Nov 16 2023
10 Tips For Mastering SEO Interviews: A Guide From A Hiring Manager via @sejournal, @HelenPollitt1

I have interviewed many people for SEO roles during my time as a manager.

I can say that certain mistakes are made during interviews that can easily be avoided.

Unfortunately, all of those generic “top tips for interviewing” guides out there don’t tend to address them due to the specificity of SEO interviews.

During the heat of an interview, it can be easy to lose focus, ramble, and appear unsure of your SEO knowledge.

If you are looking for a job currently or want to brush up on your interviewing skills for your next opportunity, take a look at these SEO interview-specific tips.

I’ve approached them from the perspective of a hiring manager who has seen her fair share of probably great candidates lose out on a role due to a bad interview.

1. Research The Role

This may sound like an obvious tip, but you’d be surprised how many people will turn up to an interview with little knowledge of what they are interviewing for.

If you are in the position where you are being interviewed for an SEO role, this can be even more important. Our industry is a multi-faceted one; “SEO manager” means something different at every company.

It can be obvious when a candidate has been referred to the role through a recruiter who doesn’t really understand what an SEO professional does.

If you are in a position where the job has been explained to you by the recruiter, make sure you do a bit of further research yourself.

In general, it’s a good idea to check the following;

  • What are the key skills the company requires for the role?
  • Does it lean toward any particular SEO focus, e.g., local SEO, technical SEO, or digital PR?
  • What is the current team structure – is this the only SEO pro or one of many in the company?
  • Does the role report to a manager with SEO experience, or will this role be the most senior SEO pro in the business?

In addition, you may want to find out:

Why Is The Role Available?

In your initial conversations with recruiters or contacts at the company you have applied to, try to ascertain why the role is available.

Is it a new role due to expansion, new markets, or new clients? This will help equip you during the interview to answer questions from the right perspective.

For example, if you are asked about a time when you have successfully completed a technical campaign, and you know from conversations that the role is coming about due to the company’s expansion into Europe, it would give you the right context to talk about that tricky hreflang tag implementation or French keyword research that you had success with.

Who Has It Already?

Is there someone else in the company that does this role already? Are you expanding the team or taking over from an incumbent?

If so, see if you can find out some information about what sort of experience they have. This might mean looking on the company’s website for their bio or even looking on LinkedIn.

Be respectful, though; not everyone wants a ton of new LinkedIn contacts from people who are after their job!

Are You Taking Over From An Agency?

If the role you are applying for is at a brand, you may find it useful to identify if the role has been created due to the company bringing it in-house.

For example, is the work this new employee would be doing replacing that of an external agency?

If so, it would be prudent to know so you don’t end up talking about how much you would want to rely on agencies for support if you land the job.

What Industry/Clients?

One of the most important pieces of research you can do is around the industry, or industries, the company operates in.

If you are applying for a role at an agency, their website is a good place to start to see what industries they work in.

They may specialize in one vertical, for example, or their case studies may show a variety. This knowledge will allow you to tailor your answers with their target industries in mind.

2. Reach Out To The Hiring Manager To Ask Questions Ahead Of Time

Some hiring managers love this approach. Others do not.

Ask your recruitment contact at the company if the hiring manager is happy to take questions before the interview before you go outside of the prescribed hiring process!

I’ve had some great conversations with candidates via them reaching out on LinkedIn or through SEO groups we’re a part of.

It has allowed both me and them to get an idea of whether they might be right for the role before they go into the trouble of applying.

3. Prepare 5 Examples Of Successful Projects

During the pressure of the interview, it’s easy for your experience and knowledge to fly out of your mind.

A good tip for anyone interviewing for an SEO role is to write down five examples of clients or projects they’ve worked on that directly relate to the skills and requirements listed in the job advert.

This has saved my bacon personally when interviewing for SEO roles!

It can help with your confidence when answering interview questions and will likely result in you providing an answer that is clear and directly applicable to the question.

This will help you to avoid the dreaded situation where waffling takes over!

