The 6 Point Prep List To Ace Your Next Marketing Interview
There’s a saying, The Resume gets you the interview, The Interview gets you the job.
That might actually be our saying...can’t quite remember. But at the end of the day, your success in the interview is directly proportional the amount of time spent preparing for the interview.
In our survey of 100 marketing hiring managers, and in our own hiring experiences, these things we’re recommending here are actually things that were mentioned during our survey as having a big impact on the result.
If you think about it, you’re interviewing for a marketing role - content manager, social media manager, email marketing, search marketing, affiliate marketing, public relations, even graphic design - the information that you need to arm yourself with is actually publicly available.
Candidates often don’t realize how much information is out there ready for you to find, leverage in your interview, and stand out.
So you got the call, did the phone screen, got your in-person interview date and time. Great.
Now what?
Your interview prep will be a combination of research and assumptions. You won't get dinged for a wrong assumption in an interview as long as you're positioning your comments as such - assumptions made from the outside looking in.
Then, all your research will fuel conversation during the interview and might inspire a few relevant followups after the interview.
Here are the data points you'll want to research and fill in pre-interview.
Company Background
Do a deep-dive. When was the company founded? Who are the owners? Who are their clients or customers? Who are their partners and ecosystems? What are their primary products or services? Free tools like Crunchbase and Owler will give you lots of intel on this part of your fact-finding.
Company Culture
Try to get a sense of company culture. What’s it like to work there? What are the company’s values? What are the most common employee complaints? Glassdoor and Indeed are great places to go for this kind of intel. Make mental notes on themes when you see the same employee comments appear again and again.
Business & Industry
What kind of business are they in, and what’s impacting their industry? Do they sell products or do they sell services, or both? What’s impacting providers of those products or services industry-wide? Who are their primary competitors? Do they have resellers? Do they have regulatory bodies? This is where you'll have to really dig in your research - the answers might not be sitting on the surface.
Interview Panel
Often, you might not get access to this information in advance, but always ask the hiring manager or recruiting contact - what are the names of the individuals who you’ll be meeting with? Then go right to LinkedIn and start investigating.
Candidates that bring out information from interviewers’ LinkedIn profile or whatever is publicly available, tend to get a better response and help the candidate stand out. It shows that you’re taking the initiative to do some research and find out more about the team.
Remember: you’re interviewing them as much as they’re interviewing you. Look at their university, volunteer work that they do, or associations that they’re a part of. Just try to grab one or two things from this person’s background that you can bring up during the interview and weave into the conversation. These small details, if incorporated organically, will go a tremendously long way in making a good first impression.
Digital Footprint
There are a number of great free tools that let you gather intel on a potential employer's marketing tactics:
Similarweb.com: punch in the URL and you’ll see online basics, like monthly traffic, where their traffic is coming from, etc. Jot down some nuggets here and weave them into your conversation.
Moat.com: put in a brand’s name, and it will kick back any live display ads that are running. This helps if you’re interviewing for any paid media role; see what’s out in the wild...you'll likely have comments or ideas on the creative, the copy, calls-to-action, design, or just give you some inspiration for some questions to ask during the interview.
BuiltWith.com: this site lets you see what tools the public site of the company is actually using. Technology and tools. What is powering their site? Their forms? Their split testing? If you have questions about the martech that the company is using, this will truly impress the hiring manager.
90-Day Plan
Don’t get too intimidated here. This is just a quick outline of how you’ll make an impact over the course of the first three months. Do this proactively.
From our experience, the proactive 90-Day Plan is something that most candidates just don’t do, but it doesn't take much bandwidth and will make for a great first impression with your new manager.
This doesn’t have to be a huge effort. Just outline what you’re going to do in 90 days to drive growth. We'll even give you a head start -below is a link to The 90-Day Plan template. You didn't think we'd leave you hanging, did you?
It's a single page, three columns. Your first column is the role, second column is the team, and third column is growth or performance. Under each, jot down one or two things that you can bring to the role. When it comes to the role or team, what are things that you can bring that don’t require deep a understanding of the company strategy and processes? Curiosity, eagerness to learn, ready to be challenged, sense of humor; try to put in one or two bullet points for each.
Watch the look on the hiring manager’s face when they say ‘Well, do you have any other questions?’ and you say ‘Yes, actually I took the initiative to outline what I can bring to the table for the first 90 days, and here it is.’ That will go miles in maximizing your first impression.
Just a little bit of effort with these 6 action items is going to make a huge difference in getting you prepared before you walk into that marketing interview for your dream role.
Once you've finished your prep, it's showtime: The Interview.