What does your PPC Manager interview process look like? Audit – yes/no?

[Sopos]

I think an audit is ideal in terms of testing skills if you don’t have concerns about sharing data in your accounts. Personally there’s no way I’d give a candidate access to an account, there’s just too much that they could learn and potentially take to a competitor. Totally depends on your industry and business though.

I have a bank of adjusted and anonymised data that I send and get them build a strategy and forecast around that. And more generally, get them to walk through what they think the best ideas would be in our industry to maximise the output from the accounts. I tend to get into the detail on specifics of how they would plan, test, and analyse a big new feature.

[Sensitive_Summer_804]

An audit is often a red flag that the client might be looking for free actionable tips without any real commitment to hire. It’s also a lot of work, especially for an e-commerce website.

If you want them to do an audit, it can be a quick one on screenshare for you to see if they know what they are doing on the platform. This obviously assumes you also have some PPC knowledge to be able to spot the good candidates from the bullshitters.

If you’re after a more advanced audit and plan to pick the best one, then make sure you compensate everyone for their time. For example, if you want the top three finalists to submit a full audit, pay each of them $300 (or whatever amount you think is fair), regardless of whether they’re hired or not.

Speaking personally, I’d never spend 3+ hours on an audit unless I’m 99% sure I’ll get the client. That’s typically when I know I’m the only person they’re talking to, and they already seem impressed in the early conversations. In that case, doing the audit usually seals the deal.

[potatodrinker]

Not an audit but will have a work sample where they talk through their approach on solving 2-3 common optimisation problems. This would be for an newbie role, 3-5 years experience.

Any of these
– Rising CPA, reducing conversions
– a problem I’m having right now
– “client thinks it’s dumb to bid on their own trademark. How do you handle this?”
– export of a snippet of campaign data, ask them to point out what they make of it, what they’ll focus on digging into to boost results

[fathom53]

Two rounds and 60 minutes each. More questions and meet the team.

If anyone asking someone to do take home work, they should compensate the person for all those hours beyond the formal interview time.

[ppcwithyrv]

It shouldn’t be a hands on audit of the agency’s live accounts. Unless the job seeker says they can do something that is very technical. The agency person should be able to filter a good vs. bad candidate.

[milkbandit23]

First round will be a fairly high-level chat. Understanding expected remuneration ranges, looking for any obvious dealbreakers and incompatibility.

Then yes an audit. This is always good for understanding whether they are good at what they do and can identify problems, trends and potential improvements. I don’t look for “tell me everything you would do to improve performance”, but it gives a good insight into how well they understand PPC platforms and your particular business (but also if they are honest about not understanding!).

Then a third and maybe fourth round of questions/calls to go over any more details.

We did this recently and I think without the audit and subsequent questions we would have potentially made the wrong choice, as these things weeded out some crucial details and revealed who was better with responsiveness and communication.