Interview test

[CommT]

Hi,

I asked a couple of weeks ago for some help with interview questions... I've now written these, but I have been asked to come up with some data with an anomaly for the interviewee to identify and explain what they'd do...

I'm thinking something to do with landing pages, but what?!

Any help would be most appreciated

Thanks again!

Amelia

[ATP]

I would do some things to look at user interaction to see if they can look past "attracting visits"

Maybe an example of a landing page attracting a lot of traffic but suffering from issues such as

• Large Bounce Rate
• Low time on page
• High exit rate

Give them stats showing a fairly new article page attracting visitors from a variety of closely related keywords, but put a couple of deliberate minor technical issues on there related to the keywords and see what they say.

Worst case: They miss everything
Mediocre: If they identify the minor technical SEO problems and small improvements
Best Case: They look past the technical SEO and realise that although you have traffic there must be an issue which could well result in a loss of ranking when google identifies users are not finding what they need.

This would give you an indication of if they can look at the bigger picture and use some initiative or if they are a more "follow this formula" type. It also opens up room for discussion.

[ClaytonJ]

It sounds like technical SEO from your profile. One of the first questions I ask if they have heard of Moz/Rand ? If they say no...

On landing pages.  I would show them a page and ask them the first 3 things they would check to determine if optimized for SEO. For me they:-

page loading speed

Title tag

H1

If they say the colour of the graphic... probably not as technical as you want!  Some cannot even check source code..

Have some fun with it...

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

You could do landing pages, or give them a service page and ask what issues they find with the page as well.

There are also test available on Smarterer.com you can take advantage of as well. There was a also a great article in Wired recently discussing (you guessed it) Google's interview process that had some great ideas and tips in it. Here's a great great article from Forbes:

"Others like to stretch the truth, a lot. How do you ensure someone has the skills they say they do? Test them. These can be written tests, role-plays, or simulations such as asking a PR candidate to write a press release for a make-believe product or asking a marketing candidate to explain the key components in a marketing plan. These tests don’t need to be elaborate, but they do need to be able to differentiate the candidates who have the necessary skills from those who don’t."

Whatever you do - you want your company culture to reflect in your test - don't stress the person out, don't make them feel cornered. New hires are more in tune now than ever with companies they want to apply for via social media and browsing websites, so you want to be as consistent and reflective as possible in your process. Have fun with it, because when if you do find someone you like who nailed your tests but they had issues with your process internally, that's not a good thing. Perception goes both ways.

Just some things to consider! Good luck!