Earlier this year Rand did a Whiteboard Friday video talking about how to get an SEO job. A couple of years ago Rebecca covered the SEOmoz hiring process, with a full re-cap of how Jane became a 'mozzer. What follows is my take on a similar topic, two years later, and a couple of thousand words shorter ;-)
We are in the process of hiring a Search Marketing Apprentice. This post will explain the steps we go through when hiring and what we are looking for at the various stages. Whether you are hiring or job seeking, you will hopefully get something out of what follows.
Don't forget the SEOmoz Marketplace has a list of internet marketing jobs, including our role.
The SEO Job Description
Our SEO hires so far (Lucy and Rob) have been people who had no SEO experience when they started. What I'm going to talk about here is the way we have approached hiring people in order to train them in-house. I'm sure the steps we would take when hiring an experienced person would differ slightly, but since we haven't yet hired an advanced SEO, I'll have to leave that to your better judgment.
For inexperienced hires questions about past successes are not relevant. For much of the interview process you need to be working out who has an aptitude for SEO. The first step of this has got to be defining what you mean by SEO, or at the very least deciding what role the new hire will take on. This is no different from creating a specification for a new piece of software. If you don't know what the program is meant to do, it's impossible to say when it works. Likewise, if you don't know what the new role will entail it will be harder to know when you have found the right person.
We had this exact problem recently and ended up wasting a lot of time interviewing people for a vague job description. Given we didn't really know what we were looking for, we struggled to find the right person. In the end we didn't hire anyone.
I urge anyone who is starting the process of hiring to really tie down the job description and the type of person you need. It will help in every stage of the process.
SEO Aptitude
Discovering aptitude is something that is quite tricky, since you are trying to work out how good someone will be at something they know little about. Our approach has always been to ask fairly broad questions and see where the candidate goes with them. The following are some of the questions we have asked in the past:
- What, in your opinion, are the goals of the search engines?
- Please tell us about two websites that you really like and discuss what makes them so good.
- Give an example of something you've promoted or sold to others.
The right candidate has, in our experience, always managed to provide interesting answers even if they aren't always 100% right. At this stage we're not looking for 100% right - we're looking for someone who has that certain spark and who, with training, will get what SEO is all about. Working out if someone is going to "get it" is incredibly hard. If you are lucky enough to meet someone who does, you just know.
Writing Job Adverts
The type of job advert you write will almost certainly have an effect on the type of person who applies for the job. Having just re-read the advert I wrote, I'm as guilty of this as anyone. It seems that everything we have learnt about writing compelling and interesting content (especially titles) gets thrown out of the window when it's time to write a job ad. Jane wrote about this exact topic when she was looking to rent a flat.
The first draft of my job advert talked about keyword research, linkbuilding, linkbait and all that fun stuff. Lucy then pointed out that we were hiring someone with no experience, and the right person may never have heard of those. Draft 2 was a bit better. Draft 3 came after I'd written this post and realised that I wasn't practicing what I preached!
Lucy said (I promise I didn't pay her) one of the reasons she applied for the job was "the thoroughness of the spec and the fun style of writing in the ad and the questions." Spending time writing a good advert shows you care about the role. The good people out there can probably afford to ignore poorly written or dull adverts. Good adverts lead to good people.
Filtering the Applications
It turns out a lot of people are a) lazy, b) desperate for a job, and c) unrealistic about how good they are (I'm being as diplomatic as possible). The first time we hired we put out adverts asking for a cover letter and a CV. We were literally inundated with responses, of which only 10% passed a threshold of "worth looking at twice." My favourite was the "cover letter" that simply said "here is my CV for looking."
Luckily we learnt that lesson very early on, and since then have had great success in asking people to answer some questions first. Unsurprisingly, we immediately saw a drop in applications and a rise in the average quality of applications. It turns out the people who just widely send their CV to anyone with a vacancy can't be bothered answering a few questions. I was pleasantly surprised to see that a lot of people put significant effort into answering the questions.
