Director Communication Interview Preparation Guide

This is a slightly mean but actually very manageable question about search engine optimisation (SEO), designed to trip up charlatans. If knowledge of SEO is on the job description, don't be satisfied with waffle about keywords and page rank.

This question refers to two big changes to the workings of the Google search algorithm in the last year or so. These are the 'Panda' and 'Penguin' updates. So this question will tease out whether they keep up-to-date with search engine optimisation (SEO).

In short, Panda aimed to reward sites with quality content, and to punish sites with low quality and duplicate content. The Penguin update aimed to tackle sites that manipulate search engines to rank more highly than they deserve to be ranked. This includes tactics like stuffing pages with keywords, or obtaining links from disreputable websites in an attempt to pretend that a website is seen as useful.

We're looking for technical skills, strategic direction, problem solving, stakeholder management, expectation management, and a drive to learn from problems and improve processes. Don't hesitate to ask them to frame their answer differently if it's not making sense.

This question isn't coming from a particular angle, but should hopefully see how they combine problem solving, instincts, data, initiative and creativity, as well as their ability to deal with uncertainty.

Coming up with new and effective ways to market a product in such a tight economy is a tough challenge and these days customers have more power than ever. It is getting more difficult for marketing initiatives to effectively meet these new customer demands. Keep these and other factors in mind when tackling this question, relate your personal experience of the challenges you have encountered and discuss the creative ways in which you handled them.

In times of economic strain, this question is most relevant for a marketing professional. As marketing is one of the most important functions within a company, when finances are tight a marketing budget, which may once have been limitless can be squeezed down to close to nothing. This is yet another area which will require a creative answer that also highlights your planning and ambition in terms of working under pressure.

Also, the best way to answer questions about the future is to focus on accomplishments of the past. In other words, when asked about how you would deal with possible future scenarios, refer to your past accomplishments. Your answers should focus on successful campaigns with statement such as, "While I was with my previous company I initiated both low-cost lead generation strategies and several viral marketing campaigns using an almost inexistent budget to boost profits by 200%."

This question may be followed by an enquiry on how you went about launching these campaigns. This is an excellent opportunity to elaborate on additional skills and impress the interviewer with your knowledge of the industry.

Do they care about their field? Are they excited by it and its possibilities? Hopefully you'll sense some in their eyes as they answer this question.

This question also probes whether they have their ear to the ground. As a follow-up question you could ask: What makes for good content or a good digital campaign?

If you're doing digital communications, you'll probably be involved with content and content management systems. Hopefully your candidate will have used a few and have been paying sufficient attention to prefer some over others, and have intelligent reasons for doing so.

Do their points suggest an awareness of the strategic issues at play in choosing a CMS? Issues like security, updating, the availability of developers to work on a particular platform, data liberation, and open source will hopefully be raised.

Be specific when answering questions about your accomplishments with other companies. By simply stating, "I ran several online marketing campaigns" does not adequately show what you can do for the company.

A more appropriate answer would be: "I started a social media campaign that used targeted advertising systems to market the company's services to youth in North America." In order to elaborate - this will further project your knowledge of different campaigns - use numbers that support the project such as, "Within three financial quarters, sales increased by 427% and brand recognition vastly improved by 10% within the target demographic."

Provide an example of a marketing campaign (either your own or someone else's) that you consider to have been very successful.

As mentioned above, marketing demands a lot in terms of creativity. When answering questions such as this, it is important to make sure you include as much creative thinking in your response as there was in the actual project. When discussing a campaign that you felt was successful, make sure to include why you feel it was a success, what contributed to making it a success and point out key tactics that you can identify with, which made the campaign successful.

Hopefully you'll have some idea about what could be improved with your digital presence before the interview. If you don't have any expertise in house, I'd recommend jumping on to a platform like Sparked and asking the volunteers there for their opinion before the interview. The community there is very helpful with challenges like this, and will give you some good ammunition.

There are lots of things that could be wrong with your digital presence. Perhaps the website displays horribly on tablets, maybe the twitter presence is more marketing spam than useful, engaging material. Perhaps the branding is sloppy, the accessibility is imperfect, or the tone is all wrong. Maybe the digital communications are focusing on the wrong things.

Whilst the substance of the answer to this question is important, also evaluate how it is articulated. Is this someone who will be able to diplomatically deal with stakeholders across the organisation?
Does it feel like they'd focus on the core issues, or get lost in vanity projects or sideshows?

When answering this question make sure to show how cultural, social, personal and psychological factors all impact consumer behaviour. Provide an example of a marketing campaign or project you developed and how you used these four key factors to develop and optimise your project.