Hiring Digital Marketing staff? 11 Gold Nugget questions you should be asking!

In order to capitalize on your ability to qualify a candidate’s potential, firstly consider what your expectations of the role actually are?

Then, what is the criteria that will qualify a candidate to deliver those expectations? And finally, rate the criteria according to how important it is in the qualifying process. (For instance, how important is the size of marketing budget the candidate has worked with? It may be a deal breaker if you have a small budget, and your hire needs to be exceptionally creative with that spend, or on the flip side, if your budget is sizable, they will likely need experience managing that & a network to engage with global 3rd parties to assist with delivery)

So, here are the questions I always ask potential candidates.

Based on my client’s criteria, the answers determine if the candidate is successful in being put forward for an interview with the client or not.

  1. What would you describe as being your top strengths in marketing (What we are looking to identify suitability across – Strategy, execution, creative, data, analysis, project management)
  2. What annual marketing budgets have you worked with?
  3. What percentage of spend was on digital v’s traditional marketing? Was it your responsibility to allocate spend, or execute against someone else’s’ strategy?
  4. How do you go about developing and presenting a marketing strategy or idea to business stakeholders (What is important in your role? is it data and insights lead, or based on creative concepts)
  5. Have you worked with 3rd party suppliers in your previous roles? If so, who have you needed to engage and for what. (this will give you an idea of how “hands on” they are, or if they need to delegate out a lot of what your role requires)
  6. Tell me about a marketing campaign that you are most proud of, that you directly managed, and what was involved?
  7. Using a different example to the one above, tell me about a campaign that you developed and executed; that garnered the best ROI
  8. What stakeholders have you needed to persuade and influence in your previous business to demonstrate the value of marketing?
  9. What are you doing to keep yourself abreast of the latest trends in digital marketing?
  10. What are your short term marketing goals (1-3 years) this will identify if the candidate will stick in the role they are hired for, or if they are looking to move up quicker than you can accommodate
  11. What business & team environment do you feel you best thrive in?

In my experience you should be asking these questions the first time you speak to a candidate. Remember to measure each answer against the importance of your various qualifying criteria.  If the answers meet the criteria, then you can feel confident to move the candidate to the next part of your hiring process.

[highlight background=”#e4e4e4″]I’d love to hear back from you.  Did you find this information useful?  Are there any other key question that you’re using as part of your qualifying process? I’d love to hear those![/highlight]

To chat further, please contact me: dayna@bigwavedigital.com.au, (02) 9331 5527 or 0416 046 968.

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