8 competency based interview questions for hiring SEO professionals -

I recently wrote an article published on Moz.com regarding competency based interview questions for hiring SEO professionals. If you have yet to read the article, it would be good to digest it first before reading on:

Having seen a shortage of quality competency based interview questions in the SEO industry, I thought I would provide further examples that attempt to raise the bar and to try and help individuals who are plunged into the hiring line but have had no formal interview training.

According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), only 11% of those you hire using only an interview as a source of selection will be the best person for the job. Even though interviews are popular, they provide poor reliability. This suggests that the process of hiring and firing becomes expensive and extremely hit and miss.

Competency based interview questions are a good predictor of candidate behaviour and provide a level playing field for all persons involved. In addition to bringing good candidates to the forefront, employers can also avoid expensive employment tribunals, because they focus on the skills and abilities of the individual, rather than age, gender, appearance and other subjective matters such as experience and personality.

Competency based interviews use scalars to determine the level of behaviour evidenced, along with probing questions to aid the interview process. Probing questions, seek to extract the information and behaviours you are asking them to evidence. You should give each candidate 5 minutes (total) to provide their response, and its good practice to give them a copy of the interview question as you go along. This negates the need for them to continually ask you to remind them of the question. Do not give them a copy of the probing questions, these are only to be used is the candidate is not providing sufficient evidence.

If a candidate exceeds 5 minutes, you simply stop them by telling them the 5 minutes is up, and you move to the next question. Only ask probing questions if they have failed to provide evidence of their behaviour. Each probing question should only be asked once. A good candidate will be clear, concise and provide strong evidence of their behaviour within 5 minutes. A weak candidate will be unclear, unstructured and will lack the fine details, often waffling and going off subject.

It is good practice to provide them one or two sample interview questions beforehand and explain the interview process. I.e. you will be asked 8 questions and you will be provided 5 minutes to answer each. Every candidate will be asked the same questions, this is to ensure fairness and transparency for all involved. The interview will last 40 minutes. During the interview, you may see the interviewer taking notes, this is perfectly normal. You will not be given the opportunity to ask questions about the role during the competency interview.

Before I proceed and provide some good examples, it is important that you understand what a bad interview question looks like. Future based interview questions are where you ask an individual to explain what would you do? These are hypothetical answers and when individuals are faced with real life situations, their behaviour will often be somewhat different. Competency based interview questions ask about past behaviour, as these are a better predictor of how you are likely to behave in the future.

Poor Examples:

Please give me an example of how you would analyse the back link profile of a website?
How would you go about sourcing inbound links?
Please tell me how you would go about analysing a web page for on-page SEO ranking factors?
How long have you worked in the SEO industry?

The latter question I list above is a common question put to individuals. Often a job advert will indicate that a candidate must have at least 2 years experience working in the SEO industry. The main issue here lies with age discrimination laws. By indicating that a person must have 2 years experience, this can often preclude individuals applying straight from school, college or university. This is very dangerous territory because an employment tribunal will often find you guilty of age discrimination, because you are in fact (whether you are aware or not) screening candidates based on their age. The same applies where job adverts indicate you must be mature, or you get feedback from an interview saying you lacked experience or you lacked maturity.

What you are really looking for is individuals with the correct skills and abilities to carry out the role. It is quite feasible that an individual still at school or perhaps and under study could have the skills and abilities for the role (they may have been involved with the educational establishments website), but have never formally been employed for 2 years. It would be safe to ask for SEO experience and list the desired competencies, but it would be best to avoid asking for a specific number of years.

By asking competency based questions you are assessing the performance of an individual solely based on their skills and abilities. Why else would you want to employ them?

Good Examples of Competency based Interview Questions that you can use for hiring SEO Professionals

Question 1.
Please provide me an example of when you carried out analysis of a web page for on-page SEO ranking factors? What issues did you encounter and how did you overcome them?