Hiring a great candidate isn’t easy; ask any recruiter and even more so hiring a marketing candidate at that! As a result recruiters have a hard time landing that perfect candidate for the firm that they represent. As such even corporates that seeking out such individuals share in the brunt of inefficient employees. Therefore there are, “3 Interview Questions every Recruiter should ask a Marketing Candidate” in an effort to recruit an efficient marketing candidate that you might encounter. So let’s find out what these interesting questions are…

What’s the difference between marketing and selling?

This is probably the most important questions that will help you identify an efficient candidate. This is a common question with mixed answers, as most individuals tend to confuse the two when it comes to the individual roles that each one performs. This confusion then leads to conflict between the two as employees that are part of the sales group tend to be more focused on making the numbers and it is difficult for them to perceive and appreciate the ground work that marketing create. Similarly, a marketing professional will find it difficult to perceive and appreciate the complexity of the steps involved in making a sale. Regardless of this conflict it will affect either party’s productivity of the organisation on the whole.

How would you contribute, if you’ve temporarily been assigned to the sales groups?

This is a nice way to cross check the applicants that you receive and a way to build bonds between sales and marketing groups. And even if this is not your objective, nonetheless you should still pose this question as it is the practical aspect of the previous question, for the candidate. This question will definitely give you an idea as to the kind of personality the candidate has. If you get an answer like, “I’m sure that I’d be good at selling, but an assignment such as this would not be the best use of my talents.” This response suggests that if the candidate is hired then they are likely to have difficulty in creating marketing programs the delivery of products that are useful to the sales teams as well. But the ideal answer would be something like this, “I’d learn everything that I can and then bring that knowledge back to the marketing group to help make it a more effective one.”

Tell me about your brand

This is a bit tricky, for the simple reason that on the surface it provides an opportunity to the candidate to apply and talk about their unique experience in the industry and how they come out to the outside world. All very important aspects for the job profile. This will also highlight whether your candidates priorities are to either help your marketing team to build a stronger brand or to build a personal brand for themselves to advance in their careers. You want to hire someone who defines their personal brand in terms of service, working in a team and helping the company to be a success. A candidate displaying more of a personal brand to be independent is sure to be problematic for corporates. These individuals usually tend not to get along with co – workers and are bound to affect the performance of others.

So there you have it the questions that might just be the key to unlocking doors to catch that perfect candidate which you effortlessly seek but leads to an attempt of futile effort of gathering those hard to get candidates. Now that you have some more information on making a hire, you should probably be implementing it in to your list of strategies to land a perfect hire!  You can also leave your views in our comments section and we’ll be glad to implement them.