Marketing Interviews can be stressful no matter what stage of your career you are at, and like any industry, you need to prepare well for them.
The classic questions will come up time and time again, such as:
Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?
What motivates you?
Why do you want this job?
But also you will need to prepare for specific questions, around your marketing experience and learn how to demonstrate your skills and highlight your abilities.
Competency Model
Many employers use a competency frame work when interviewing. At Signet we practise this as well, so if working with us, you will have already had a taste of a competency based interview already.
Prepare for the interview and try to identify the competencies needed for the role.
Then you can think of some examples, ensuring you prepare them using the STAR technique….
Situation
Task
Action
Result
Each answer should be concise and demonstrate ability.
Marketing Interviews tend to focus on both the creative and the analytical, so you should be thinking about questions such as:
Explain to me how you demonstrate creative ability and still achieve ROI?
Tell me about the last time you thought outside the box?
Describe to me how you can achieve commercial results within a tight budget?
How to prepare…
Marketing candidates have an advantage in interviewing, it is easy to prepare a portfolio to highlight former work.
Digital candidates can email links to websites they have worked on, show analytical data of where they have increased footfall and sales.
Copywriters should always have hand-outs of their written work, and PR executives should again be able to show media clippings and demonstrate reach easily in an interview environment.
Ensure you always choose materials that convey how good you are. Check your portfolio for typos, and grammatical mistakes. Look at the websites you have built for 404 errors or poor SEO. If you can, get a friend or a recruiter to look at what you are showcasing. It could mean the difference between you getting a job offer or not.
And finally….
Brand yourself online.
Marketing is all about branding, and if you cannot brand yourself then this may raise concerns. Ensure your LinkedIn profile is current and sells you, if you have your own webpage or blog ensure it is up to date.
Make sure your social media is clean and ready for a future employers to look over. (Don’t ever critique your current company online.)
Finally…
Remember – failure to prepare means to prepare to fail!
Good luck