Marketing Insights - The Art and Science of Creating Demand

When hiring for demand generation professionals it’s sometimes difficult to gauge the person’s understanding of the concepts. Providing a Homework Assignment after a phone interview, prior to the second phase onsite interview can help. Below is a list of ten behavioral questions to obtain more information about the candidate plus a logic exercise.

This assignment is VERY telling.  In fact, when I’ve interviewed candidates, the verbal interaction was great. When they used their written or logic skills, things fell apart OR became very clear. I was able to clearly understand if they simply took their resume and converted it into their assignment or actually thought about the questions and provided intelligent answers and provided me with some insight as to who they are as a marketer.

Behavioral Questions

1. How do you define success?
2. How would you know you were successful?
3. What have you done to improve your marketing knowledge?
4. What would your marketing plan look like?
5. Have you ever been really proud of a marketing campaign?  Please explain.
6. If you owned your own business, what would you do? OR Tell me about your dream job.
7. Describe your management style.
8. If you were hiring for this job, what would you look for?
9. What has been your biggest professional disappointment?
10. Tell me about the most fun you have had on the job.

Exercise

1. Create a template for a marketing budget. Explain the company’s target audience, business model and what marketing programs / tactics have been selected and why. 
2. Develop a welcome program for net new leads, what would this look like?
3. Take three campaigns from your past work experience and describe the planning stage through execution and describe what you would or would not change, and why.
4. Define a segmentation strategy and how a database might be set-up to accommodate this strategy.
5. Create a report or dashboard necessary for managing a marketing funnel.

The answers to the behavioral questions should provide you with enough detail to understand the candidate’s approach to the position as well as a bit more insight into their personality and fit for your organization. The exercise should provide you with insight into their logic skills: did they create a Visio document, a PPT presentation and/or excel spreadsheets to show as well as tell you what they would do or have done in the past? This exercise allows the candidate to demonstrate their creative side (art) as well as logical side (science).

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