You did it! You got an interview at the SEO agency of your dreams! Since you’ve started reading this series you now know the main things they are looking for in a SEO , you’ve mastered the SEO skills that most are lacking, and now you just need to nail the interview. A big fear for most people being interviewed is getting stumped by the questions they ask.
Well fear no longer! We asked our panel of SEO experts what questions they ask the most when interviewing people for SEO positions.
Ash Buckles Google + | Twitter
I like to ask SEO candidates to explain how search engines work and to get into as much detail as possible. How they describe servers, crawlers, bots, sites, content, links, etc. tells me a lot about their core knowledge and their perception of the industry.
Tom Critchlow Google + | Twitter
If you could get an SEO tool built that doesn’t exist right now what would it be?
Bonus follow-up question: why hasn’t anyone built that already?
People don’t have to be technical to answer this but it shows great critical thinking as well as a good knowledge of the industry as it is right now.
Ian Lurie Google + | Twitter
Define canonicalization- 90% of applicants say “Something that happens at the Vatican?” or “a meta tag?”
Cyrus Shepard Google + |Twitter
What SEO ideas do you have for (site XYZ.com)? Hopefully the site of the company you are interviewing for.
Wil Reynolds Google + | Twitter
My favorite SEO question on an interview-probably this one: “When is last time you did something for the first time?”
BONUS EXPERT:
Rand Fishkin Google + | Twitter
I asked Rand of SEOmoz to participate in our SEO series, but he politely declined because they are a software company these days. Which means they don’t hire SEO’s much anymore, but I was not going to let that slow me down. I found this great video of Rand explaining what questions he would ask in an interview for a SEO position.
Your Thoughts?
What questions do you think are best to ask in an SEO interview?
Stay Tuned- Next time we’ll hear examples of what not to do during an interview.
