Interview Guide: Marketing and Communications

When recruiting Marketing or Communications talent, there is a wide range of skills to look for including subject-matter expertise, planning, creativity and execution. The questions outlined in this Interview Guide will help you assess a candidate's experience, creative skills and ability to drive results using proven tactics.

The type of role you're looking to fill will inform the questions you should ask. Pick and choose from the questions below, organized by role, to find the right candidate for your team.

Interview Questions

Initial Questions

1. Tell me about your current or former employer. How would you tell a client about the firm’s services and products? (Interview note: Listen for their ability to bring the story of the organization alive.)
2. Describe your career progress to date. What led you to a career in Marketing and Communications?
3. What accomplishments are you most proud of?
4. In your past roles, what has been your primary marketing and communication responsibilities?
5. Were these duties shared among a team? If so, who was on the team and who was accountable for each part of the marketing and communications function?
6. Who was your target audience – new prospects, existing clients, businesses or individual consumers?
7. What were their main demographics?
8. How did you identify these individuals or groups and decide the best method to best reach them?
9. How often did you give presentations, and to what type of audience?
10. What CRM was used, and how was it relied upon by the team?
11. What key information did it capture?
12. What sort of activities did you support with this tool?
13. Did your organization rely on marketing automation software (Eloqua, Hubspot, Marketo, or others)?
14. Describe a successful campaign you were involved in. How was the success measured?
15. Have you been involved in international marketing, including dealing with exporting, trade barriers, joint ventures, licensing, and transportation difficulties, among other things?
16. How did you accomplish a successful marketing or sales campaign in the context of budget restrictions?
17. Has social responsibility, such as environmental awareness, factored into your brand campaigns? If so, please explain.
18. What type of internal communication have you been responsible for?
19. How did you communicate brand messages to non-marketing staff?
20. When communicating to an internal audience, what vehicles did you find the most effective?
21. How did you communicate organizational change to internal teams?
22. What are your thoughts on the concept that we live in an “over-communicated” society?
23. Tell me how you approach collaboration cross-functionally with in-person or remote teams.

Branding

1. Describe the brand of a company you worked for, and how it was leveraged on all marketing and sales platforms: website, social media, television, radio, print, contracts, letterhead, sales materials, etc.?
2. What role did you play in establishing brand guidelines and ensuring they were applied across a variety of mediums?
3. How were elements of marketing integrated to communicate a message?
4. How did your brand help turn prospective leads into actual customers?
5. How did your brand differentiate your organization from your competitors?
6. How does your personal brand align with our organization's brand?
7. Have you been part of a rebranding process? If so, what was your role?
8. What steps did you take to introduce the new brand?
9. How did you determine if the rebranding was successful?

Advertising

1. Which advertising channels have you relied upon?
2. Of these, which channels are you most familiar with?
3. Explain an advertising campaign that you designed and executed. What steps did you take and what were the results of the campaign?
4. Have you ever managed multiple brands within one organization? If so, please explain how this was managed.
5. Do you have experience managing an advertising budget? If so, how big was the budget?
6. Have you dealt with regional or industry-specific campaigns? If so, how did you research the material needed to expand your knowledge on the topic?
7. What impact have the advertising campaigns that you planned had on revenue and sales? Can you provide an example? How was this measured?
8. Have you managed or supported online advertising campaigns, like Google AdWords or other pay-per-click advertising options? How did you determine when modifications were required? How large a campaign (monthly spend) did you manage?

