Marketing Intern Interview Preparation Guide

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► Mediocre Responses:
☛ I write my blog post in Word and then post it when it’s ready.

► Great Responses:
☛ I write my blog post in Word, add hyperlinks to at least three other pieces of content on our site that we’ve published, and add at least one hyperlink to a third party resource.
☛ I ensure there’s an associated featured image for the post by going to a stock image site.
☛ I always make sure there’s a clear call to action at the end of each post.
☛ For quality control, I make sure at least one other person has proofread it before publishing.
☛ I optimize the title for a target keyword by looking at what terms people are searching for in Google.

Highlights the candidate’s knowledge of the company’s brand.

The answer to this question reveals the candidate's motivations for pursuing this internship position. It's vital to understand what is motivating your applicants so you can determine if they are in for the long haul.

☛ What motivates them to interview for the company
☛ What they plan to learn as an intern
☛ Growth potential

I find that your company is innovative and values continuous learning, and my goal is to work in a forward-thinking company. Companies that consistently innovate often lead in their industries and constantly grow. I value continuous learning and want to grow as a prolific business leader with an innovator. I believe your company and this position can help me to achieve this.

This sample interview question should be answered as truthfully as possible, utilizing a Problem-Action-Result (PAR) story. This technique requires you to speak of a specific incident in which your trait was utilized. Your story should be under a minute, and hit all three points succinctly.

There are a couple of points you’ll want to hit when answering this question:

First, set up the situation that you’ll be describing and include the task given to you (e.g., “In my last job, I was assigned the task of managing the schedule for 20 employees”). After this brief introduction, go into detail about your actions and their results (e.g., “I standardized the process and reduced turnover by 20%”).

Draw on your strengths, and respond with attributes or experiences that make you unique. You should have studied the company’s profile prior to the interview, so use that knowledge to tailor your answer.

Again, you should be as honest as possible during this question. Both parties should have a realistic view of the other’s expectations. If you hate stress, but the job you’re interviewing for is extremely fast-paced, neither party will be happy in the long run.

Questions like this are given to candidates as intentional curve balls. They are the most asked interview questions for STEM related positions. Most of the time, you won’t be expected to give an accurate answer. The interviewer mainly wants to see how you problem solve and think through unique situations.

These are common among jobs that require creative thinking, so be prepared to show your brain power. If you’re blindsided by one of these questions, do your best to stay calm and formulate a best-guess answer instead of just saying, “I don’t know.”

Interviewers usually pose this question because they may be interested in knowing how serious you are in pursuing a given academic or professional field. In an internship context, this question should compel you to dig down and think about your career interests in the long term: Are you planning to go back to graduate school? Are you interested in gaining a few years of actual real-world experience? Would you like to work as a full-time staff member of an organization similar to the one you are applying for? There is no “right answer” but you do have to provide one that is insightful in that you have a plan to keep building your professional skills after your internship. Who knows, maybe your organization would like to know if you would be available for a permanent position after you complete your internship. And in that case, how you answer this becomes all the more important.

☛ Why it’s important to ask this: What drives a person to invest their time and effort into creating content? Is it anecdotal insight such as a hallway conversation with a sales person—which may be a good place to begin investigating an idea, but not the final driver for its execution? Or is creation more data-driven, such as through Google Analytics or insight from a content marketing platform?
☛ What to look out for: Be wary if your candidate indicates their past content development was primarily driven by what their boss told them to write about; or they have no understanding of what goes into content strategy. A follow-up question could be: “Describe your company’s content strategy, including key steps in its development.”

► Mediocre Response:
☛ Usually I just know if it’s done well or not.

► Great Response:
☛ I look at Google Analytics after a few days to see how many page views it has received.
☛ I search on Google for the target keyword I was optimizing for to see if it ranked in the first page.
☛ I look at the Twitter counter on the post to see how many tweets cite this post.

Reveals the candidate’s multitasking skills.

The answer to this question demonstrates if your candidate has potential to work for your company long-term. It's crucial to identify this because you are investing resources in the candidate and can save time hiring candidates who are already trained for the position.

☛ Potential for continued work at the company
☛ Application of learned skills
☛ Where and how skills will be applied

After this internship, I plan to complete my final semester in college and apply leadership, project management, communication and technical skills that I'll gain in my academic, volunteer and extracurricular activities. My plans after graduation include pursuing a career as a business analyst for your company.

This can be a difficult question if you haven’t thought about its answer ahead of time. Ponder on feedback you’ve received recently, both positive and negative.

You want to be honest, and now is a time to show more of your personality: Do people laugh at your jokes? Do they turn to you for advice? Are you the life of the party, or a more laidback observer?

