By Bob Van Rossum

There is a lot of bad data out there on how to prepare for an interview, much of which is actually counterproductive to the process.  Please DO NOT go out on Google, search for sample interview questions about behavioral interviews or any other type of interview process and waste your time writing out and memorizing answers to these questions.  The result is likely to be disaster, first you have no idea what type of questions the interviewer will ask. Even if you hear from someone who has interviewed there before that Company X uses behavioral interview techniques, you do not really know if they do or just the person they interviewed with did.  Additionally, no matter what methodology a company uses there are always multiple high ranking employees who can’t be bothered to learn the process and therefore interview the same way they always have.   So now your friend told you to prepare for behavioral based questions and you spend hours doing so and you go in and the very first interviewer asks none of the questions you have painstakingly memorized questions for, first you get a little nervous, second your confidence goes downhill and next you are fumbling for answers to even the most basic questions.  You just lost the opportunity to work for this company.  Worse is you go in and they ask you exactly the questions you are expecting and you answer them all based on the memorization game you played with yourself.  You leave the interview feeling great and you never hear from that company again.  You have been rejected and they never even bothered to call and let you know, let alone let you know why.  In this case the reason you were rejected was your answers sounded rehearsed and therefore fake.  Best case scenario is you lacked credibility, worst case scenario they just flat out did not believe you.   When you interview you are competing and when you compete with others of similar skills and background, it is individual most prepared who will win.  How are you separating yourself from the competition?

Check out:

How to Prepare for an Interview

The Phone Interview

MarketPro – is the leading marketing staffing and marketing recruitment firm utilizing top marketers to find you top marketing talent.

By Bob Van Rossum

Interesting times we are living in, looks like many people are being lulled into a false sense of insecurity.  A belief they can wait until the market turns before they need to take action.  The market is creating a situation where good business people are pretending they do not know how to run their business because they are unable to grasp what to do next.  While others are seeing it clearly and using this as an opportunity to hire the best marketing talent and they are doing so with alarming speed.   We lost a top executive level marketing candidate today as our client has been slow to make a commitment, the second such top candidate we have lost on this search alone. 

But this search is not unique, our clients who are succeeding are the ones moving fast and our clients who are acting like a deer in the headlights, well they are slowing down their search as I will only let them hire an “A” player.  The myth is that there are a lot of talented people in the marketplace.  Reality is there are very talented people looking for a job, but the other reality is companies by and large did not cut their top people, they cut the bottom ten percent.  So you have a dynamic where the marketplace has lots of unemployed people and around 10% – 15% are worth hiring.  For the placements we have made in the last six months, over 82% of candidates hired had a job at the time we found them a new one.  In my decade as a recruiter, I have never seen a better time to add talented marketers to your team and never has it been harder to separate “A” level talent from everybody else.  Our business is growing as companies are realizing the need for an experienced marketing professional to recruit and screen marketing talent, as those looking for a job have become talented at interviewing. 

The most important aspect of what is going on in the market is the work and results being driven by these new marketers.  Our clients have seen themselves leapfrogging their competition with regards to brand awareness and revenue.     

http://www.marketproinc.com

By Bob Van Rossum 

www.marketproinc.com

By Bob Van Rossum 

By Bob Van Rossum

Epsilon recently surveyed CMO’s and realized they were having a hard time finding talent for today’s evolving world of marketing.

http://www.epsilon.com/modules/Press-Releases-012909-Profile-of-an-American-CMO/p83-l3

http://www.marketingcharts.com/topics/nearly-40-of-cmos-unhappy-with-new-hire-talent-pool-7897/?utm_campaign=rssfeed&utm_source=mc&utm_medium=textlink

The results suggest that there is less talent or inadequate talent in the marketplace.

But nothing could be further from the truth. 

In any economy the best talent is hard to find, because businesses don’t lay off top performers. 

The problem leading brands have is:

1.      Lack of an employment brand

2.      Lack of talent reach or an inability to identify the top talent

3.      Lack of talent access or an inability to create interest from top talent in their company and / or opportunity.

Ultimately recruiting marketing talent is not like recruiting for finance or IT, the recruiter cannot use certifications to determine who is truly talented.  If a skilled recruiter who normally does not look for marketing talent calls a rockstar candidate on your behalf does not truly understand marketing you have zero chance of convincing an A player to come join your team.  Not only do they pass on joining today, they will remember the interaction the next time a marketing recruiter calls, making it more difficult in the future.  Unfortunately in most recruiting processes, not only is there a lack an understanding of marketing, they lack the time to proactively reach out to the top talent and do not understand where to find them.  Real problem for the CMO is convincing others in the organization that recruiting marketing talent is fundamentally different from recruiting other functions.  The talent is out there you just need to know where to find them and how to convince them making a move is in their best interest. 

www.marketproinc.com

Showing interest and being committed are integral to interview success.  This young man impressed after he made it to the interview with a stab wound in his leg.  While I would not recommend trying to repeat his feat on the way to your next interview, ask yourself how committed you are to getting this job and what have you done to make sure you are prepared to win.

Teen stabbed in leg, but makes it to job interview, then hospital – Welland Tribune – Ontario, CA

http://www.wellandtribune.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1422078

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It would seem that as professionals become more advanced in their careers, making transitions should get easier. In reality, the higher someone goes in an organization, the more challenging career transitions become. The expression, “It’s lonely at the top” is resoundingly true. There are fewer people at top levels of an organization who can serve as mentors, and who are capable of or have time to answer the questions of their aspiring peers. Also, candidates looking for change are established and set in their ways, and while they have plenty of experience to make judgments, that experience may or may not be a fit for another company’s culture and expectations.

As an employer, you have an entirely different perspective. You expect senior marketing executives to hit the ground running based on the investment you are making in them – as you should, but the more senior a candidate will be in your organization, the more important and challenging onboarding a new hire becomes.

So the stakes and challenges are high – but different – for both you and your potential new employee. This white paper explains how through a solid onboarding approach, both sets of challenges can be conquered. It explains how they must be overcome to maintain organizational stability in today’s global business environment.

Onboarding is a shared responsibility between your company and the newly hired marketing executive.

Read More

http://www.marketproinc.com/success/successful_marketing_executive_onboarding.html