5 Questions I always ask when hiring for Content Marketers
I’ve been in plenty of cultural interviews before starting to recruit for my own team.
Here’s the trick: I would always speak with the hiring managers about topics or concerns of focus, and try to poke around (in a friendly way) to see how the candidates think, react, or even lead. Sometimes, the conversations turned incredibly raw.
I had a junior candidate who was so vulnerable with me that they told me they were just “honestly looking for anything and not particularly interested in a career here.” I also had a more senior candidate sharing with me that they absolutely disliked the idea of someone being better than they were.
Seeing how most of them became rather honest (whether it’s to their advantage is another topic of debate) when interviewing with me, I liked to think I was quite a competent interviewer. Once I sat down in the hiring manager’s seat, I realized there was so much more to it.
In my previous article 3 (Physical) Things I Look for When Hiring for Content Marketers, I described the storyline of an application. The chapter of the interview is where the candidates and the company figure out whether they like each other–whether they fit professionally and culturally. And how effective a hiring manager can evaluate a candidate really depends on the questions.
A first-time hiring manager’s learning on interview questions
The biggest adjustment I had to make was to become more self-aware about whether I was evaluating a candidate’s personality or professionalism. When I first started recruiting, I found myself making more evaluations like “they are very motivated” or “they are passionate about writing.” Not to say these are unimportant traits of candidates, but I slowly realized–after a few hours of later interview rounds where I was extremely confused why the candidates weren’t “as good as I thought they were”–I should be judging professional skills before characters.
Willingness to learn is great, but do they have the foundational skills in place to build upon? Interest in Marketing is fantastic, but what have they done to turn that interest into action? I enjoy learning what a candidate thinks about content distribution, but I also want to know how they turn their hypothesis into success.
I would go as far as saying a cultural fit doesn’t equal “they are nice and funny, so I can work with them.” The culture being judged here should be a professional one–it matters more how this person prioritizes requests from multiple teams or obtains a sense of professional worth, rather than how good they can make you laugh.
After lots of post-mortem and experiments, I gradually compiled a list of questions I rely on to break the ice, start a conversation, and surface information I am seeking from a candidate.
What information I seek in interviews to evaluate a candidate
Before diving into the five questions I always ask when hiring for Content Marketers, let’s set the stage.
In the hiring manager interview, I typically focus on understanding:
At what scale in their daily operations does the candidate apply the hard skills required for this role?
How do they evaluate performance and identify room for improvement?
How do they currently work with others and if any, what changes do they look for?
How do they expect this role to contribute to their overall career plan, and what does that plan look like?
I try to avoid “whether” or “yes/no” scenarios and stick to questions that prompt descriptive answers, which open up more freedom for the candidates to structure their thoughts and in turn a wider scope of evaluation. I find this especially helpful when speaking to senior candidates and for inspiring follow-up questions.
With that in mind, here are the five questions I always ask when hiring for Content Marketers, and why I ask them:
Describe the structure of your Marketing team and where you sit on that team
How do you measure or define success of the content pieces you created?
How do you approach creating content for a topic you have little knowledge of?
What is one thing your colleagues often come to your help for?
How do you think this role would help advance your career or achieve your professional goals?
Q1: Describe the structure of your Marketing team and where you sit on that team
Titles and organizational structure vary from company to company. Therefore, I like to start with this question to orient myself and learn about the context of the candidate’s current or latest working environment.
Potential pieces of information I could receive include the hierarchical dynamic the candidate deals with, level of responsibility for business impact, familiarity with teamwork, area or scope of expertise, and whether they are happy with the current setup. All of these are doors to follow-up questions.
Usually, this is where I quickly learn whether the candidate is working as a one-person team, a generalist, or a specialist. This is also what puts a candidate’s resume into real perspective–once, I found out that the candidate really puffed up their role in the resume. Another time, I realized a candidate’s scope of responsibilities on the resume seemed way too narrow for a one-person Marketing team.
Q2: How do you measure or define success of the content pieces you created?
Vanity or not, there are tons of metrics, KPIs, and methods to measure the success of Content Marketing. For me, it is crucial to understand where the candidate stands compared to my team.
This is where their analytical seniority could really show. A candidate who focuses largely on website traffic or search impressions is probably a level too junior for a conversion-focused role.
There are two reasons why I don’t specifically ask for a list of KPIs:
I am a strong believer of combining quantitative metrics with qualitative feedback, and I want to see whether or what the candidate thinks of qualitative feedback.