Time and time again we have found out more from these questions that we did from reading a CV. Rightly or wrongly I've had a pretty good idea of who we will end up hiring based on the answer to these questions.
SEO Interview Topics
This stage is certainly one where it will differ if you are hiring an experienced person. Like Rand talked about in Whiteboard Friday, a lot of the interview process is trying to work out the personality of your interviewee and how well they will fit in with the rest of the team. The sort of questions you ask should all tie back nicely to the job description you decided upon. If you want a creative person, asking them technical questions isn't going to give them a chance to shine, and at the end of the day your job as an interviewer is to give people the chance to impress.
To Summarise
The people you hire will make or break your company. Good people make a company, bad people don't. I'm not promising that if you follow the above stuff you will find a good person, but I suspect that if you write a dull job advert for a poorly defined role you are more likely going to only find dull people who don't really have a ideal role in mind.
SEO is a relatively new industry and, as yet, career departments don't talk about SEO as an career option. None of the (relatively few) kids I know are growing up wanting to be an SEO - they still favour farming, firemen, or Buzz Lightyear. All of this added together makes finding good people harder than hiring for other roles. On top of that there is the fact that SEO as a whole has a weird mix of marketing and technical skills, which often sit at the opposite end of a fairly long scale.
Finally, brilliantly, it sometimes happens that exceptional people just sorta turn up. If that happens, ignore everything I've just said and take a chance: it'll be well worth it.
So, over to you in the comments. Let's hear what you find works best when hiring. Failing that, funny stories about incredibly bad applications always go down well.
Oi! I had SEO experience - though I grant that most of it was learnt from SEOmoz, and the rest was perhaps a bit too blackhat, but anyway....
I'm glad that you sometimes follow the line of "ignore everything and take a chance" otherwise I probably wouldn't be writing this today.
Other advice for interviewers that I've learnt from Duncan: at the beginning of an interview, tell people that "there is no job for you" and that "we're probaby not going to hire you."
There's no pressure then, and you can all just enjoy 30 minutes shooting the breeze and talking about the web etc. If you give them a job after that, then it's a bonus.
Nice article.
I've been invited (or interviewed) for some well paying in house seo jobs and I felt resistance from designers and IT guys everytime
Also some companies (IMO) were not willing to see things my way so I stay self employed in the business (since 1997) and really have no desire to be in the clutches of big businesses - unless a from the ground up, my way situation were to crop up in Charlotte NC
Then it would have to be a really god deal to tempt me away from working at home ;)
You're hiring? How's living in Seattle London for a dutch guy? Where can I apply?
edit: lol indeed.
lol they are based in London.
There is actually a serious point to you joking about telling people there isn't a job - though that is perhaps taking it to far.
I feel the role of the interviewer is to get the best out of the candidate. Being under little pressure will do that. We always try to lighten the situation early on, so candidates don't feel under pressure.
I think SEOmoz had a good mindset when looking for an entry-level, zero-experience new hire: they wanted someone who "got" the Internet and knew how to write, but didn't necessarily know anything technical or anything about marketing. You can generally teach technical SEO and marketing principles, but you can't teach someone the Web. Eleven years of mindless surfing taught me how the Internet works, as did setting up a very elementary blog and executing amateur hacks of Myspace and, later, Facebook.
You don't want to hire someone who has to muddle through learning how the Web works. Some of the things my technically unsavvy friends don't understand about the Internet is fascinating. You'd spend years making up for that. I like to say that given my career path, all that time messing about on the computer during college was not, in fact, a waste of time. This isn't to say you should look for solely grade-A geeks (I still used IE and hadn't heard of Firefox), but solid net-aptitude is a must.
On the hiring end, I've been party to some horrific interviews and cover letters. To the universities of America (and probably elsewhere): If they cannot form sentences, please do not let them graduate.
I remember a post a bit back were Rand mentioned that SEOmoz invested in people not past job experience.
