Good SEO Executive and PPC Consultants are in high demand – however, so are client expectations and as such it is vital that you prepare effectively for your interview. Employers may be crying out for your skills but don’t think for a second that they will recruit you just because they are desperate – with high levels of client accountability they still need and want to recruit the best.
Having said that, whether your skills are agency side or client side, they are pressing the right buttons to get you to interview stage – you can safely assume that the company are interested in what you have to offer, they have read your CV and they have liked what they have seen. You will also have lost much of the competition, as less than half of submitted applicants reach this stage.
Having established that you have the fundamental qualifications for the job, you have to build upon this and impress the interviewers with your personality. Technical skills aside, the purpose of an interview is for the employer to meet you in person and evaluate whether your personality will fit into their company. This article focuses on the non-SEO side of the interview - don’t be put off by this though; we have seen many jobseekers with great skills not be offered a job because employers felt they wouldn’t gel with the team, were hard to manage, were not 100% professional, were not presentable, were late, unenthusiastic, confrontational, evasive, too nervous, arrogant and lots more – in other words, there are plenty of reasons other than your SEO or PPC skills that may stop you getting that job offer.
First impressions
Research by psychologists has shown that people decide what they think of you within four minutes of a first meeting, therefore is very important to make a good impression right from the start.
Get all of your preparation out of the way well in advance, and allow plenty of time to get to the interview so that you arrive in a cool calm state. Arrive ten minutes early and use the bathroom facilities to smarten your appearance. You will not be so nervous if you are well prepared and look your best.
Confidence is the magic word, if you are confident then you will be relaxed and able to talk lucidly about yourself, you will be able to look the interviewer in the eyes, you will not fidget – you will have the potential to clinch the job.
If you are not feeling very self-assured just think, you wouldn’t have reached the interview stage if you didn’t possess the attributes that the company desires. Looking your best and being well prepared should help, so that when you meet the interviewer you will be able to greet them openly with a smile, look them in the eyes and shake their hand.
Don’t let confidence come across as arrogance. Excess confidence can come across this way and it’s not an attractive trait for the employer as it implies that you are not a good team player.
Multiple personalities
The subject of this article is “effective presentation”. However an employer will be looking for different personality traits depending on the type of job to which you are applying. For example, sales personnel have to be very outgoing and sociable, and these characteristics are not so necessary for a software engineer. If your natural personality is not really suitable for the job to which you are applying then you should seriously reconsider the direction of your career because otherwise you may not be happy in the long term.
Attractive features that are desirable to all employers include:
Confidence
This can be expressed in so many ways. Look the interviewer in the eyes, shake their hand firmly. Be chatty and lucid, sit with good straight posture with your hands on your lap, be precise in your answers do not ‘Um and ah’. Confidence comes with experience, so tell the interviewer about difficult situations that you negotiated in your previous jobs, perhaps even mention your world travels or a time you held a position of power within an organisation.
Approachability
To express approachability be friendly and open, smile and pleasantly greet everyone you are introduced to. Perhaps you trained other personnel in a previous job, or were a counsellor at college; recount an occasion when professionally someone came to you with their problem.
Sense of humour
Do not set about cracking jokes, but be responsive if the interviewer makes a humorous comment (even if it is not very funny). If you can subtly incorporate humour which is not at the expense of anyone else then do so, but bear in mind that this is a business interview and you should be professional.
Responsibility/trustworthiness
These qualities cannot be really seen in a person, but you can recount the times in your previous jobs that you have held positions of responsibility. For example any job in which you had personnel beneath you, or if you were a scout/Guide leader.
Initiative/leadership
These qualities are linked to confidence, but in addition show the employer examples of times you have used these skills and have prospered as a result. For example, you worked on a software solution to a work problem in your own time and it turned out to increase the efficiency of the task by 60%.
Body language
A first impression can be greatly influenced by a person’s body language. You are in trouble if all the right things are coming from your mouth, but your body is doing all the wrong things. Chat to the interviewer when they first meet you and take you to their office. After the interview confirm when you can expect to hear a decision from them, then move the conversation on to another matter. There is no definitive formula for interview success,just be relaxed and friendly, the easiest way to get your personality across is to be yourself.
Summary
We’ll cover the SEO/PPC aspects of the interview in a later post but remember that combining the above with demonstrable evident of your ability to effectively manage PPC campaigns or to optimise competivie keywords effectively gives you the best possible chance of securing that job offer.
Remember – it is the best prepared candidate that gets the job – not necessarily the best candidate that gets the job. In other words, you could be a perfect match, but if you cannot convey this fact to the interviewer during the interview then they will never know!
Its good posting. but you didn’t mentioned anything about SEO/PPC questions. Or How to behave if you don’t know etc