4. Be Specific And Use An Answer Structure

Be specific when you are answering questions. It is horrible as an interviewer to have to dig through a verbose answer for the piece of information you are hoping is there.

I’ve had candidates answer in such a confusing manner that I’ve struggled to identify if they answered the question or not. This can often result from nerves or not fully understanding the question. It doesn’t have to happen, though.

There are several techniques for structuring answers to interview questions. A well-known one is “STAR,” which stands for “situation,” “task,” “action,” and “result.”

It allows a candidate to ensure their answer includes the key details needed.

Whichever one you choose, make sure you are picking up on the intent behind the interviewer’s question.

Remember, interviewers often have no training in interviewing skills. We can be quite bad at it! It is okay to ask clarifying questions if you’re unsure of what the interviewer is trying to ascertain.

Once you are clear about what skill or experience they are trying to uncover, you can directly tailor your example to showcase the relevancy.

This is particularly important during SEO interviews because the projects we might want to use to showcase our experience can be complex, containing many stakeholders, activities, and results.

Using an answer structure can make sure you include everything that is pertinent to the question.

Choosing a technique and practicing answering questions with it can help you overcome the initial panic during an interview. It will enable you to provide clear and structured answers.

5. Be Prepared For Not Having An Answer

You may be asked to give an example of a time when you have carried out an SEO task that you simply haven’t done before.

Don’t worry. No one matches a job description 100%.

What I look for during interviews, especially with candidates who are new to the industry, is their ability to think around a problem.

This is especially the case if they haven’t directly encountered a situation before.

Some of my best hires have been people who have said, “I haven’t dealt with that before, but this is probably the approach I would take.”

You can use examples from case studies you have read about or draw from presentations you’ve seen at conferences. You can talk about how you would go about finding an answer to that issue or resources that you might use for help.

SEO is an incredibly broad discipline. It’s unlikely you have encountered every SEO issue out there! However, theoretical knowledge applied well can be just as effective as experience.

Draw on your knowledge and understanding of a situation if you can’t draw on your experience of it.

6. Consider Your Answers To Probable Questions

You are likely to encounter similar questions across SEO interviews.

Typically, you will be asked to give examples of times you have worked well with stakeholders or solved a complex technical issue.

You may be asked about a time when a project did not go to plan and how you handled it.

If you have been interviewing for a while, you might want to list some of the questions you notice you get asked often. Practice those answers. Ask your wider SEO network to help you refine them.

There will always be nuances to how interviewers interview, but there is a limit to how off the wall the questions are likely to be and still be relevant to SEO!

7. Don’t Criticize A Potential Colleague’s Work

Sometimes, interviewers will ask candidates to audit their company’s or their client’s website. You may choose to do so unprompted.

Be careful if you are likely to be pointing out errors or missed opportunities with a site someone on the interview panel may be working on.

As we all know, there are often internal processes and problems that impact an SEO pro’s ability to fix glaring issues.

When answering these types of questions, just be aware that you don’t have the full context of why the hreflang tags are missing, or there are terrible cannibalization issues.

Don’t be afraid to highlight these improvements and opportunities; just do it sensitively. Lean on the side of caution.

Assume that you are not uncovering some previously undiscovered technical issue. Presume that the SEO expert in charge of that client’s account isn’t lazy or incompetent.

Even if you are correct and they have missed an issue or made a mistake, no SEO pro wants their work criticized on a call with their superiors. Instead, take an empathetic approach.

Don’t forget, it’s not just your practical SEO knowledge that is being tested at the interview, but your approach and team fit also.

8. Tailor Your Answers To Who Is In The Room

It is a good idea to be aware of who is interviewing you generally, not just so you don’t accidentally criticize their work but also so you can tailor your answers appropriately.

There is a big difference between being interviewed by someone with specialist SEO knowledge and without. It is likely that you will be interviewed by both during a company’s hiring process.

If your interviewers are SEO pros themselves, you can afford to go more into the technical details of your experience.

