Mastering the Marketing Interview

Everyone wants to succeed at a job interview but few people put in the hard work to prepare for one.

Here is my basic guide to preparing for a marketing role, irrespective of seniority that you should follow:

• Read your own CV: Figure what could be asked to you from this. If you say you reduced customer acquisition cost by half. You could obviously be asked how you did it. Prepare answers to things you could directly be cross-questioned on. Ironically, senior people especially suck at this because usually it's been a while since they achieved something a couple of jobs ago. Juniors suck at this because they highlight group achievements as individual achievements.
• Separate group achievements (and what you contributed to it) from individual achievements (and how you got to it). Write why you put a point in your CV (not what you actually said).
• Prepare the basic questions but with context. Instead of preparing 'why marketing' - prepare 'why marketing for you'. Instead of preparing 'introduce yourself' - prepare 'who you are in' context of what the job demands. Are you a lawyer-turned-marketer, at first glance, you will be a straight reject but there will be overlaps - maybe you wrote for a legal blog, maybe you are detail-oriented or gifted with good verbal communication skills.
• If you are interviewing for a specialist role (SEO, marketing automation) - brush up on business context for your role. You are likely to be good at technical aptitude anyway. If you are interviewing for a generalist role (brand manager, assistant marketing manager) - brush up on technical context for your role. You are likely to be able to identify business context more easily anyway. The key is to 'brush up' and not do thesis-level research.
• Set Google alerts for the company for a few days leading up to the interview.
• Read their website. (I can't believe this has to be said, but I rarely meet people who have done this).
• Visit every social media channel that the company has and overthink about it as if it was your ex-girlfriend's arranged marriage picture.
• Read the company's wikipedia or crunchbase (even if dated, is usually a concise summary that you can start with).
• Do the website-wikipedia-social media stalking for atleast 2 more companies in that industry's domain.
• Know of a couple of marketing campaigns - have observations around this. Plan so you don't blank out during the conversation.
• Before you sit to interview - explain to yourself - what segment does this product or company target? why does it work or not work?
• Sign up for a marketing output from the company (newsletter if a B2B company), abandoned cart (if eCommerce) etc.
• Try not being cliche to stand out. I have taken 250+ early career interviews outside of my team and the only examples that most people come up with for marketing are Zomato & Amul. Find out brands doing good work that aren't the most obvious.
• Try to go deep into their marketing/digital marketing/ communication/ messaging/ channel strategy. Figure out why a cement brand won a marketing award for instance. If you can't do this, either at a rudimentary (early career) or advanced (mid/senior) level - you won't last long.
• Make a list of relevant questions to ask - what is their marketing budget? what are their marketing goals? Ask questions that will help you prepare for your next interview round. Don't waste your time asking generic questions like - what is the growth path?
• If you are junior or middle level, anticipate questions above your pay grade such as broad industry trends or tools or challenges you may have not solved. Attempt to try this even if you have not heard of this. Use proxies to answer this - never worked on Hubspot? You may have know another team that may have worked on another CRM? Use that to guide your understanding.
• Understand the central intent of the marketing interview - what created the hiring need - tooling (run email marketing campaigns), strategy (support my market expansion plans), distribution of excess tasks (coordinate with my creative agency on a new product launch). Functional or technical questions are always aligned to this. If they seem completely unrelated (say you get asked a question on adobe analytics in a content writer interview - this is a red flag unless the interviewer justifies why you need that skill)
• Don't over-index on theoretical marketing if you are a junior. Most marketing seniors in the industry don't care about 4Ps, 7Cs, 9Ds or whatever. Hearing ambush marketing or guerrilla marketing shows that the candidate's knowledge is theoretical (ok for maybe less that 1 year of experience but not beyond). Don't over-index on pontificating jargon if you are a senior. It's usually a sign that you have not touched grass.
• Lastly and most importantly, do not give the interview unless you know the BIG 4 answers - What made you apply for this role? Why are you interested in working for this company? What do you like about marketing? What is the exact way in which you will be able to contribute if hired?

If you found this helpful - do subscribe to this newsletter. I am wondering if I should write a short book (~20 pages) in detail on navigating marketing interviews. If that sounds like a good idea - comment or DM me!