Let’s make sure you absolutely crush every interview you get. If you’ve been applying for 2+ months, you’re likely making some key mistakes so let’s fix those now.
Interviews are incredibly hard to come by in this tough job market. You obviously need to first make sure you have the correct work experience just to get an interview (If you’re not sure what work experience us hiring managers want or how to get it quickly, check out this article (link to ebook). Assuming you do, you then need to make sure that when you finally get one, you ace it as it will likely take a lot of work to get the next one.
As a long time marketing hiring manager, I see far too many applicants making the same mistakes over and over again in their interview that’s costing them the job. I want to share a couple big ones here. Yes, this is only the tip of the iceberg of the mistakes most entry-level applicants are making, but this is at least a solid start in you understanding some key things you’re doing wrong as a first time applicant trying to get a full-time entry-level marketing job. If you want to be trained to ace every entry-level marketing interview you’re in, get 100+ marketing strategies you can pitch during your interview so you sound incredibly knowledgeable, and get hired in as little as 2 weeks, you can always take our program and we’ll make that happen for you.
Most Common Mistake You’re Making
Interviewer: Tell me about yourself
You: I love marketing. In the past I did x, y, and z for x company and loved it. I gained great experience there and I know I can bring that experience here. I want to learn as much as possible and I feel like I can do that and grow here.
What you should be doing/saying: You’re applying for a marketing role. Rule #1 in marketing is don’t try to sell your services/product. Instead, show how your product/service can fix the target customer’s problem. Did you notice how the above pitch was about you rather than how you can help? If you can’t market yourself effectively, why would a marketing hiring manager think you’ll be able to do it for their company/product?
You need to instead always be talking about the improvement you will bring to the company such as “I love digital marketing and I have work experience in Social, Email, PPC and SEO. I will use my experience to automate your lead generation techniques by doing x, y, and z, which will lead to more potential customers in our marketing funnel just as I did with x company.” I hope you understand how that’s a much more powerful statement in our ears than what most entry-level applicants are providing. Trust me, you’re not alone in making this mistake.
How to Immediately Show Your Worth and Your Preparedness
- Don’t just talk about yourself during the interview. You want to pitch marketing strategies on how you’re going to make an impact. I’ll provide you with a way to get 100+ high level strategies to pitch in my next email.
- Go to their website. Make note of their navigation bar, any pop ups, and all of their lead generation forms. During your interview, state what you liked and where you think you can optimize their performance to collect more leads. Did they have an exit pop-up lead gen form? If not, pitch this for example.
- Sign up for their newsletter. Now that you’re receiving their emails, you can see their main selling points and show that you have an understanding of their business. Take note of their subject lines. Were they enticing enough? Create an alternative and talk about how you’re all about A/B testing and that you have some alternatives to share. Did the call to action stand out enough? Come up with some alternatives and give some percentages on which CTA’s often produce the highest click through rates.
- Know the benchmarks for the industry. State that you know for this industry the average open rate for emails is x% but you feel you can get that higher by doing x, y, and z. This once again shows you’re numbers focused (as all marketers should be) and that you’re prepared.
In order to get interviews and have a chance of being hired, you first need to have the right work experience on your resume as discussed here (ebook). When it comes to the interview, like I said, this is just the tip of the iceberg of the mistakes that most entry-level marketing applicants are making in their interviews. Start adjusting your approach using this guidance and make sure you’re pitching high-level strategies as this is what we want to hear!
Good luck out there!
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at joseph@jobprepped.com as I’m always happy to help 🙂