You can discuss the impact a content pruning exercise had on the crawling and indexation of your site. Or explain how you handled a tricky website migration. You can discuss these with some assumption that they will know what you are talking about.

If your interviewers are not au-fait with SEO, you may want to focus more on the business impact your changes made.

They may not want to hear about how going from client-side to server-side rendering impacted the visibility of your pages in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

They may be more interested in how you brought stakeholders along on your project and the impact on revenue your changes had.

You may need to explain the activity in a bit more detail than you would with another SEO.

9. Demonstrate Your Desire To Learn And Develop

Our industry is one that is changing a lot. One thing I tend to look for when interviewing SEO candidates is their attitude to learning and development.

I will ask questions to see how they solidify and expand their knowledge.

Good answers will often show that a candidate takes responsibility for their own learning and growth.

Everyone learns differently, but good SEO professionals are always trying to learn more about their discipline.

Whether you are an avid reader of case studies or listen to all the SEO podcasts out there, just be ready to explain your process for keeping up with industry developments.

10. Use It As An Opportunity To Learn About The Company And Refine Your Choices For Your Career

You’ll often hear it said that interviews are just as much about the candidate deciding if the company is right for them as it is the other way around. In SEO, this is extremely important.

You could be fighting a battle to get your recommendations implemented. You may be faced with strong stakeholder opinions and push-back.

Whilst you are interviewing with a company, use it as an opportunity to understand what level of SEO-literacy the team has.

  • Is SEO something that is new to the company, and your focus will be on training and selling in the benefits once you join?
  • Are they already aware of the importance of SEO and have been working towards a goal for a while?
  • If so, are your ideas going to be welcomed, or will you be expected to just continue your predecessor’s work?

Questions you could ask during your interview include:

  • “What is your company’s current approach to SEO?”
  • Or, “What importance does the senior management team give to SEO as a growth lever?”

The answers will help you determine whether the issues and opportunities at that company are the sort you want to face.

Conclusion

SEO interviews can feel overwhelming.

There are so many aspects to SEO that it can feel impossible to showcase your strengths in all of them.

Take some time to review the above tips and practice your interviewing where possible.

Most mistakes in interviews seem to be the result of nerves. Good interviewers will understand that.

Do yourself a favor and prepare for these interviews so that you can reduce the nerves as much as possible and feel confident in your ability as an SEO professional.

More resources: 

Featured Image: fizkes/Shutterstock

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Nov 6 2023
LinkedIn Report: Hiring Still Slow & Career Confidence Wanes via @sejournal, @martinibuster

LinkedIn Global Talent Trends report shows that hiring trends continue a stubborn downward trend and employee confidence in their careers are also generally trending negatively.

Job posts that mention AI and generative AI receive higher rates of job applications over those that do not.

The report emphasizes the importance talent acquisition efficiency and keeping an eye on employee retention strategies.

Worldwide Hiring Trends Continue To Decline

A sample of twenty countries shows that year over year hiring rates continue to decline.

However the rate of decline is less than the previous year, offering some hope that a positive trend may be just around the corner.

The data is interpreted by a LinkedIn analysis as an indication that employers are taking a cautious approach to hiring while evaluating how best to use and develop current talent.

Todd Friesen (LinkedIn profile), a digital marketing executive with over 20 years of experience who is a recent casualty of a round of layoffs shared what it’s like to be a job seeker today.

“The biggest problem job hunting right now is the incredible mismatch of job hunters to open positions, particularly at the senior level.

Thanks to the never-ending tech layoffs you routinely see job postings that show hundreds if not thousands of applicants the day after they launch.

Nobody is looking at all those resumes. Standing out in that crowd is nearly impossible.

You need a network and recommendations. The blind job application is practically doomed, compounded by the fact that there are less jobs available.”

According to LinkedIn’s chief economist Karin Kimbrough:

“I’m looking at this period as a gentle rebalancing in the labor market – meaning employers are hiring, but at a more cautious pace, and employees are staying put for longer.”

