Marketing Intern

The answer to this question helps you gauge the candidate's research skills. It's crucial that candidates are aware of what's going on in the industry so they can make better business decisions, and research skills can help them identify these issues.

☛ Threats and opportunities identified

☛ New or innovative concepts

☛ Methods of research

I noticed that live-streaming is picking up as a way to engage audiences in business. Content marketing is a must nowadays for any business to generate leads, and live video content marketing can quickly demonstrate how to use a service or product to engage audiences with exclusive content. I believe this is an innovative opportunity your business can leverage to engage your audiences and generate leads.

The way candidates answer this question reveals whether they possess leadership skills. It's crucial to understand if your interns have leadership skills because they are a core part of the business.

☛ A broad overview of the impact

☛ How the candidate plans to initiate the strategy to create impact

☛ Tactics the candidate plans to use

I plan to identify key areas of opportunities that can enhance the operational process. I'll map out the necessary resources to achieve operational goals. I'll also rally a team, delegate tasks, procure resources, identify key performance indicators and create a schedule to make sure that each tactic is being achieved in a timely manner.

☛ Why it’s important to ask this: I am always surprised by how few marketers at any level understand how Google really ranks content. Though you’re not interviewing for an SEO position, content marketing is intrinsically tied to search engine optimization; everyone should know the basics when creating content.

☛ What to look for: You don’t need a candidate to know the PageRank formula, but rather the basic premise behind Google’s ranking algorithm, along with other auxiliary factors that help with SEO. For example, many naive marketers think Google ranks content largely on meta tags and keyword stuffing. In reality, Google primarily ranks content on inbound links, and the authority of the sites doing the linking. It’s a bonus if a candidate can mention other contributing factors such as the text of the hyperlink, the title tag, keywords in the URL, and others.

Never say to the person interviewing you that you’re just looking for something to pay the bills. As far as they’re concerned, you could pay the bills by flipping burgers at any fast food restaurant.

Even if your primary motive for applying for the job was to earn a paycheck, focus on other factors that inspired you to choose that job in particular. Include specific attributes of the company you picked up on while researching it, and highlight how you relate to them as a potential employee.

Interns, almost as a rule, don’t have large amounts of experience in the field they’re trying to break into. If nothing else, say that you applied for the position to gain experience in that specific field of work.

☛ Give an example of how you’ve dealt with a conflict with another person.

☛ Tell me a story either personal or professional that paints a picture of you.

☛ Describe a situation where your judgment proved to be an invaluable contribution to a team.

☛ How do you handle meeting tight deadlines?

☛ Give an example of how you set goals and achieve them.

☛ What do you do when your schedule is interrupted? Give an example of how you handle this.

☛ Give an example of how you work on a team.

☛ Can you remember a time when you handled a difficult situation with another student or co-worker? What did you do?

☛ Share an example of how you’ve been able to motivate team members.

☛ Describe how you would handle a difficult relationship that you felt was holding you back on the job.

☛ Why it’s important to ask this: The candidate may understand Google ranks content based on inbound links, but they also need to know how to accumulate inbound links.

☛ What to look for: A good content marketer knows how to get links by producing great link worthy content, and promoting it in a clever manner. Here are some good responses to the questions:

► I interview influencers, not only because they have good things to say, but because they promote the resulting content to a large audience as well—and some of those people will end up linking back to my interview.

► I include content others can reuse. For example, I may create a quick infographic that other bloggers may want to curate or include in their own posts, with a link back to mine.

► I write long form content so I have the most comprehensive and authoritative post on a particular subject, which tempts others to link to me as the reference source.

Based on the candidates' answers, you can gauge their problem-solving and collaborative skills. It's important to understand if your interviewees possess problem-solving skills and can work in a team environment.

☛ Results

☛ Experience with working in a team environment

☛ Thought process and experience for solving issues

The pet shelter I volunteer at needed to reach new audiences and increase awareness of adoption opportunities. However, funds were limited. I rallied volunteers, identified that the shelter wasn't using social media or posting frequent blog content, and mapped out a content and social media marketing plan that could be implemented within the budget using free marketing tools and platforms. As a result, awareness and adoptions increased by 10 percent within three months.