Our best illustration artist had never used illustrator before she started working with us.
Our most talented UI designer has no prior "formal" design / usability training.
We just brought a new girl on for social media marketing, because she has been using it to socialize so well.
Great Point.
We hired a web designer just because she had an excellent sense of color combination and photo selection, but no prior experience of web design.
Your company is much bigger so dont know about you, but We have had a constant problem of retaining such zero-experience new hire staff.
Once we have trained and the candidate have reached a high level of understanding, he would jump to another company. And we have to go through the training process all over again with new recruit.
This is one of our main worries. We believe we can train people up to be excellent search marketers and they could relatively easily walk into another role.
We are in the process of trying to sort out share options so everyone has ownership of the company. On top of that we think we have managed to create a really fun place to work.
That may not be enough but has worked up until now.
Yes, that is not enough. That's what they think.The idea of Risk involved in share option make them pull back.
Sadly, that is sort of what I did with my old job. Infact I'm mid way through a youmoz post about learning to move on or stay in your pond.
My old job was SO MUCH FUN... but much like that relationship that is "so much fun" it did not have lasting qualities.
Looking forward to your Youmoz post.
Maybe viewing with an different perspectivecan give some insights and solutions.
We were very lucky with our first hire- turned out he had some things we've found crucial to SEO, PPC, and social media work (we do all three, not just SEO):
We didn't throw out our copywriting when writing the Craigslist entry (which is now closed):
SEARCH MARKETING SPECIALIST
Fuel Interactive has an entry-level opportunity in the exploding field of search engine marketing and optimization. You will work directly with the Director of Search Marketing, another Search Marketing Specialist, our Web Analytics Specialist, Account Managers and other team members. Fuel Interactive is a rapidly growing internet marketing agency partnered with one of the top traditional marketing agencies in the Southeast and another long-standing successful technology company. We need a sharp individual interested in on-the-job training and working hard in a quick moving environment. You�ll learn cutting edge internet marketing techniques and tools.
What's the Job Like?One Search Marketing Specialist says, "it's cool working in an innovative industry not everyone knows about." It's not easy work. He says, "I've read and studied more in the last two months than I did in college." Search is always evolving and requires constant learning. But Search Marketing is a growing field. In these times of economic downturn, getting a job in this field is "true job security in troubled times." While employers in other industries are laying people off, Fuel has been hiring like crazy.
Responsibilities and duties include:
* Following up on SEO research, build relationships with other sites, help build links to client sites * Mining of multiple data sources to develop keyword lists * Creating and editing text and URL's for SEO * Gather and organize data/research from various websites to aid in SEO and PPC efforts * Pay Per Click and SEO reporting * Campaign management- on the job training provided * Similar activities for growing Online Reputation Management and Social Media Management programs
Skills needed: * Ability to handle multiple tasks and work independently * Must be attentive to detail, good spelling a must * Proficient with Excel- importing, sorting, cleaning data * Good written and oral communication skills, team player * Ability to prioritize, multi-task and dependably deliver results * Ability to quickly learn new software tools * Analytic and quantitative abilities
Pluses:* Experience with AdWords, Yahoo PPC management, SEO, blogging, social bookmarking, Twitter, Google Analytics, Omniture, Urchin, HTML, CSS, CFM, PHP, ASP * Sense of humor, or just the ability to pretend you have one
---------------------
After a previous lesson, we decided NOT to reply to any resumes or intro letters that contained spelling or grammar errors. If you can't pull it off when representing yourself, you won't be able to for clients or business partners. This criteria narrowed the field dramatically.
We interviewed about four people for the most recent hire- we took the one that showed intelligence, previous experience learning, technology and computer abilities, and sense of humor.
So far so good.
In my past life working in HR we used to automatically throw out any applications that had spelling or grammar errors. It says a lot about someone's willingness to spend the time to represent themselves well. We may have lost some good candidates who made some typing errors, but when you've got so many apps to sift through you've got to use some kind of a filter.
