to articulate different types of content and how it can be customized to align with different channels and objectives. Ideally, they will support their perspective with data and provide a specific example of content they have successfully included in past campaigns.
Interview Questions for an Email Marketing Role
Email marketers, like most marketing jobs, are a combination of hard, technical skills and soft skills. This candidate should have management skills, attention to detail, and analytical skills.
“Tell me about a time when you owned the process of an email campaign from beginning to end.”
Look for an understanding of key email marketing concepts from subject line to creative to CTA’s to A/B testing to list management.
“Which tools do you use to report on the success of your email campaigns?”
4. What kind of management style do you prefer?
To answer this question, you should be honest about what you think makes a great manager. Do you prefer a manager who checks in regularly with you? Or do you prefer a hands-off management style? An honest answer to this question is important because you don’t want to end up working for a manager who you can’t work well with:
“I prefer to work for a manager who is available for assistance when I need it but is otherwise pretty hands-off. I understand that, at first, a more hands-on approach is probably necessary until my manager has a sense of my capabilities and a level of trust is established.”
16. What is a product you have seen marketed poorly? Why did it fall flat, and what would you do differently?
Listen for a candidate who is solution-first, who can provide logical and concrete alternatives to perceived problems. Ideally, their critique goes beyond the surface. It’s one thing to criticize a product’s color, but another to explain how the brand lacked an adequate understanding of its target demographic or core marketing channels.
Pro Tip:
Our recruiter, Michelle, recommends making a set list of interview questions that will highlight a candidate’s behavioral qualifications and split it up among the interviewers. Then, each interviewer can take a subset—List A, List B, etc.—and when the team meets to confer, everyone will be on the same page, without having to repeat questions.
This is a great way to ease into the marketing interview and start a conversation. Begin with a general background question that can lead to dialogue.
“Tell me about your career up to this point.”
Make sure the right candidate shows up for the interview…(that’s not Will Hunting)
And let the interviewee provide you with a jumping off point. Listen carefully and follow along on their resume; note what they specifically highlight because this could allude to the most important points of their career. Follow up with a question that is more specific, such as:
“What is your largest responsibility in your current/last role?”
The next questions can gauge how driven and motivated the candidate is. Every marketing leader wants to stack the team with passionate employees—try to get a feel for what kind of go-getter your candidate is.
“How has your current role evolved since you started?”
This will give you a sense of how the person has grown in their past role. Did they seek out learning opportunities and show a clear increase in experience and skill level?
Finally, address the elephant in the room.
“Why are you looking to make a change?”
This question can give you a feel for your candidate’s weak spots as well as their ambitions. Watch out for red flags, such as complaining about their manager.
Before diving into specific questions about qualifications, make sure that you are both on the same page. If the candidate is a little confused about the role, jump in! Make sure they know what they are applying for, what your specific needs are, and if they could be a good fit.
“What do you know about this role? What made you apply to work here?”
Maybe they’re applying because they saw pictures of your cool office on VentureFizz…
Each marketing role and team measures success differently. Some marketers have specific goals to hit related to traffic or flawless execution, some marketers are simply judged on the quality of their work. Others have quarterly goals! How does your candidate make sure they are living up to expectations?
“What techniques do you use the measure the quality of your work? What steps do you take to ensure the desired quality is achieved?”
Take this opportunity to identify and discuss any tools that are necessary to use in the day-to-day of the job. Consider asking them if they’re familiar with marketing analytics tools like Google Analytics, and what marketing metrics they consider most important to track and report on—any number of acronyms; CPC, CPA, CTR, CTO, CVR, the list goes on and on.
“What are the most important skills you have learned that you would utilize in this position?”
Finally, if a large component of this position will be managing a team of people, make sure to touch on their leadership skills:
“What is your greatest personal struggle or limitation in supervising others? Can you give me an example of a time when you overcame one of your limitations and resolved a problem?”
This is also where it gets a little tricky—some marketing positions can be much more technical than others, i.e. graphic design vs. content writing. We have some tips for how to interview for specific marketing roles.
