HOW TO INTERVIEW A MARKETER IF YOU’RE A CEO?

Published on 15 October 2024

In the early 2000s, I went to an interview for a solo marketer position at a small company. I was very nervous: I had little experience and knew practically nothing about marketing. However, my boldness made up for that. The CEO himself was conducting the interview.


Right off the bat, he asked me to define marketing. He demanded a definition, not “What is marketing?” Boldly, I mumbled something. He nodded. Then, he asked what I had done before. I spun some incredible nonsense as big as the Egyptian pyramids.


The conversation wasn’t going well. The CEO didn’t know what else to ask and felt out of place. I was brave but inexperienced, so I couldn’t figure out what else to say. We agreed to talk in a week.


The end.

“The Interview Went Wrong“
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Let’s assume you’ve read up on how to hire marketers and decided on the type of candidate you’re looking for. Now it’s time to choose the best one.

So, what should you ask them?

First, accept that you probably won’t be able to assess the candidate’s professional qualifications. Even if you’ve "set up ads in Google, written copy, and sent email newsletters" yourself. There’s more than meets the eye.

Your goal is to form an impression of the person and find out if they understand the basic economics of marketing and sales, how systematically they approach projects, if they have relevant experience, and most importantly—whether they can express their thoughts concisely but vividly.

Ask them to tell you about their favorite marketing campaign (it doesn’t have to be successful) that they led personally. You can help the candidate with leading questions:
  • What product were you promoting?
  • What was the goal and why?
  • How did you define the target audience?
  • Which channels did you use and why?
  • How did you prepare the campaign communications?
  • What challenges did you face?
  • What were the primary metrics of the campaign?
  • How did you collaborate with other departments?
  • How did you evaluate the results?
  • What would you do differently now?

A good marketer will tell a story you’ll find interesting to discuss. A less qualified one will only talk about setting up ads and how they had a high CTR (in this case, it’s not even important what CTR is).
“Happy Sales and Marketing Collaboration“
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If you need to get into specifics

1. What is the key to successful collaboration between marketing and sales?

A green dashboard often substitutes real collaboration in the eternal battle between good and evil sales and marketing. In natural conditions, the tandem works when the salesperson sees the marketer not as a supplier of leads but as a business partner; the marketer focuses on quality results and collaborates on a regularly reviewed plan.
A reasonable candidate will discuss balancing lead quality and quantity, aligned with the sales plan, the need for regular forecast and pipeline reviews, lead qualification, conversion rates at each funnel stage, industry benchmarks, product marketing, and marketing support for sales teams.

2. How do you assess the effectiveness of marketing channels?

Before purchasing, a customer interacts with a company dozens of times through various channels—search engines, emails, social media, review sites, etc. Measuring the effectiveness of individual channels is, frankly, pointless. However, you must evaluate how each channel influences the purchasing decision.
An experienced candidate will talk about attribution models and end-to-end analytics while keeping internal channel metrics in mind. The marketing channel should deliver maximum return on investment, so we must ensure everything is optimized. Yet, assessing effectiveness is only meaningful in the context of the customer journey. The best candidates will mention the customer acquisition cost (CAC) and how it aligns with the financial model.

3. How would you launch a new product?

This question aims to determine whether the candidate can think strategically and create an effective plan for a complex project that aligns with strategic goals. You can complicate the question by asking, “How would you launch a new product in different regions with diverse sociocultural characteristics?”

The candidate should discuss the product itself, Product-Market Fit, target audience, unique selling proposition (USP), positioning, pricing, sales model, market maturity, competitors, customer journey, and launch objectives. Then, move on to the channel mix, content, messaging, PR, lead generation, budget, and plan outline.

4. Digestif: Why do search engines and social media care about having high-quality ads?

Ad platforms charge advertisers when users click on ads. Ad quality scores depend on many factors (it’s a complex relationship) and ultimately affect how often and where the ad is shown and how much the advertiser pays per click. Platforms justify the need for high-quality ads as “improving user experience”—the higher the quality, the more relevant the ad is to the user.
It’s only half the truth. The higher the quality, the more clicks the ad gets and the more the platform earns. A slight decrease in revenue due to lower bids goes unnoticed amidst increased volumes. If the candidate understands this and can explain it, they have a curious mind and business savvy.

Should you ask the candidate to assess your website?

(Or blog, email newsletter, brochure, Instagram.)

The answer is no.

A serious candidate won’t offer quality assessments. At best, they’ll give restrained praise and highlight good facts—for example, that your emails have UTM tags for tracking.

They’ll also add that they can only draw conclusions about channel effectiveness based on data analysis. You’d first need to analyze the marketing strategy, target audience, and channel goals before looking at operational metrics—traffic, email open rates, or subscriber growth.
“Don't Even Think of Asking This“
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If you ask for a website review, a serious candidate might think it’s not worth dealing with you: there’s too little context, a focus on superficial details, and a high risk of subjectivity. These could be signs of a not entirely adequate leader or colleague. If you want to ask something about the website, ask them how they would improve its effectiveness during the discussion of marketing channels’ effectiveness.
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