Based on the candidate’s answer, I can grasp whether qualitative or quantitative feedback better helps them reflect and optimize.
Candidates who say “the Sales team tells me this product brief is on point” or “our social media audience comments that the video was confusing” think differently from candidates who say “the webinar has X number of downloads” or “the landing page generated Y number of leads.” As a hiring manager, you want to find the type of brain that suits or complements your current team and strategy.
Follow-up Question: What Contributed to the Success of Content?
When I encounter candidates attributing output KPIs as the reason for success (for example, someone saying “I know the content piece is successful because it generated XYZ leads”), I follow up with the question, “What factors contributed to that success?” to see whether they can drill it down to more actionable, input-driven causes.
A tricky notion to clarify is that while output KPIs–inbound leads, engagements, views, etc.–are indicators of success, they are not the cause of success and rather the outcome. A content piece is successful not because it achieves an output goal; it is successful, so that it achieves the output goal.
What really contributes to the success of a content piece can be qualitative (the messaging, the design, the influencer sharing, etc.) or input-wise quantitative (the audience size, the ad spend, etc.). Content Marketers should learn to differentiate between the cause and outcome early in their career.
Note that there is nuance in the context of interpreting this phrase. When comparing content A and B against an output goal, one can of course say, “A is more successful because it reached the goal,” and at the same time, be aware of all the “better” qualities A has that resulted in success. I am looking for candidates who have this perspective, using the follow-up question.
Q3: How do you approach creating content for a topic you have little knowledge of?
This is a question quite specific to the role of a Content Marketer or Content Creator, and a very interesting one to explore. While I find it fascinating that there are various processes people use to guide them through content creation, I am specifically listening for the candidates’ ability to find adaptation for the context of my company or industry upon describing their current methodology.
There’s no one-size-fit-all, and a Content Marketer should be wary of using the same research and self-education methods for writing about sports cars to write about tea.
This is also where I learn about the types of content creation tools or support the candidate is used to working with. If they have not been used to working with Subject Matter Experts, that could be a learning curve. If they have extensive online research techniques, I would love to hear that, too.
Q4: What is one thing your colleagues often come to your help for?
This is a question my manager shared with me when I came for advice. It is kind of a curve-ball way to ask what their strengths are.
I always find the latter phrasing of this question challenging to handle because I would immediately start thinking about what the hiring manager wants to hear. What keywords should I mention as my strengths to show relevance to the role? What is an “impressive” or “advantageous” strength to have?
To be honest, a lot of the answers I come up with for myself are not what my colleagues ask me to help with. As a hiring manager trying to judge team fit, I naturally hope to understand what others think the candidates are good at, not what the candidates think they are good at.
If a candidate struggles to find an answer or share a scenario, that is a red flag for me. Either they don’t have skills to be helpful to others, or they lack the self-awareness to assess their collaboration with those around them. Both can be tricky team members to work with.
Q5: How do you think this role would help advance your career or achieve your professional goals?
This question proactively opens up opportunities for the candidate to talk about their three- to five-year plan and where this role comes into play. It also shines a light on what the candidates value in their current stage of career as well as the immediate next. Are they attracted because they are looking to mentor junior colleagues? Did they apply because they want to go into strategic projects? These are all informing of their expectations of the role.
If there is misalignment of what they think they will be getting versus what the role actually provides, I would communicate that on the spot. For example, I had a candidate who shared that they would like to lead junior team members, which opened a discussion about whether they wanted to become a team lead, or simply have the chance to mentor others. This was a critical clarification at the time, knowing that the role I was recruiting for did not have the trajectory to lead a small team in the next two years.
Ask to understand, not to pick or scratch
There are so many more good questions that I cannot cover in this one article, and simply asking these five questions is certainly not sufficient to evaluate a candidate.
I would emphasize that all of these questions are aiming to understand the candidates, not to check a list. Sure, there are certain answers that ring bells and others that sound alarms. I try to drill these exchanges down to principles, intentions, and thought processes, which are fundamental to forming a deeper opinion of the person speaking in front of you.
I hope my notes on hiring are helpful for some of you hiring managers or candidates out there. Similarly, I would love to know which interview questions are equally or more effective in bringing out interesting insights. Please do share your list with me.
Here’s a Content Marketer writing to fellow Content Marketers. Place your commas!