Three Interview Questions You Should Always Ask Marketing Candidates (But Never Do)

Building a killer marketing team is a core part of the job of every CMO (and company!), but as with everything in life, it’s easier said than done.

You know exactly what you need, but finding the perfect person, and then meshing that person to fit well with your other perfect people is no small task.

I could write a book on hiring successes, and then a much longer and eminently more entertaining one on hiring mishaps, but a recent conversation with an industry colleague got me thinking about my go-to interview questions, and how three very simple and straightforward questions (that no one seems to ask) can reveal volumes about a candidate.

1.????What would you say we do here?

It’s like the question that the Bobs ask in “Office Space.”

The worst answers I get are usually too broad (“you guys do digital marketing campaigns”), or they involve parroting our homepage copy word for word (“you guys use AI to optimize [blah blah]”… wait, why do I have that on my website? Gotta fix that.

This is a question to screen out people who’ve done the bare minimum vs. those who’ve exhaustively researched the company before coming to meet you.

The answer doesn’t have to be perfect, especially for junior hires (tech is complicated!). But you want to see that at least some research was done. And for directors and above, you want/need to see that they fully understand your niche and why a customer would want to do business with you.

2.????What was your favorite content download in our resource center??

Good marketing candidates will read your site cover-to-cover. They’ll go through every page, read your blog posts, and download your gated assets – anything they can get their hands on to learn more and sound smart when they answer questions, and use what they read to ask even better ones.?

Downloadable long form content is usually the centerpiece of marketing efforts; companies invest a lot of time, energy, and money into them to drive inbound leads, and to give the SDRs and sales team powerful “non salesy” assets to reach out to prospects with.

I once asked this question to a candidate who was interviewing to be our content marketing manager, and the person said, “I didn’t download anything, but I read some blog posts.”

“Why didn’t you download anything?” I asked.

“Well, I didn’t want to put junk information into your CRM system.”

Oh. How kind.

Drained from an exhausting hiring process -- and against my better judgment -- I let that horrible answer slide and hired this person based on the strength of their prior work samples and references.

It ended up being a massive mistake for both of us, and I haven’t made it again. And not just for content marketers: Everyone on the marketing team should be leaning into your content. If they aren't, don't hire them.

3.????Who is doing a good job of marketing in our industry??

This is one that I borrowed from a CEO who very wisely didn’t hire me.

I was a young, cocky, first-time VP of Marketing who had achieved some measure of success, and walked into my interview confident that anyone in my industry would be thrilled to have me. I probably wasn’t so far off, except that no one likes working with a jerk, and especially not one who doesn’t have a healthy respect for the competition.?

Never having been asked this very non-standard question, I was stumped, and said “no one impresses me... All their work bores me.” Something along those lines.

It’s a great qualifying question not just to weed out arrogant shmohawks, but also to find out how a marketer thinks: Great marketers emulate who they admire, so find out who your candidates admire and why, because it’s going to flow into their work for you.

I’m older and somewhat wiser now and can always rattle off a list of brands and CMOs who I think are doing a killer job, and a better one than me. And I like to think that it spills into my work output.

A candidate with a healthy respect for others, with a clear rationale for why they admire them, is someone you want on your team.

About the Author

Jordan Cohen?is a seasoned marketing executive with more than 20 years of experience leading SaaS mar-tech, ad-tech and media companies to industry dominance, VC raises, acquisitions, and IPOs.

As CEO and Founder of?The Fox Hill Group, a marketing management consulting and research firm, he spearheads growth strategies for start-ups ranging from launch phase to scale-ups gearing up for exits. Notable clients include Cordial, What If Media Group, RevTrax (acquired by Neptune Retail Solutions), Delivra (acquired by Redbrick), Campaign Monitor, and Zignal Labs. The Fox Hill Group also advises Private Equity firms and Insitutional Investors on digital marketing and online advertising industry investments and takeovers.

For more information about The Fox Hill Group, please visit:?www.foxhillgrp.com. And reach out to Jordan at?[email protected]?for an initial consultation, just to shoot the sh*t about marketing, life in Startupland, or pretty much anything.