Site note: The guy who put (and I quote) "I have so many skills I'm practically a Skill-Zilla" on his application under "Other Skills" didn't get an interview....but he lives on in infamy to this day so many years later :)
We would tell & prefer the candidates to brief their resume in 1 A4 size page. This way we have to go through only the essential details required.
With around huge bunch of application who has the time to go through 2-4 pages of resume.
Good stuff, and great move hiring Rob - v.creative and interesting guy!
As to hiring, couple of points.
a) dont do the thing that one agency tried to make me do in an interview "heres our website - figure out whats wrong with it, write a report and come back to us" - because the candidate if any good is to busy at other interviews to bother - and also wont do your work for you!
b) A great thing one interviewer did was show me my online profile "ah i see your on seomoz a lot" - it allowed me to trust the interviewer and the company a lot more, that they actually understood SEO etc.
c) Dont do what a certain big UK seo/ppc agency does, ask new graduates for maths tests and if they dont score 85% or above show them the door without an interview...
Yeah...I was in the 11th percentile for math (99 verbal!) on the practice GRE I just took...and then it took me WAY too long to figure out what percentage of people were better than me.
Just kidding.
I don't even want to talk about the math score I got on my GMAT last year :P But during my admissions interview they did say that a high verbal score is a much better indicator of ultimate success than anything else. Just thought I'd share that with you :) Sure did make me feel better about my low math and high verbal scores!
I don't even want to talk about the math score I got on my GMAT last year :P But during my admissions interview they did say that a high verbal score is a much better indicator of ultimate success than anything else. Just thought I'd share that with you :) Sure did make me feel better about my low math and high verbal scores!
I don't even want to talk about the math score I got on my GMAT last year :P But during my admissions interview they did say that a high verbal score is a much better indicator of ultimate success than anything else. Just thought I'd share that with you :) Sure did make me feel better about my low math and high verbal scores!
Thanks for the props.
I must say that Lucy is an awesome Search Marketer, she's just too busy doing great work to be out hobnobbing.
I wonder if the quality of your candidates would go up if you changed the position to:
Secret Search Marketing Apprentice
They could start off practicing the dark side of search marketing as a black hat SEO, and then slowly as they learned what it meant to be a real SEO they would find themselves fighting to bring down the emperor.... and then they'd have to choose between destroying Darth Vader or protecting another SEO.
Now that would be one hell of a job interview.
"This is your father's LinkScape report. This is the weapon of a Search Marketer. Not as clumsy or random as a Yahoo back-link analysis. An elegant weapon, for a more civilized age."
Haha. That sounds a lot like Rob's career progression ;)
Never met Lucy, but Rob was def a great choice to the team as far as i can tell. Hes really creative.
Aw, shucks, you're too kind. Bear in mind that every time we've met has usually been at some kind of seedy pub, but yeah - thanks!
lol - thats not what I mean (drunken convo is never a good indicator) I like the stuff you done with twadle...
and you've not put your new pic up on moz either... slacker :P
We actually advertise our jobs with the college.
We try to be just cryptic enough to get a good amount of interest and informative enough to get weed out lazy.
All of our positions start out part time and we work around class schedules because most of our work can be done anytime.
Interested people phone for an interview.
I have found local serious job seekers are checking the college off campus work board. We fill our vacancies very quickly.
Sounds interesting. So you let them phone to do an additional effort and to avoid that you're just part of a "my-potential-future-employer" mailing list? Or is there another reason why a simple email isn't enough to get an interview?
We go over some of the details of what they will be doing on the phone. We are about half an hour from the college campus so we discuss reliable transportation. Before they come out I want them focused on working as part of a team. We are a bit like a small family, so I have to meet them and let them see what we are about.
I follow Duncan's advice. I am way more interested in their attitude, ambition and personality than I am their experience. If they have an eagerness to learn and a willingness to jump in I am way more willing to give them a shot.
This is not everybody's "end all" job so people do come and go. I have had some stay years some only weeks. The trick is to treat it like a business, not a hobby.