Jobs Mentioning AI Receive Greater Responses

Job posts on LinkedIn that mention AI or Generative AI received a 17% higher job application growth during the past two years over job posts that do not mention AI.

The LinkedIn report commented on what this means:

“As for the popularity of job posts mentioning AI, candidates are savvy.

They’re showing they want to go where opportunities are.

So I would consider it a requirement for most companies to share at least a basic roadmap of their AI strategy in job posts to keep up with the market.”

Rate Of Job Seeking Intensifies

Perhaps a reflection of the tighter labor market, a sample of eleven countries shows an increase in the rate at which job seekers have been applying for jobs.

LinkedIn published the following rates of change in year-over-year number of job applications filed by job seekers.

Increase In Rate Of Job Seekers Applying For Jobs

  • United Kingdom +23%
  • United States +18%
  • France +17%
  • Singapore +17%
  • Australia +16%
  • Germany +15%
  • Netherlands +15%
  • Canada +13%
  • Italy +11%
  • India +8%
  • United Arab Emirates +4%

The LinkedIn analysis sees this as an intensification of job-seeking efforts.

These trends may be a signal that job seekers might want to consider putting their best effort into job applications and resumes (aka CV in the UK).

LinkedIn advises that talent acquisition teams need to focus on efficiency in this kind of job seeking market.

An analysis by the LinkedIn VP of Talent Acquisition, Erin Scruggs, suggests making sure the talent acquisition team is up for the challenge.

Erin Scruggs offered these thoughts:

“How do recruiters efficiently find the candidates who have the skills, knowledge, and motivations that match their company’s needs?

Hoping that hiring managers and interview teams know how to assess talent can be a losing strategy.

Educating and training will lead to the best outcomes.

I’d recommend that TA leaders take a magnifying glass to both their hiring principles and recruiting processes with an eye towards alignment and consistency across the organization.”

Career Development Confidence On A Downward Slope

Perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising that worldwide career development confidence is generally trending downward in a year over year comparison.

That trend was not across the board, with Japan, Brazil and UK showing higher rates of career development confidence.

YOY Improvement in Career Development Confidence

  • Japan +18
  • Brazil +8
  • UK +1

LinkedIn advised employers to help their employees visualize what their career prospects are at the company by helping them identify skills they want to learn and offer opportunities to acquire them.

Statistics published in the report show that companies that invest in career development have a 15% higher mobility rate within the organization.

LinkedIn advises:

“A first step is to show employees what career development at your company looks like – through any number of programs, like job shadowing, rotations, or sharing internal-mobility stories. This can both further personal career development and start to build organizational resilience and agility.”

Employee retention is recognized as important to an organization.

The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) published the following reason why employee retention and development is important:

“By managing for employee retention, organizations will retain talented and motivated employees who want to be a part of the company and are focused on contributing to the organization’s overall success.

This leads to increased performance, productivity, employee morale, and quality of work, and reduces turnover and employee-related problems.”

Takeaways

The LinkedIn report documents a continued downward trend that appears to be slowing down. It highlights a gloomy outlook by currently employed on future career prospects within a company but even here it’s not a universally shared outlook because employees in some countries continue to have a positive outlook.

Job posts that mention AI tend to attract more applicants over those that don’t, perhaps reflecting current opinions that AI is the future of work.

LinkedIn recommends employers consider employee retention strategies and creating efficiency in talent acquistion.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Roman Samborskyi

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Oct 18 2023
8 Ways To Future Proof Your SEO Career In A Fast-Changing Industry via @sejournal, @HelenPollitt1

“SEO is dead!” We hear again, for what seems like the 20th time this year.

“No one is using Google anymore, they’re all using TikTok for searches!”

“Generative AI in the SERPs is going to steal all our clicks!”

“It’s impossible to prove the worth of SEO in today’s cookie-less world!”

There’s a lot of fearmongering going around the search industry. A lot of doom and gloom.

