You Ask, I Answer: How to Interview Marketing Interns?

In today's episode, Lily asks, I will be interviewing summer interns for our marketing department this week, and I feel stumped on engaging on engaging productive questions to ask. My usual angle of focusing on uh past professional experiences may not really apply. Any go-to questions you recommend for these types of interviews. So interns, not terribly different than interviewing other employees, except that they have substantially less work experience. That said, you're still after the same things, right?

And you're still dealing with human beings. And so you have to just make a list of the questions that you want answers to. Uh will this person work hard? Uh will this person be a cultural fit for the company without reinforcing existing biases. Will this person be motivated to solve problems on their own?

Uh does this person think creatively? Uh does this person have an aptitude that if their internship works out, would you want them back, right? Uh would you want them back as a full-time employee? Even if someone doesn't have a lot of work experience, these are things that you can uh look for. So you gotta focus on behaviors.

For things like uh cultural fit and working hard, those are pretty straightforward. You can ask someone, tell me about a project that you worked on that didn't go well. Tell me about a project on a team that didn't go well. Uh how did you handle it? Uh tell me about the experience and listen to the answers.

Listen to the answers about how they use language. How much responsibility do they accept for a project a team project that didn't go well? Right? If if it's entirely oh, well, it's everybody else's fault, you know. I I did my part and they didn't I don't know that that's necessarily uh a kind of person you might want on your team.

On the other hand, if uh if they you know collapse and and and they're like, Oh, it's all my fault, and uh I'm I'm you know completely useless. Not that I think that someone would say that in a job interview, but it is a it is a non-zero possibility that that might be an outcome, and that's again somebody that you might not feel comfortable having on your team culturally. When it comes to things like thinking creatively, um, there are all sorts of of interesting things that you can do. Um simple one is just give them some problems to solve, it gives them some theoreticals. You're interested in marketing, great.

Uh and you're you're studying it in school. Um tell me about how you would solve a a particular product marketing problem. Here's how would you make this product better? Uh you can ask uh uh for attention to detail things, things that every job candidate should logically do. Hey, um, did you go to our website?

Okay, great. Tell me three things you liked about it, tell me three things you didn't like about it. Uh and you're re in this case you're just asking for their opinions. Um how they answer those questions is just as important as what they answer them with. Are they willing to to be honest with you and say, well, you know, that that picture of the dog on the front page, I mean, I'm not a dog person.

You know, that kind of response. You'd want to you'd want to be able to see, can they give you honest opinions? Um of the challenges of hiring people is that you don't really get to know the person until you know at least you know 90 days in, because uh in a lot of cases, uh people don't it takes people a while to be comfortable, and so you may actually feel comfortable with a person by the time their internship ends. Um so though again, these are things you want to ask for up front to the extent that you can. Um focus a lot on behaviors.

Uh if you have, for example, front desk staff, chat with the staff afterwards. Like, hey, do you remember that person? Um, how did they behave? How did they present themselves? Were they polite to you?

Uh you obviously want to be very careful about somebody who is impolite to the front desk staff, right? That's definitely not somebody that you want on your team. Um how do they treat you? Ask yourself basic personal questions, again, being aware of your own biases. Uh, but questions like mentally is this a person that would feel okay with being stuck in an airport for like a six-hour layover?

Like, or is this person like uh I don't know that I would want to spend a whole lot of time with this person again, being aware of your own biases and and the your own preferences, because one of the things that tends to happen in hiring is we tend to hire people like us, uh, and that's not necessarily a good thing. We actually want diverse perspectives and opinions. Ask them how they handle interpersonal conflicts. Hey, when you get into a confrontation with uh a friend, how do you productively resolve the confrontation? How do you deal with uncomfortable conversations?

Uh how do you deal with a lack of motivation? Everybody has those days when you're like, uh, I don't want to get out of bed, right? Someone who says, Oh, I never have a problem, is either uh a very very, very unusual person or they're not telling you the truth, because everybody has one of those days sometimes. Ask them how do you motivate yourself? Um, what are the things that you are passionate about professionally?

What are the things that you are interested in personally outside of work? Again, being aware of the boundaries of what's acceptable to ask in interview questions, because there are a whole slew of questions that are uh either inappropriate or flat out illegal to ask. Um, but you can ask uh all sorts of questions about your field too, about marketing. Who are some authors you read? Right?

Who what was the last marketing book you had and what did you take away from it? What marketing blogs do you read? Which marketing uh people do you follow on YouTube or uh what Slack communities are you a part of? And if you get somebody who's like uh none of these things, like okay, you know, for an intern, that's not a deal breaker, it absolutely would be a deal breaker for a full-time employee, but it it will help you find the the gems in the rough, right? Because somebody who is interested in marketing, who is interested in the profession, um, who does read blogs and follow people on YouTube and stuff, that's somebody who's already self-motivated, right?

That's somebody who is uh a self-learner, and those are really good things to ask for. And again, these are things that you need no job experience whatsoever to do. In fact, uh the way many people teach their marketing courses, I've I've guest lectured for a bunch of folks, they encourage their students to actively go out and and subscribe to blogs and newsletters and things. And so if you have somebody who isn't doing that, it's like, okay, did you are you here because you just needed the job or you need the experience, or is this something you're actually interested in? And that's really what you want to find out.

You want to find out, are you here just to punch a clock? Are you genuinely interested in learning more about the profession of marketing? Because again, an internship is not a lifelong commitment by any means. Um and it is supposed to benefit the intern as much as it is the company, uh, through education. So if you are interviewing people who are frankly uninterested in their education, they're not going to be a very good intern.

Uh and they're not going to be a very good marketer either. So identify that hunger for knowledge, for learning how things work, for learning the ropes, for building skills. Uh ask them, have you started or have you completed your Google Analytics certification? Right? Simple things like that.

If they've never heard of it, then they might be somebody who has not necessarily gotten the best education. That should be an opportunity to dig further. And if that person's interested, then say, yeah, you know, while you're here, maybe you should do that. Maybe you should take that examination and that that certification. Because a professional certification is never a bad thing.

So lots of things you can do that are not reliant on work experience. If you have follow-up questions, leave them in the comments box below. Subscribe to the YouTube channel and the newsletter. I'll talk to you soon. Want help solving your company's data analytics and digital marketing problems?

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