Website Content and Analytics

1. Do you have experience working for an organization where the website has served as the primary sales or distribution mechanism?
2. What contribution have you made to your company’s website in terms of content, design and/or functionality?
3. Do you have writing samples?
4. Describe your writing process for creating content.
5. What tone and voice do you rely on most often for the content you create?
6. Are you comfortable adapting this to match the brand voice?
7. How frequently do you update website content? Explain the types of updates you make most often.
8. What content management systems are you comfortable using?
9. What steps have you taken to increase sales from your web channel?
10. In your past roles, did you have conversion goals?
11. How did you get conversion data (ComScore, FireClick Index, etc.)?
12. Do you like how your brand is projected on the homepage and why?
13. Does your firm rely on customized landing pages for unique customers? Please explain.
14. Do you measure website statistics (visitors, traffic patterns, banner clicks, etc.)? If so, how do you use this data to determine what improvements are required?
15. Have you made use of Google services including ads, analytics, and insights?
16. Have you used other clickstream data from Omniture, HBX or others?
17. What methods have you used to increase SEO (search engine optimization)?
18. How do you use SEO best practices in your content writing?
19. Have you managed multiple websites at once?
20. Have you been responsible for managing an ongoing blog?
21. How did you plan content and develop a strategy to connect with the right audience?
22. Were you responsible for the HTML/CSS coding?
23. Do you consistently review competitor websites? How does that information help shape your marketing approach?
24. Explain how you have tested website functionality on mobile devices, across browsers and operating systems. Did you rely on manual testing or web-based browser testing tools such as BrowserStack?
25. Have you worked on websites that have an e-commerce component? If so, what was your role in the process?
26. Did you use a common platform for e-commerce (i.e. Shopify, Big Cartel, WooCommerce) or a customized solution?
27. Have you been responsible for the launch of a new website? If so, what was your involvement? Did you work with a web agency? If so, how did you ensure that content, design and functionality were ready within the timelines?
28. Among the websites you rely on (personally or professionally), which ones do you like and why?
29. Tell me about your approach to user validation (A/B testing). Were you able to explore analytics in a deeper way beyond visits, user paths and goal tracking? Did you conduct surveys?

Social Media Marketing

1. What platforms are you familiar with? Have you used these personally or professionally?
2. Specific to your business, how have you leveraged different social media platforms? Which ones are you most familiar with: LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Tumbler, Google+
3. Did you converse with customers directly on social media platforms? If so, what was your approach?
4. How have you managed negative comments from disgruntled customers on social media? Please provide an example.
5. How frequently do you publish content and what types of media do you post (video, still images, carousels)? Please elaborate with examples for each platform used.
6. What is your approach to developing video content for platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube?
7. What size teams have you worked on in the past?
8. What measures of engagement did you rely on to measure success (clicks, likes, reaches, shares, purchases, etc.)?
9. Did you rely on platforms to help manage your social media accounts such as Sprout Social, Hootsuite, or Buffer? If so, how did you use them?
10. Did your company have a social media policy for internal employees (i.e. no posting photos from corporate events)? If so, please explain the parameters.
11. Did you develop or oversee the policy?
12. Have you managed or produced any paid social content inclding: promoted tweets, LinkedIn ads, Meta [Facebook/Instagram] ads or boosted posts? Were they successful? Why or why not?
13. What did you learn from these campaigns?
14. Have you developed a social media account from scratch in a professional capacity?
15. How did you develop a voice and establish an approach to take with the content on that platform?
16. How did you get buy-in for this approach internally?
17. What methods did you use to grow your followers and develop a community?
18. Can you give me an example of a corporate social media account that you admire? What do you find makes their content valuable or useful?

Product Marketing

1. What product lines have you represented? Who was your target customer for each line?
2. What research was conducted and what objectives were established?
3. What distribution channels were in place?
4. Were you involved in product development, refinement, or product strategy including pricing, distribution and product changes?
5. Did you plan tests for price points and customer touch points?
6. What product education was required?
7. What steps did you take to increase customer engagement or gather feedback that influenced the product’s features (surveys, focus groups, etc.)?
8. To what extent did your competitor(s) influence your approach? Please explain.
9. Did you conduct any data analysis to help refine the product or expand your understanding of the market?
10. On what measures have you rated? How was success defined?
11. How did you work with the product development team or product manager?