"The trick is to treat it like a business, not a hobby."
Good Point.
I had absolutely no web experience at all when I was hired as an online marketing specialist at my current job, Acro Media. My background is from traditional advertising as an Account Manager. I am soooooooooo happy that my company saw something in me. I was hired to do something that I never knew existed and I absolutely love love love online marketing now.
Hiring people that are passionate about something intellectual seems to have worked out very well for our company thus far. If someone isn't passionate about life and all it has to offer, chances are they won't be passionate about working for you either!
For your request about horrid resumes, I used to work as a secretary for personell, and I handled incoming applications, and would find 3 or 4 identical resumes and search+replaced cover letters for different jobs.
Or the people who would put in their e-mail adress like [email protected] or [email protected]. Like for serious? You can't open up a gmail with your name proper?
Well,
Besing a department head If I have to look the first thing to hire a experienced guy, I would check for his existing online profile. For example, If you searhc for "amish keshwani" in google It will give you all available profile & give you a general idea about my online visibility.
What I felt is being a SEO / Internet Marketing professional, It is also necessary for a candidate to market himself better on the net as it also shows his/her own skills of marketing. So, I would suggest, simply search his/her profile & analyze the result. It will give you few glimpse about his experience & knowldge.
i've always been recruited based on past work.. i keep trying to geta drone just to do "data entry" for me, but every time i about to get someone, somehting happens, (car wreck, death in family, etc..), so i end up getting the work done myself... it has to be done anyways.. so they figure out.. "eh.. he can handle it, why hire someone else."
i've always understood the measure of ROI with an employee is that they generate 3 times what they are paid...
oh, well.. back to maximizing ROI... =)
Hi
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Try it.
I'd love to work in house with a steady gig, but as my best friend pointed out to me...I am not employee material... most employers have an issue if I'd show up around 10am.... :-)
I hear you.
this is why some us have to be business Owners. We make such lousy employees nobody would put up with us.
But in the SEO world, that's not such a bad thing ;)
why is it that the world has no regard for us hardworking night owls? There out to be an optional office hour of 3pm to midnight! :-)
Swing Shift,
My personal fave. The phones stop ringing. I put the head phones on and Rock out while the rest of the world vegs in front of the tube.
Keep this kind of thing up and you'll never be fit to be a worker bee.
One of my favorite tactics in hiring is to point out a flaw in the interviewee and see how they react.
Been thinking recently that there's two approaches that people come into SEO thru - and thats via Marketing - thus they're good with integration and "big thinking" yet weak technically.
And there those that come in via development work, who are strong with the techie skills but weaker in integration, big thinking etc.
So you almost need two lists for a candidate that says - are you techie or marketing based that you're approaching SEO - thus you'll need x & y training and experience...
The good thing about hiring someone with no experience is they don't bring any bad habits with them. A bad seo habit could brake ya.
This is a great field for a recent college graduate. When you say you lack years and years of experience, most of the others in this field do as well. I was just glad I was able to take it up while in college thanks to the copywriting job my company was willing to give a sophomore.
last year, the organisation i work for engaged into an intern-recruitment exercise in the intent to get some help on operational areas where the intern would not required much training, yet bring us a lot of support in terms of admin and stuff.... most of sector teams in the office ended up getting interns, except the Comms dept, where i work... when i started looking into the technicalities of advertising such intern job in France (no schools teach SEO/SEM sort of courses), try and get the best candidate as poss. + post-recruitment training, I changed my mind and decided to continue working on my own without any support. The whole idea of investing my time on recruiting and training someone in the art of SEO and the little guarantees of success just made me panic, so i gave up.... though I would have perhaps approached it in a different way if i had read this post at the time :)
True, its mostly about values and aptitude
Jack
I agree with most of the people in here, I have interviewed a lot of people for internet marketing and experienced that it is easier to work with a complete fresher / or some one with less experience and teach them SEO.
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