In in effort to ensure you identify only inbound marketing rock-stars, we have provided 10 questions to supplement your hiring interview processes. Note: these questions are in no specific order--pick and choice the ones that are best for your business. Additionally, the quality of answers would depend on the experience level you were looking to hire.
10 Inbound Marketing Interview Questions
1. Can you explain "insert topic" to me in a simple way? - Inbound marketing is about making your industry interesting and helping to solve customer problems with content. This question is used to make sure that someone can drop industry jargon and communicate a simple idea in a clear and engaging way.
2. What results have you achieved with your current inbound marketing efforts? - Inbound marketing is about growing your business. Make sure that the person can provide solid numbers to showcase their previous work. This also shows that they have an understanding of how to measure inbound marketing efforts.
3. What do you read online? - Part of inbound marketing is understanding industry news and leveraging for the benefit of the business. Does the person have the right habits in place to do this?
4. How do you drive traffic to your blog (personal/business)?
- A business blog is a big part of the inbound marketing process. This question is looking for an understanding of not only writing for a blog, but also growing readership.
5. What part of inbound marketing would you start with for our business?
- This question ensures the candidate understands the basics. If the say "social media," when you are getting very little organic search traffic, for example, it demonstrates that they may not be good at seeing the big picture.
6. What is an example of a company that does inbound marketing well and why? - Reverse engineering is an important marketing skill. It is important that you hire a person that knows what success looks like and understands what other businesses have done to be successful.
7. What are five blog post titles you would write for our business? This question is all about understanding how well this person can incorporate inbound marketing into the mix of industry insights.
8. How do you know what type of content to create for our business? - This question tests industry knowledge along with understanding of types of inbound marketing content. Beyond blog posts, the candidate should mention webinars and ebooks.
9. What area of inbound marketing are you least knowledgeable about? It is important to hire a person who understands they don't know it all... This question is all about identifying that level of maturity in someone.
10. How long will it take for us to see results from your inbound marketing efforts? - Regardless of your business, setting the right expectations is critical. You don't want to hire someone that will only tell you what you want to hear. Test the person by making sure they give you reasonable estimates for tactics.
Do you agree with the questions on this list? What would you add? If you are looking for a job in inbound marketing check out the
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Angela 4:17 PM on February 24, 2011
Good Article! I was in the process of trying to re-write our interview questions, this will help me!
I noticed the link to the 'hiring' page is broken. Instead of going: http://www.hubspot.com/careers/
It's pointing here:
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/9992/www.hubspot.com/careers/
BUT, I'm sure whomever applies will be smart enough to figure it out! ;)
scott Armstrong 4:36 PM on February 24, 2011
As always a very useful HubSpot post, thanks for sharing it.
Along with these internview questions, www.clearfit.com is a great tool for hiring marketing team members (and they are a HubSpot/BrainRider client :).
Cheers
Scott Armstrong
BrainRider.com
"sharing what we know about how to connect with and convert more B2B customers is what we do!"
Nick Sal 4:41 PM on February 24, 2011
I appreciated your article. Something that also might be useful is finding out the candidates experience and inclination towards building a maintaining a content publishing schedule for the business in question. How will that candidate champion the publishing effort and generate buy-in from the key subject matter experts they hope to be leveraging in their articles, e-books and webinars. Their expertise, after all, is some of the key content many companies with a service component are hoping to show-case to a wider audience.
I also wanted to note that the link is broken.
I look forward to visiting the offices again soon!
Rob Berman 7:09 PM on February 24, 2011
Great set of questions to use in an interview. Thanks for sharing. Do you have one on outbound marketing?
Rob
Ian Smith 11:33 PM on February 24, 2011
Good article but the grammer?
What area of inbound marketing are you least knowledge about?
knowledgeable
Will Pena, MBA 12:19 AM on February 25, 2011
I appreciate question 5 as that is the usual, and emotional response I get from a lot of my colleagues. Thank you for setting that one straight.