With a backdrop of cost-of-living rises and employment markets slowing down, it can feel risky to have a career in SEO.

There are indeed a lot of changes on the horizon in how SEO pros work and prove worth.

However, it’s definitely far from the doomsday scenario that is doing the rounds on social media right now.

What Is Likely To Change In The Near Future That Could Impact SEO Roles

There are some key changes on the horizon that may well impact the day-to-day role of an SEO pro.

Artificial Intelligence And Large Language Models (LLMs)

AI has been a buzzword for the past year, but what impact might it realistically have on an SEO pro’s job?

Generative AI In Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)

Whilst other industries fear that humans may be replaced by AI, we have the added concern that our entire industry could be wiped out.

If search engines are replacing ranked third-party content with their own AI-generated content, where is the need for SEO professionals?

AI Means We Are Expected To Achieve More For Less

Many companies are looking at ways to scale back on operating costs by introducing AI to replace functions and outputs.

The SEO industry has always been quick to automate processes where possible, but it still requires an SEO pro’s knowledge and skills to create the automation.

With AI technology freely available, could non-SEO pros use the technology to replicate the knowledge of an SEO professional?

Other Search Platforms

Google-owned search properties might not be the most popular search destination forever.

Searchers Becoming More Aware Of The Impact Of Using The Bigger Search Platforms

This is something that perhaps hasn’t been discussed enough.

We know that Gen Z is becoming ever more conscious of the social and environmental impact of their actions.

This could soon impact their choice of search engine.

For example, the environmental impact of running the huge servers needed to power a search engine like Google or Bing is not inconsequential. We may well see this generation opting for a more environmentally conscious search engine like Ecosia to offset this.

We are also seeing more people understanding how they are being tracked online and desiring more anonymity when searching.

Audience Using Other Platforms To Search

TikTok users staying on the platform to search for advice, products, and more instead of going to a traditional search engine was big news this year.

Clicks that would previously be attributed to organic search are now being counted as social media visits.

Proving The Worth Of SEO

With increasing emphasis on budgets, consolidation, and automation, we need to be able to prove the worth of an SEO professional’s skill set as much as ever.

Not only may fewer search users get counted as organic traffic due to their use of other platforms to conduct searches, but the changing attribution models in tools like Google Analytics 4 means conversions are being attributed elsewhere, too.

On the face of it, Google Analytics 4’s “data-driven attribution model” seems to downplay the value of organic search in the customer journey.

For example, a GA4 report I saw attributed 21% of the value of a conversion to organic search and 79% to paid search.

This is despite the customer journey being 20 organic search visits followed by one paid search visit.

More visit data is being lost now that consent to use tracking cookies is a legal requirement in many countries worldwide.

As a result, it is increasingly difficult to prove the efficacy of SEO.

Future-proofing Our Careers In Light Of Changes

So how do we ensure that our roles as SEO pros keep up with the changing times and remain useful to an organization?

The following eight tips are designed to help mitigate the risk to our careers that many are fearing.

1. Communicate The Need For SEO Skills More Than Ever

One of the reasons this is such a fraught time for many SEO professionals is the idea that things are changing so quickly.

The use of AI in the SERPs has seemingly happened overnight. With it, the real estate on the SERPs for organic listings is getting increasingly smaller, and the walled gardens of the search engines are getting larger.

You could (and should) argue, however, that this just means the need for red-hot SEO pros is growing. As long as organic search listings remain, then the competition to appear in those slots will remain.

The need for a strong SEO strategy will remain.

The clicks to our websites from organic search results might decrease, but brands will still want to be cited in generative AI answers. They will still want to be the ones taking up whatever organic real estate is left.

That responsibility will remain firmly with the SEOs.

Start talking to your organizations about these changes and reinforce the importance of SEO in the advent of generative AI taking over the SERPs.

2. Demonstrate Where Generative AI Won’t Be Used

Another point to emphasize when talking to stakeholders about SEO is that there will be some areas where generative AI won’t appear much in the SERPs.

