Related to Chapter 4 of ‘Fair Dinkum Business’, (Don’t Hire Drongos, Galahs or a Bull in the China Shop), I was recently asked for advice on questions to ask candidates for a Director of Marketing position, a broad role at a startup software company. Here are my suggestions:
- Ask them to bring samples of any creative (branding, advertisement, trade show booth layout, poster design, pamphlet design, datasheet, brochure etc) they’ve driven, done completely or contributed to meaningfully. For some of these, ask the objective, the process, who was involved, how they validated the design/content along the way, and feedback after the material was released. As much as anything, you’re looking at how they went about it in addition to the end result.
- Similarly, ask about demand generation programs – the goals, the process they used to develop the campaign and content, the marketing engines used (social media, blogs, podcasts, SEO/SEM, direct mail, automated email, events etc) and most importantly the results and how they measured these. They should talk about leads, MQLs (marketing qualified leads that pass a scoring threshold), SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads once salesrep verifies the lead is accurate and it looks like a real opportunity exists, Opportunity (once it is past the full qualification typically phase 3 of the sales cycle). Listen for “cost per” and ROMI – return on marketing investment (the holy grail that shows how much revenue attributed to marketing programs against cost of the marketing programs). For B2B and relatively expensive type products, typically cost per would be something like:
- Avg cost per lead ~ $150;
- Avg cost per MQL ~ $1,000;
- Avg cost per Opp ~ $10,000-12,000
- The actual numbers probably aren’t as important as a clear understanding of how these are calculated and what impacts them (program costs, reach, conversion ratios etc)
- Since partner marketing is a big part, drill into any experience with channel marketing – who funded, developed and executed these programs (design, content and execution strategy), how leads were shared/followed through and what were the measurable results and learnings.
- You might also want to drill into product marketing side. Ask for examples of product positioning / repositioning, the objectives, how they went about this, and how they validated and measured impact in the market. You could also them about market research projects and product pricing examples if they will contribute to these.
- Given that you’re looking for someone to build the team typical things re management style, examples of marketing people who were stars and ones who haven’t worked out and how they reacted in each case.
I hope these are useful. Of course there is more to investigate re cultural fit, ethics and work attitude as with any management role. I’d be interested to hear from others regarding their favorite interview questions.