How to check your candidate's Digital Marketing knowledge

 

While it is true that recruitment processes should always include tests to measure candidates' knowledge, that is even more important in a discipline such as Digital Marketing.

The person in charge of carrying out our company's digital campaigns has a very big responsibility, which can be translated into the management of budgets of hundreds of thousands of euros.

Therefore, it is essential to ensure that the candidates we are going to trust with our Digital Marketing investments have demonstrated their technical knowledge beyond their CV.

In this post, we explain the importance of resorting to technical tests as part of your Digital Marketing talent hiring processes.

 

Don't put all your trust in your candidates' CV

 

Many hiring processes rely exclusively on the curriculum to decide which candidates to interview.

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to verify the authenticity of the data from a CV. Think of a candidate who says he has managed budgets of € 500,000 per year in Google Ads: if what he says is true, this is probably a trustworthy candidate, since it indicates that some companies have trusted him to manage significant amounts of money. The problem is that we cannot guarantee that this information provided in the CV is completely accurate.

Of course, to check the CV information, we could contact the references indicated by the candidate (for example, with the marketing director). But beware of this practice, as our candidate's ex-boss may not want to disclose information about their marketing budgets. On the other hand, it would not be ethical to contact the company in which our candidate currently works, so if the data we are looking for (in this case managed budgets) is related to the position that our candidate currently holds, we would have no way of doing the necessary background checks.

It is also possible that the Google Ads campaigns, which the candidate claims to have managed by himself, were actually managed through a media agency, or were executed by another company employee.

All of this indicates how difficult it is to check the authenticity of the information provided in a CV.

 

Require that they pass knowledge tests

 

A good way to ensure that our candidate has the required level in the management of Digital Marketing platforms, is through technical tests and case studies.

There are many options to create online questionnaires, such as Typeform, Classmarker or Flexiquiz. Some are free and can be a good option if we do not handle too high a hiring volume. Others are paid and allow to create more sophisticated tests and for a greater number of users. Let's see below how to focus our tests on each of the areas of Digital Marketing.

 

Google Ads and Facebook Ads

For the most sought after paid ad platforms on the market that are Google Ads and Facebook Ads, it is advisable to focus your tests on very specific questions.

In the case of Google Ads, we can focus our questions on key concepts such as Quality Score or the differences between advertising on the search network and the Display network, or how to configure retargeting options.

A Facebook Ads test can focus on advanced audience segmentation and configuration as this is, without a doubt, the most complex part of Mark Zuckerberg’s Paid Ad platform.

 

Google Analytics

For Google Analytics, it is also advisable to create a questionnaire with closed questions much in the same way as for Googe Ads and Facebook Ads.

However, in the case of Google Analytics we also have access to practical cases that Google makes available to users.

The Google Analytics demo account allows you to analyze real data from the Google Merchandise Store. This demo is a good way to ensure that our candidates know how to find key information in record time in Google Analytics.

 

SEO

To ensure that you are going to interview a qualified candidate to position your website in organic Google, it is advisable to focus your tests on specific questions about Google's ranking algorithms. More specifically, it is recommended to ask the candidate what are the most important criteria to consider to optimize a web page.

A candidate who replies that the optimization of Meta Tags is more important than the generation of quality links to your domain (link building) is probably not your best option when hiring an SEO expert.

 

RTB/Programmatic

In the case of RTB/Programmatic, it is essential to carry out tests with a strong numerical and probabilistic orientation, since programmatic advertising is very anchored in the world of mathematics.

Let's see below a possible question we would ask in an RTB test:

An advertiser has bought 5 million impressions. If the end-user ad blocking software blocked 1 million impressions and it is later discovered that another million impressions were viewed by robots (non-human traffic), and if the advertiser paid a € 3.00 CPM for the 5 million impressions, what is the actual effective CPM paid by the advertiser?

[Do you know the answer? Send it to us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., we will tell you right away if you are right ;) ]

A test should also include open questions about real life situations that may occur in the management of an RTB client portfolio. For example, in the case of an advertiser focused on achieving visibility for their brand through RTB campaigns, we could ask a candidate how to measure the impact of an online programmatic campaign over offline sales.

 

Other tests

In the previous points, we have focused on the most popular areas of Digital Marketing, essential for the hiring of any generalist candidate.

However, the tests can be adjusted to each vacancy, and can vary substantially in the case of more specialized profiles. A Social Media profile does not require the same knowledge as an SEM or Digital Analytics specialist, and therefore the tests have to be adapted to the requirements of each position.

In any case, whatever the specific discipline for which we are going to hire, it is advisable to ensure that our candidates have a good level of Excel. To do this, you can create case studies where the candidate is asked to analyze data from an Excel workbook and translate this data into a graph, and then draw conclusions and propose ROI optimization strategies.

 

 

That your candidates pass knowledge tests is a fundamental advantage when optimizing your Digital Marketing hiring processes. On the one hand, it allows you to ensure that you will not waste time interviewing candidates who do not have the level required for the vacancy. On the other hand, the fact that a candidate devotes their time to take these knowledge tests indicates that they are really interested in the position. In this way, we prevent candidates who are simply browsing through vacancies without any real interest from entering our hiring processes.

At PayPerTalent, we take special pride in personally testing our candidates' Digital Marketing konwledge before presenting them to companies, thus ensuring our clients the most effective recruitment processes.

 

 

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