Consider Google’s own words:

 “There are some topics for which SGE is designed to not generate a response. On some topics, there might simply be a lack of quality or reliable information available on the open web.

For these areas – sometimes called “data voids” or “information gaps” – where our systems have a lower confidence in our responses, SGE aims to not generate an AI-powered snapshot.”

Look at your own industry and consider where this might apply – for example, high-risk YMYL scenarios or where there isn’t sufficient data. This will likely remain an open opportunity for organic search.

Start having these discussions with key stakeholders now to help assure them of the need for continued SEO strategy.

3. Learn AI Prompting

Embrace AI rather than fearing it. Practice and refine prompt creation.

Get used to AI being a part of your job function.

If the world goes the way the pessimistic corners of the internet have predicted, then jobs may fall to AI.

However, using it within your role as an SEO expert means you will be ready to demonstrate how AI makes you more efficient, freeing up your time for the aspects it can’t replace.

4. Demonstrate Where AI Can’t Take Over

Although AI will be very useful in carrying out SEO processes, there will always be examples where it can’t take over a human’s job entirely.

Core to this is that SEO has a lot of moving parts.

At any one time, an SEO professional will need to be devising a strategy, taking into account the complexity of the website, industry, and competitors. They will need to be prioritizing budgets and resources to ensure the right work happens at the right time.

There will be liaising with stakeholders to get buy-in and sign-off. There will be problem-solving with developers to find a solution that works for both them and SEO.

Although AI may be able to assist with parts of this – or even attempt all of it to a degree – it’s unlikely it will be of a level sufficient to replace an SEO pro’s role.

5. Transfer Skills To Other Search Engines

Consider broadening your experience with search engines like Ecosia and DuckDuckGo.

As SEO pros, we often get caught up in focusing our efforts on just the main search engines for our region.

Although there will be similarities in how they rank content, they are not identical.

You may want to start experimenting to find out what works well with these more specialist search engines.

Get familiar with the differences in their SERPs and any nuances that differ from how your industry’s more popular search engines operate.

Keep an eye on how your target demographics are responding to issues like data privacy and environmental impact.

6. Start Applying Your Skills Beyond Traditional Search Platforms

Beyond search engines, consider learning how to optimize for other platforms with search functionality, like social media and industry review sites.

For example, the skills developed as an SEO pro put you ahead of the curve when understanding how Facebook’s algorithm responds to content.

They will also put you in a great position to dominate Amazon’s product listings.

Build up your practical experience of optimizing for other types of search functionality. For example, your industry might rely on visibility in TripAdvisor.

Seek out opportunities in your current role, or look at personal projects that give you experience in ranking with different platforms’ algorithms.

7. Widen Your Impact Beyond Marketing

Look for opportunities to demonstrate your skills acquired through SEO in other business departments.

For example, understanding how search engines work can make you a helpful advisor for the team looking to perfect your website’s internal search function.

You will understand code to a degree that many non-developers do not.

Your skills in balancing the needs of users against the needs of the search engines will mean you are likely to be very pragmatic in your approach to recommending website optimizations.

Start seeking opportunities to broaden your impact across the business.

8. Look Beyond Traffic Metrics To Demonstrate Results

As SEO pros, we have a history of focusing on metrics that don’t necessarily show the true value of our work. However, the core metrics we all (mostly) agree on, like impressions and sessions, may become less impressive.

As the search engines provide more answers within the SERPs, or more people turn to other platforms like TikTok for discovery, our key metrics might decrease year-over-year.

We need to start approaching other metrics as a measure of our success.

For example, if the rise of generative AI means fewer people will click through to our website because they have all the information presented to them, can we start tracking brand mentions in the SERPs instead?

In Summary

There will be a lot of changes happening in the search industry over the next few years; however, that’s also been the case over the last decade or so!

As SEO professionals, we will need to adapt and embrace new technologies and platforms, but it will be a great opportunity to flex our muscles in new ways.

More resources:

Featured Image: PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

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