Recently, I was looking to hire a growth marketing specialist for my team at Photomath.
After reviewing dozens of CVs and applications, I decided on a candidate and so far it’s going great. In this blog post, I want to focus on what kind of questions I asked potential candidates, and what I was trying to find out about them.
Usually, on the first screening call, our recruiters will ask questions designed to understand the candidate's motivation and culture/team fit. They also try to find out more about their background, attitude towards work, collaboration, etc.
When I’m interviewing candidates, I’m focusing more on their functional skills, while also evaluating the soft skills. I try to really get a sense of what the person is like, how they approach their work, and what it would look like working with them. I value team fit and attitude more than skills, especially for mid/junior roles.
Let’s get to the questions. Keep in mind that these questions were created to interview a specialist within the team - if you plan on interviewing a team lead/head position, the questions should probably focus less on technical knowledge, and more on soft skills, processes, management, etc.
Intro
Tell me a bit about yourself and your background.
It’s a pretty standard question, but I think it’s great to relieve the stress of the interview for the candidate, and in general, people like talking about themselves, so it's a great start to our conversation.
Technical knowledge & experience
Previous experience.
I try to go into more details about their previous experience to find out what expertise they have and what they have worked on before. For example, if I’m hiring for a role that’s mostly for paid acquisition, I try to ask questions about the types of clients they worked with before, what type of campaigns, whether they have more experience with B2B or B2C (for example, if they were at an agency at some point). If they’re working in-house, I ask about the types of campaigns they usually do and have the most experience with. I also love to ask about their favorite campaigns, why they like them, and what results they managed to achieve.
Processes
A/B testing
A/B testing is an important aspect of growth marketing, so I'm always trying to understand candidates' experience with experimentation. I ask about their process of running tests, how they prioritize these tests, how they evaluate results and implement learnings, etc.
Creating a campaign from scratch
I’m trying to see how well they know the process of creating a paid campaign from scratch. This tells me how involved they were in the process before. It's also a great way to find out how they approach a project from the beginning.
Tools/platforms
Again, if the position is mostly for paid acquisition, then here I would ask about the platforms they mentioned earlier. Asking about specific technical stuff lets me know how well they know the advertising platforms, such as Facebook or Google Ads Manager. As a growth marketer, a person should be familiar with some sort of data/analytics software (e.g., Google Analytics, Amplitude, Segment, Mixpanel, etc.)
Attitude towards work
Failure
Here is where I ask them to tell me about a recent struggle they had. It should be pretty easy for them to remember a recent failure of theirs - it’s completely normal to make mistakes, and we want candidates to acknowledge and talk about them. This is useful as it shows how they approach issues and if they take responsibility for their failures.
Planning
Usually, I’ll ask something along the lines of “How do you plan your day? What’s your process of deciding what to work on, on a given day?” This gives me an idea of how organized they are, and also if they are proactively working on getting things done, or are they just waiting to be told what to do. This is a useful insight because it helps you align expectations from the start, and helps you prepare for your new team member.
Project deadlines
Here I’ll usually ask how they assure the project will be finished on time. And, more importantly, what do they do when they realize the project can’t be finished on time. This also tells me how they approach problems, communicate with their team members, and how they react in a seemingly stressful situation.
In the end, I’ll usually leave 15 min for any questions the candidate might have for me.
These are just a few questions that I think are good to ask a potential growth marketer to join your team. Of course, this is just an overview of the topics I want to discuss, and as such, it doesn’t have every single question listed. You should let the conversation flow naturally and ask subquestions.
Usually, for every 10 questions that I prepared, I’ll have at least 5 more questions that I thought of on the spot, because something piqued my interest.
Edit (Apr 27th): I have just come across this list of questions on Twitter - it contains a few more example questions you can ask. H/t to Joe for this!
Let me know what you think about these questions!