The SEO job market is on fire lately!
Companies are investing more in SEO, and agencies of all sizes are scrambling to hire new SEO professionals.
I know I’ve spent Ton The time when the candidate was most recently interviewed. Distinguishing between good and bad candidates can seem like a daunting task.
How do you ensure that the person you hire will be a good SEO?
How do you differentiate BS artists from practitioners?
The secret is in the interview questions you ask!
Here are eight interview questions I love to ask SEO job candidates.
Do an SEO interview
When I do an SEO interview, I don’t ask the standard questions you would get in a typical interview. Most of the standard interview questions bore me.
That doesn’t mean someone on my team won’t ask them (we still need to make sure you really understand SEO), but once the candidate gets past that stage, I’d prefer to take a different approach.
While many SEOs ask very technical interview questions like “what are canonical tags”, I’ve found that a slightly different approach works better.
Technical knowledge is great, but SEO trivia is easy to remember and easy to train.
If the candidate does not know how to use a specific Search Engine Optimization Tools I can show them for an hour, so it’s not worth asking such a question in an interview.
I find that most technical SEO questions are usually interviewers trying to show off how smart they are, not Measure an applicant’s SEO knowledge.
Too many SEO interviews just pass by letting the interviewer keep talking about them. I am not that interviewer. As much as I love talking about myself, interviews are not the time to do that.
Instead, I prefer to examine their problem-solving approach as well as their thought process, customer engagement skills, and general view of SEO.
You can’t train critical thinking the way you train SEO best practices.
But if I can find someone who can think rationally, critically and logically, who knows the basics and has some technical skills, then I can train them in other areas.
The Best Interview Questions to Ask SEO Candidates
1. Talk about yourself. What are you looking for in your next role?
This is the first question I ask. Here’s what you hear in every interview.
What am I most concerned about with this question? Candidates consider it important to:
- Do they talk about themselves in person? professional?
- Do they go straight into their work history?
- Will they read me a list or something?
There are no really wrong answers here – unless they recite the qualifications like a checklist.
Talking about what they’re looking for in their next role right away lets me know if it’s a good fit for the person, or if they’re going to hate the role and probably quit soon.
I want to make sure that we not only meet our demand for open positions, but that candidates will be happy and have room to grow. Doing so resulted in a significant reduction in turnover.
2. Tell me about your greatest achievement at your last job.
This simple question is my favorite. This answer will likely immediately make me decide for the rest of the interview.
You’d be surprised how many people can’t answer this question.
Take a look at your average resume. Most people will list their tasks or assignments to do, but they won’t tell you what they actually do in that role.
Here’s a chance for candidates to brag — tell me their results:
- Do you have any idea?
- What impact have you had on customers? (If you’re from an agency, I’d rephrase it as “Tell me about the biggest impact you’ve had on your clients.”)
I’ll ask some follow-up questions about the shortlist, but it’s basically just a conversation about the job to make sure he or she is actually involved in the job and find out what role the person plays.
Some good follow-up questions include: “How did you measure success?” “What insights inspired the idea for this project?” and “What were the biggest challenges in making it happen?”
3. Why SEO?
I would only ask this question when hiring for any entry-level position or when the candidate has less than a few years of work experience.
I’m curious why they chose this major. What motivates them?
If you tell me “I need a job” or “the salary is good”, then you didn’t get the job (or probably paid a lot.)
4. Tell me about your personal projects, websites, blogs, side jobs, conferences, etc.
There are two reasons for this problem:
- I want to make sure there is no conflict of interest. I interviewed people who wanted to continue full-time consulting for competing clients in addition to our full-time jobs.
- I’m trying to find someone who won’t shut down their SEO mind at 5pm (that’s the main reason I’m asking this question.)
I want someone who is passionate about search, marketing and technology.
SEO is a job where you have to keep learning and growing, and I’ve found that people who are passionate about it do it themselves. I am also looking for ambition here.
I do not care how That passion shows.You don’t need to have a blog or a side business or a personal website or speak at a meeting.
if there is enthusiasmthen show me.
5. Tell me what most SEO professionals think you think are BS (or, what you think most SEO professionals think are BS).
This is my second favorite question and one that I usually keep near the end.This is a great modified version Peter Thiel (I personally don’t like it very much) interview questions.
I have to limit it to SEO or marketing though, because people tend to get very politicized in this (flat planet, vaccines, elections, etc).
While these are interesting answers, they really have nothing to do with work and I don’t want to discuss them in that setting.
Having said that, if you do develop crazy views about racist/sexist/big things, you can bet you’re not getting a job offer.
This question helps assess a candidate’s critical thinking skills. I’m looking for their reactions when they’re in the field. (I promise no one expected this question and it will take time to answer.)
I want to see candidates upset – with no prepared answers – because that’s how customers interact.
I’d also like to see candidates defend their answers, as I’ll be asking for some follow-up asking them to do so.
This is a good area to determine if they will “resonate” with your SEO philosophy.You can get into things like subdomains vs directories, or nasty stuff like that XML sitemap.
6. Given a random URL, tell me how you diagnosed its SEO issues. What is your first step?
I also sometimes replace it with “Take me through your approach to keyword research” based on role and candidate.
For SEO-specific skill sets, I like to be open-ended.
For this question, I keep asking, “Then what? Then what?”
I want to see how their thought process works.
Not everyone is the same. Some will start with research or crawling; others will start with understanding business goals; others will come up with their checklist. (You get bonus points if you mention one of my SEO tools.)
I’m not a fan of lists.
Also, I don’t want to hear “I’ll run this tool”. I want you to tell me what you do with this tool.
For senior positions, I often ask candidates to make a few slides of how they will improve a random site.
It was never a client site (we really don’t ask for free work). It’s usually a branded site, and I’ve noticed that people I see in the background of Zoom are wearing or interested in any brand of clothing.
Or if they tell me they play hockey, it could be a hockey equipment manufacturer etc.
If I want to be unusual about this, I’ll ask them to rate wtfseo.com or something. It’s always random.
7. Suppose the client wants to do this. You think it’s a bad idea and instead recommend something else. Meeting tomorrow to discuss. What is the game plan for the meeting?
This is my favorite hypothetical question to ask.
There Yes a correct answer. I am looking for a data driven and actionable plan.
Sadly, many candidates instead give what I call a “self-reaction” where they’ll say “I’ll tell clients that I’m an expert and they should trust me” or something like that.
That’s not someone I want to hire.
8. Do you have any questions for me?
Sometimes the best interview questions are not to ask the question, but to let the candidate do it!
The main goal of this is to provide them with more information about the job, allay their concerns, and make sure they’re a good fit – but you can learn a lot of Based on the questions they ask you.
For example, if they ask about raises and promotions right away, that’s a red flag telling me they may be a flight risk.
If you’re being interviewed, a better way to ask this question is: “What does my success in this role look like?”
Often candidates will ask if they have to do something they hate doing (like metadata or reporting), which helps to understand how they interact with the team.
(Note: No matter what level of SEO you are, you’ll still be doing some “basic” SEO work from time to time.)
in conclusion
The main goal of any interview is to determine the candidate’s skills, their loyalty to the company, and how well they fit into the company’s culture and future colleagues. With the right questions, you can ensure that the most qualified candidates advance to the next stage of your recruiting process.
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