We’re happy to share on our blog a post by Yam Regev, CMO and Co-Founder at Zest. As recruiting C-level professionals is challenging, we thought you might use the questions below to conduct better job interviews. Let’s dig into details!
Credential Verification Questions – Hard Fact Answers (18 questions)
– How many team members have you managed at a given time?
– What was the structure/hierarchy of your previous marketing department and who did they report to? (Ronit Abdu)
– How many years of global marketing experience do you have?
– How many new markets have you expanded into in your previous roles?
– How many years of experience in traditional marketing do you have?
– Are you familiar with [Specific Industry-Name]? What can you tell me about it?
– How many years of experience with BizDev do you have?
– How many years of experience in Sales do you have?
– How many years of experience do you have as a B2C marketer?
– How many years of experience do they have as a B2B marketer?
– How many years of experience with Brand marketing do you have?
– How many years of experience with Demand Generation do you have?
– How many years of experience with Product Marketing do you have?
– What were your main KPIs throughout your career?
– Given the company goals, how would you measure Marketing success? What are the 3-5 metrics you would use to track this?
(Maya Grossman)
– How many years of experience do you have working in a SaaS company?
– How many years of experience do you have working in an enterprise?
– Any experience working for a bootstrapped or young startup? (Liran Cohen-Tsemach)
Opinion/Behavioral Questions – Measures past behavior to predict future actions (17 questions)
– What’s the most common marketing misconception you’ve come across? (Oren Greenberg)
– What is the most interesting thing you can tell me about yourself that doesn’t appear on your CV? (Ido Yerushalmi)
– What characteristics would you use to describe your ideal manager? (Alon Weinstock)
– Elaborate on the relevant KPIs for your position, and how do you believe they should impact the business? (Gil White)
– What brought you to marketing? (Erez Agmon)
– Why do you want to join our company? (Erez Agmon)
– Walk me through an experience where you had to deal with a challenging situation involving a disagreement with a colleague. (Felix Wong)
– Why did you leave your previous company? Is there anything you’d have done differently now, looking back? (Erez Agmon)
– What’s the most creative thing you did in order to make a project successful? (Liran Cohen-Tsemach)
– Tell me about a time that you created a successful campaign for a challenging user segment or persona? (Maya Katz Boker)
– What is your personal elevator pitch? (Adi Nir)
– When was the last time that you didn’t follow orders and why? What were the results? (Ronen Remez)
– What were your biggest marketing F* Ups? What did you learn from them? (Yair Shraga Peled)
– What would you do if we had a $0 marketing budget? (Sivan Pollak)
– Tell me about a time you missed (or almost missed) a deadline. How did you react when you realized you were falling behind? What did that experience teach you? (Rachel Morgan)
– Your CEO insists on a campaign that you believe will harm the brand’s reputation. What do you do?” (Meital Sharon)
– What are some of the downsides of being a CMO? Being a marketing professional? What would you say makes it all worthwhile? (Einav Laviv)
Experience / Competency Questions – Exemplify if they have what it takes to execute the job efficiently (14 questions)
– What do you believe are the most prominent marketing challenges we will face, based on your perception of the company? (Anat Lev Oransky)
– Take me through your most recent personal project, from conceptualization to creating awareness. (Caetê da Silva)
– What exits or significant increases in shareholder value have you helped to drive and how? (David Leichner)
– If we were to choose you as our CMO, what would be the first three things you would accomplish first? (Erez Agmon)
– We have the following challenges in our company… What resources would you need to overcome these obstacles? (Yael Kochman)
– How do you do a market analysis? (Noa Liron Levy)
– How do you execute internal marketing? I.e making sure that the company’s employees are aware of your activity and are aligned with the company’s proposition, mission statement, and vision (Ohad Refaeli)
– How are you assuring the leadership’s buy-in? (Maya Katz Boker + Moran Sayho)
– What methodologies should you use when it comes to building a love-love relationship with the Sales department (Natali Gutner)
– What activity will you never delegate to anyone? (Shaul Weisband)
– What is the right balance between short term and long term strategy (Eran Shlingbaum)
– Tell me about your biggest failure as a marketing leader (Ronit Abdu)
– Can you tell me about 1-2 marketing strategies that you know and like from other companies? (Moshe Pesach)
– What did they excel with? How did they implement it? How long did it take to see the results? How did you measure the success of it? What did it change outside of metrics? (Agata Krzysztofik)
General questions – Gives the interviewee the option to take some control and lead the conversation (3 questions)
– What do you want to know about us? (Neta Weinryb)
– What CMOs are you following? How do you build your professional knowledge? (Ido Suchowolski)
– What questions have I not asked that I should be asking you? (Ben Kochavy)
As the interview progresses, try to see if the potential CMO:
Has a passionate personality
Is confident about what they did, what they know, and how they present themselves and answer your questions
Has that executive X factor
Is fundable? i.e Can you count on them to sit with you in a board meeting or to join you to meet VCs and Angel investors?
Professional: Did they show up to the interview on time? Were they prepared?
Is a leader or a boss?
Is brilliant or bluffing?
Today’s CMO needs to be tomorrow’s CEMO, and be able to tap in and motivate marketing teams from an over-arching, KPI, results-driven approach, as well as on a human, one-to-one level. So always remember to ‘pay it forward’, lend a helping hand to a fellow marketing professional, whether they’re just starting out, or a C-level looking for a soundboard, because whatever you give out, you’ll get back tenfold.
We hope that you’ll make good use of the questions presented above. Some of them might be helpful also while hiring other professionals.
