4 Questions I’m Going to Ask in Your Interview

So you’re coming in for an interview...

We’re always hiring at Seer. And as a member of our interview team, I spend a lot of my time in panel interviews with candidates, learning more about them to help determine who will be a great fit for the team.

Here are the 4 questions I’m probably going to ask you...

What would you do if there was a major decline?

Imagine you walked into the office one day and one of your clients experienced a huge decline - whether it’s traffic to a specific page, rankings to priority keywords, or a major issue with the entire site - I like to ask the steps you’d take if you were faced with this situation.

So what’s the right answer?

It’s going to vary from question to question, but really I’m looking for you to give me several examples of how you might diagnose issues and the sort of steps you’d take to check things off as you determine what did or didn’t happen, so that you can find a solution.

Extra points if you think outside of the analytics and algorithm box and look for other issues that could impact a brand like major PR problems!

Tell me about a time you really messed up - what would you do differently now?

There are plenty of skills you can learn in training or from taking courses, but sometimes there’s no better teacher than experience.

What I’m trying to understand from this question is how you take responsibility and learn. Sometimes you don’t get a chance to undo what’s been done, but if you can honestly look back and learn from what worked (and what didn’t), then you’re ensuring that you’re finding value in all of your experiences - not just the good ones.

What would you do if your client pushed back?

If someone in an interview brings up a really good strategy or idea from one of our prompts, I like to ask them how they’d handle it if their client pushed back.

What if your client said that they didn’t think this strategy was right from a brand standpoint?

What if your client said that they didn’t think they could get the resources or budget?

So what’s the right answer?

The answer to this question is a question!

I don’t want you to back down from a good idea - I want you to get to the root of why your client feels this way to see if there’s somewhere you could help them make a case.

Not right from a brand standpoint? Are there other ways we could position this type of content but still target valuable keywords? Are our competitors already using this strategy and we have a major gap if we don’t compete? Are we bidding on these terms in paid campaigns but not owning them in organic strategy?

Can’t get the resources? Can you do a better job of proving the ROI of this strategy, so that finding the resources is a no-brainer? Are we spending $X in paid campaigns for these keywords and building an organic landing page would only cost $Y? Can we estimate traffic and conversions using a click-through rate curve and average conversion rate or a similar methodology?

Why haven’t you tried it for yourself yet?

Spoiler alert - if you come into an interview and tell me how excited you are to learn Power BI, I’m going to ask you why you’re waiting.

Why?

Power BI desktop is free
There are tons of free resources available
And some of those resources are available right here on the Seer website

OK, if you have a Mac, you get a pass, but you could still be playing with Tableau Public, trying the free trial of Power BI Pro, or using Parallels.

I promise that there is no judgment in whatever you show us - I’m always the first to remind other team members that big data tools are still new to us too and that I myself delivered a content gap analysis in 2017 that was built entirely with VLOOKUP and INDEX, MATCH.

The point is that telling me you’re looking forward to training is one thing, but showing me that you’re so excited to learn that you tried it out for yourself really stands out. It proves to me that you’re self-motivated and willing to try new things on your own.

Want to learn more about working at Seer?

If you want to learn more about what we look for in a successful candidate, check out our blog post on getting hired as an SEO associate.

Think you have what it takes to join the team? I would love to chat with you! Submit your application here.