Because you won’t have your boss/friends/co-workers beside you while you answer this question, you do have some leeway, but use caution. If you’re hired, your new employer will want to see the sense of humor you talked about in your interview. Any lie or exaggeration you tell will always come to light.

Why it’s important to ask this: In order to create great content, you have to know how to discern which content is doing well in the first place.
What to look out for: There are many answers to this question, so this helps tease out what type of content marketer the candidate is. Here are some possible answers:
☛ “Traffic”
☛ “Repeat visitors”
☛ “Retweets and likes”
☛ “Search engine ranking”
☛ “Comments”
☛ “Leads and sales”
☛ “It depends”

The more they name off and can sensibly explain the importance of, the better.

► Mediocre Responses:
☛ I publish my content on WordPress, and then tweet it out as well.

► Great Responses:
☛ I publish the post on our blog using WordPress.
☛ I then schedule a minimum of four tweets at different times of the day in HootSuite.
☛ I email coworkers to retweet and share my post as well.
☛ I ask the demand generation team to include it in the next email newsletter to our database.

The answer to this question reveals what your candidates expect to get out of this position and what they think the work will involve. This provides insight into whether you can fulfill the interviewee's expectations so that neither of you wastes time.

☛ Realistic goals
☛ Goals the candidate expects to achieve
☛ Whether goals align with tasks candidate is expected to accomplish

My expectations involve being able to learn how to identify business problems, how to choose strategies to address these issues, and how to plan and execute the tactics needed to achieve these goals. By learning this, I can gain real-world experience of what it takes to drive business operations forward.

If you haven’t had any difficult experiences at work, respond as such, but branch out to other areas of your life. For example, if you volunteer and had a challenging experience while doing that, talk about it.

Interviewers want to gauge how you react to difficult circumstances, so make sure you use the STAR method to share an experience of some sort with them. You want to have an answer for almost every question an interviewer throws your way, so think outside the box.

This one places the focus on the employer. Chances are you have applied for internships at other organisations too – the interviewers suspect this and want to gauge how serious you are about their opportunity and how likely you are to take it up if they offer it to you (so they won’t have to go through the interview process again with someone else).

Your reasons need to show that you have looked into the company beyond a quick read of the ‘about us’ section on its website and that you and the employer are a good match. What do they specialise in and how does it relate to your career aims or career interests? What are they striving to achieve and how does this relate to your own values? Always back up claims about your own values with evidence. For example, you might want to draw a link between the company’s aim to improve lives through its healthcare technology and your desire to help improve lives through your work. A credible answer would give an example of how you have pursued this passion/interest already, such as volunteering or charity work.

The answer to this question helps you gauge the candidate's research skills. It's crucial that candidates are aware of what's going on in the industry so they can make better business decisions, and research skills can help them identify these issues.

☛ Threats and opportunities identified
☛ New or innovative concepts
☛ Methods of research

I noticed that live-streaming is picking up as a way to engage audiences in business. Content marketing is a must nowadays for any business to generate leads, and live video content marketing can quickly demonstrate how to use a service or product to engage audiences with exclusive content. I believe this is an innovative opportunity your business can leverage to engage your audiences and generate leads.

Tests the candidate’s knowledge of social media best practices.

► Mediocre Responses:
☛ My manager tells me what I should write about and gives me an outline.
☛ I look at what’s trending and pick an interesting topic.

► Great Responses:
☛ I keep a backlog of keywords that people are searching for in Google related to my target topic, and create posts based on the backlog.
☛ I set up Google News alerts and a feed reader to look at which topics are trending in the news that relate to my topic area. I come up with spins on those topics to newsjack those stories.
☛ I regularly ask the sales team what questions their prospects are asking, and use the responses as fodder for my next post.

Any question that relates to your family, race, religion, gender, or age are illegal. The interviewer should know not to ask these questions, but if you get them, you should know how to respond.

You’re not required to answer, and can steer the conversation in a different direction: “I’m not comfortable discussing that topic, but I do have a question about your management structure. Can we discuss that further?”

If they pressure you for an answer, then that company is not somewhere you want to work. If they can’t be honest in the interview process, there are probably more things they handle illegally as well!

☛ Describe a time you had to work on a team project. What was your role?
☛ How do you prioritize different projects / assignments you have to complete at the same time?
☛ Describe a time you had to give a presentation.
☛ Did you ever quit a project? Why?

☛ Are you familiar with our brand?
☛ Who do you think our customers are?
☛ What’s the primary difference between marketing and sales?
☛ What components make up an effective digital campaign?
☛ What trends are gaining traction in digital marketing?
☛ Describe the relationship between content marketing and SEO.
☛ How does social media support content marketing?
☛ Talk about your experience with mobile marketing.
☛ Are you familiar with market analysis software? Mention any tools you have used before.