Any HR professional will tell you that Interviews are not a good predictor of candidate behaviour. In fact statistics by the Chartered Institute of Personnel (CIPD) in the UK suggest that only 11% of individuals you appoint using an interview only process will turn out to be the best candidate for the job. This has real consequences for businesses, because the cost of hiring and firing can often be substantial. The biggest cause is poor interview questions, conducted by poorly trained interviewers.

If you are to embark on an Interview only candidate selection process to hire SEO professionals, then a competency-based interview will improve your candidate selection as it involves asking questions about a candidate's past behaviour, rather than future based questions (what would you do?). A candidate's past behaviour is a better prediction of how they are more likely to behave in the future, humans are of course creatures of habit. Any knowledgeable individual may know what good link building should consist of, but have they actually done it, and done it well? Hence, why you ask questions about past behaviour. Individuals who have actually carried out this process will be able to give good, clear examples with substantial evidence in a timely manner.

I've read many previous internet articles on the subject, including those on Search Engine Watch and Moz, and for me there seems to be a real shortage of guidance and good examples of competency based questions and scoring for the SEO community. So I thought I would provide details of poor SEO interview questions, followed by some good SEO examples. Prior to me working as an SEO professional, I was heavily involved in recruitment, in particular the execution of a competency-based assessment centre process for the Home Office.

Types of Interview Questions

Poor Example:

How would you go about evaluating the on-page SEO ranking factors of a web page? What would you do if you found issues?

Good Example:

Please provide an example of when you evaluated a web page for on-page SEO ranking factors and you found issues?

Scalar
Strong evidence 4 3 2 1 Weak Evidence

Desired Behaviours
1.1 name of website provided
1.2 keyword/Phrase provided
1.3 starting Rank Provided
1.4 identified issues e.g keywords missing in title, on-page content etc
1.5 provided details of changes made
1.6 provided details of software used
1.7 provided closing rank and outcome

You would provide them five minutes to provide a suitable answer. If the interviewee were providing insufficient evidence, you would then ask them probing questions (these are below). Note: you would only ask each probing question once. If they still failed to provide a suitable response, then you would score the behaviour as weak. You would not mark them down for having to be prompted with a probing question. At five minutes, you would stop and move onto the next question regardless if they have finished. You would not allow them to provide an alternative answer. It is useful to provide the candidate a copy of the question on a sheet of card as you progress (do not include the probing questions). This prevents the candidate from having to repeatedly ask you the question.

Probing Questions:

What was the name of the website in question?
What issues did you face?
What did you do?
How did you overcome the issues?
What was the outcome?
You still have time remaining in your five minutes, is there any further information you would like to add to the example?

Scoring
You should use the Scalar to mark individual behaviours. If they provided strong evidence, you would mark them 4 on the Scalar. Weak evidence would be marked as 1.

At the end of the interview, you would then simply add the total up. The candidate with the best performing scores is the most suitably skilled, because they have demonstrated strongest evidence of performance and desired behaviours.

As communication is often an essential requirement you could also score them overall for effective communications:

Scalar
Clear 4 3 2 1 Unclear

Verbal communication over the duration of the interview

Structured 4 3 2 1 Unstructured

Information provided

ANOTHER EXAMPLE

Poor Example:

How would you go about analysing a competitor’s backlink profile and use the information to target links for your own client?

Good Example:

Please provide an example of when you analysed a competitor’s backlink profile and you used that information to successfully acquire a quality link for a website?

Scalar
Strong evidence 4 3 2 1 Weak Evidence

Desired Behaviours
1.1 name of website analysed
1.2 provided details of software used
1.3 outlined how information gathered was used in decision-making process
1.4 reviewed the information and provided details of authority and strength of potential targets
1.5 established how they went about obtaining the link for the website
1.6 provided details of the new link

Probing Questions:

What was the name of the website you analysed?
What did you do?
What sources did you use to gather your intelligence?
What were your findings?
What was the outcome?
You still have time remaining in your five minutes, is there any further information you would like to add to the example?

ANOTHER EXAMPLE

Poor Example:

How would you go about link building for a client, explain the process?

Good Example:

Please provide an example of when you successfully sourced a new high quality inbound link for a website? What process did you follow?

Scalar
Strong evidence 4 3 2 1 Weak Evidence

Desired Behaviours
1.1 explained the type of link
1.2 mentioned the importance of quality and relevancy of the link
1.3 explained how they identified the domain
1.4 talked about software used to identify authority and quality
1.5 mentioned the importance of building relationships
1.6 identified the importance of driving quality traffic rather than just rankings
1.7 mentioned the avoidance of Exact Match Anchor Text

Probing Questions:

Where on the website did the link feature?
What did you do?
What sources did you use to gather your intelligence?
How did you approach the other party?
What was the outcome?
You still have time remaining in your five minutes, is there any further information you would like to add to the example?

Negative answers: directory submissions, blog comments, page rank and exact match anchor text. Focused too much on rankings, rather than driving quality traffic.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE
(this is a generic competency question related to team working and would be useful if the role involved line management responsibility)

Poor Example:

How would you deal with an underperforming member of staff and how would you improve their performance?

Good Example:

Please provide an example of when you dealt with an underperforming member of staff and you helped improve their performance.

Scalar
Strong evidence 4 3 2 1 Weak Evidence

Desired Behaviours
1.1 provided actual time and date
1.2 identifies how they were under performing
1.3 identifies the importance of performing within the team
1.4 were willing to help / support team member
1.5 was open and approachable to other’s issues

Probing questions

What did you do?
How did you encourage the other individual to perform?
Were there any problems that arose?
How did you overcome them?
What was the outcome?
You still have time remaining in your five minutes, is there any further information you would like to add to the example?

I hope the Moz community find this interesting and it contributes to SEO talent management.

About me: I run my own inbound marketing business davidvidgen.co.uk and I have worked with a variety of clients up and down the UK. Feel free to say hello and pop me any questions on Twitter @davidvidgen.