Trade Shows and Events

1. Did your company exhibit your product or service at trade shows? If so, which ones?
2. Did you host customer receptions?
3. Were you responsible for organizing and/or staffing the sales force or experts who would be onsite engaging with prospects or customers?
4. If so, did you prepare key messaging they could use?
5. Did you rent or own a booth?
6. Have you been responsible for booth design?
7. What size of booth space has been the largest that you’ve worked with (tabletop, retractable banner, outdoor banners, etc.)?
8. Did you negotiate contracts and/or manage vendor relationships?
9. Have you managed show logistics like transportation, set-up and dismantling, electricity, equipment rentals, and other elements? Please describe your experience.
10. Have you hired third-party contractors for booth setup?
11. Have you managed logistics for events in Canada or internationally?
12. What was your role at these events? Did you give out marketing collateral or represent your organization by speaking with visitors?
13. How did you handle situations in which you didn’t know the answer to a question from a visitor?
14. How did you measure the success of a trade show?
15. How did you convert leads into sales?
16. Did you provide management with post-show reports?
17. Outside of trade shows, did you host events for your customers? If so, how big were the events and how often did you host them? What was your role?
18. Have you ever dealt with a complaint or criticism from a client or customer while working at an event? How did you handle it and what actions did you take to resolve it?
19. Have you been responsible for pitching or organizing speaking engagements for your sales force or experts?
20. Were you responsible for organizing events for internal team members? If so, what types of events did you plan and how often did they take place?

Public Relations

1. How was public relations used to manage your firm’s reputation?
2. Tell me about your experience working with the media to obtain coverage of a milestone or news item. Did you issue press releases, hold press conferences, share the news on social media, reach out to journalists directly, etc.?
3. What media win are you most proud of?
4. What type of enquiries did you field from the media?
5. Did you research, write and edit press releases, promotional videos, handouts, speeches, articles, or annual reports?
6. Did you organize photography or video production?
7. How did you use your organization's website or social media accounts for PR purposes?
8. What was your role in online community management?
9. What was your role in community relations?
10. Did your firm sponsor events, sports teams, golf tournaments, charity events, etc. to create goodwill? In your opinion, how effective were these sponsorships?
11. Have you ever represented your organization as a spokesperson to the media or provided interviews? If not, have you coordinated media interviews for senior executives?
12. How have you dealt with negative media coverage or press enquiries about an issue impacting your organization?
13. Did you ever have to manage a crisis (i.e. product recalls, fraud, etc.)?
14. Have you facilitated media training for senior executives?

Sales and Database Marketing

1. How was the marketing team involved in increasing sales revenue?
2. Did you influence selling techniques or sales presentations? Please explain.
3. Were you responsible for ordering promotional items for clients and/or customers?
4. Which items were most popular?
5. Which items were most impactful, and why?
6. What was your price point for promotional tools?
7. What software was in place for the team to track clients and leads?
8. What data did you draw from to build marketing campaigns?
9. How did you incorporate the sales team into the development or execution of these campaigns?
10. How did you send marketing materials to customers (direct mail, email, client meetings, etc.)?
11. Are you familiar with any email marketing or marketing automation tools? If so, which ones?
12. How have you used those tools as part of your marketing efforts?
13. Have they been effective?
14. How do you measure the success of an email or direct marketing campaign?
15. Have you been responsible for identifying key performance indicators (KPIs)?
16. How did you share this information with others?
17. How did you react when the results were not what you expected?
18. If you’ve used marketing automation tools, have you developed sophisticated dynamic content, behaviour-driven campaigns or drip campaigns?
19. How did you measure if they were effective or make changes to improve their success?
20. How have you used CRM or sales database information to create marketing campaigns? Has this approach been effective? What lessons have you learned from their success or failure?
21. How did your firm establish practices to respect consumer privacy and adhere to anti-spam legislation for email marketing?

Bilingual Marketing

1. Do you have experience developing marketing materials in more than one language, or languages for specific markets?
2. When producing marketing materials, do you rely on third-party translation services or do you translate your own material in-house?
3. Have you experienced issues with the message being changed or lost in the translation? What adjustments have you made to deal with this issue?
4. How have you overcome layout issues caused by language requirements?
5. What steps do you take to verify the translation ensuring it’s linguistically and culturally appropriate?