Hiring for SEO

[BryanCroft]

so sorry if i offend anyone here ...but dang SEO Experts are the used car sale guy of 1999!

we have a small eCommerce company in Jacksonville, FL - and we are always looking for improve our SEO - we have been members of moz for almost 10 years now!  We have learned alot with all the tools they offer,

We have tried at least 5 local and national SEO consultants, agencies and consultants - NONE HAVE WORKED.

The time has come for us to hire an in house SEO do you have any advise on how a small business that wants to grow our SEO can weed thru the thousands of SEO "GURU's" out there today - Everyone is an expert.

On a side not if you want to move to Florida and help us grow - www.HolmesStamp.com/team

[Christy-Correll]

The Local SEO test is at https://moz.com/blog/local-search-expert-quiz-2016. I would use it as a jumping off point for making your own test (and randomizing the questions), rather than simply having potential candidates take the Moz one.

https://moz.com/blog/local-search-expert-quiz-2016

[BryanCroft]

awesoem answer .. thanks for the feedback and tips! - I will 100% incorporate this basic question " what are you looking for from this role?" as we dont have it in our stock questions, and its important!

And we will go Mortal Combat as well!

Cheers!

Bryan

[MoosaHemani]

The two round interview idea is great but in my personal opinion, it will work better for an agency. I have worked for years in different In-house companies and from the experience, I am telling you that success of in-house is depends upon multiple factors.

If you are hiring a single person to handle your complete SEO, than you are looking for a guy who can understand the ins and out of your business, can write about it, do competitor analysis, outreach, build links and build reports and present it to the CEO.

Unlike agency where they have a set culture relevant for SEO and digital marketing, In-house culture is more business orientated where the guy will be sitting around non-SEO people.

What I mean to say here is that when you search for in-house guy you should look for a person who know their game well plus they understand your business and have management skills unlike agency where all they need is a good writer and they give them on-the-job training.

Just a thought!

[ChrisAshton]

Hi Bryan,

No offence taken by any of us, I'm sure. It's an unfortunate fact that our industry has a number of... dodgy providers.

In any case, our process is quite similar to Danny in that we use a 2 stage interview process and a test.

Ours is broken into 2 parts. A very short phone interview to cover the boring old cliche questions like "why did you leave your last job?" and " what are you looking for from this role?" I'll also throw in a bit of a qualifying question that could raise some obvious red flags so I can filter out the ones that just aren't going to work out. This saves my time and, more importantly, saves their time and travel costs. If they're out of work, the last thing they need is to be travelling to an interview they just aren't right for.

For those that make it past this step, they're invited in for a face to face interview. This one is about getting to know who they are; no technical questions. This gives me a solid indication of whether or not they'll be a good cultural fit for our team (very important to us here!) and if this seems fine, they're asked to complete a 10-question test which should take about  5 - 10 minutes.

It asks basic questions that anyone with the experience required for the role will almost roll their eyes at because it's so easy - "what is the purpose of a page title and where is the average user likely to see it most?" - that type of thing.

All of this lets me know what sort of technical ability they have, how well they can communicate, what sort of person they are, what they're looking to achieve and whether or not they can articulate answers to basic questions under a bit of pressure.

Then, if we end up with 2 candidates who seem evenly matched in every way, we arrange a Mortal Kombat style fight to the death.

Seriously though, being ecommerce, if you do go this route make sure you include specific questions about SEO for ecommerce. They can fall under a few different rules as far as how they should be set out, how to deal with potential content duplication etc.

[LeeAbrahamson]

Local MOZ online test?  Good idea. Where is it?

[BryanCroft]

thanks for the reply - yes i need to get them to take some tests on moz ... that is something we have done in the past to screen out a few.

i hate assuming ... so just to triple check - this is the test your referring to ?  right?

https://moz.com/seo-expert-quiz

are there others ?

the link is here www.HolmesStamp.com/team

[SEO-Expert-Danny]

Hi Bryan,

I run my own agency that is growing quite fast and we need skilfull and knowledgable SEOs on board quite often. We post job offerings on our site, on social media such as LinkedIn, Ineed, local HR magazine, Craigslist. We asked them to provide is with links of recent work along with resume. Once they come to the interview and we feel good about them. We have second sets of interviews which is longer interview with a test, last time I used local SEO moz online test and it worked well, also no hard feelings from applicants.

Thanks for invitation to move to Florida, I guess link is missing with employment opportunity, so potential seos experts can apply.

Good luck Bryan