It’s a seller’s market for SEO. Anyone who has spent months looking for the ideal SEO candidate can attest that the demand for search engine marketing services currently outpaces the supply of individuals with SEO work experience. Experienced SEOs are hard to come by, even in large cities with thriving tech scenes. Even someone with just a year or two of experience is rare. An experienced SEO work individual is like finding a unicorn in a local market where the economy is less tech-driven.
It’s sometimes best to hire someone with no prior experience in digital marketing but a lot of potentials and train them if you’re an SEO trying to expand a large in-house team or grow a team of digital marketers at an agency.
However, you can’t just hire anyone for an SEO position. Give them the proper training, and expect them to be fantastic.
Most hiring tips for SEOs focus on making sure they are knowledgeable and not spammers. But when it comes to hiring trainees, that doesn’t apply. So how can you determine if someone is qualified for a position they have never held?
There are a few qualities we look for in a candidate at cheapest book printing, where we’ve had great success hiring smart young people and transforming them into digital marketers.
Do they learn aggressively and independently?
Reading blogs, going to conferences and webinars, and discussing and testing new techniques are all time-consuming activities that successful SEOs engage in outside of regular working hours. A person who enjoys learning and is capable of independently pursuing ongoing education should be the ideal candidate.
Do they comprehend what SEO is and why we use it?
When the techniques you first studied or that used to work so well vanish (I’m looking at you, siloing and PageRank sculpting), it can be frustrating. Suppose your attention is on what strategies and tactics will help you rank #1 rather than how you use digital tools to connect and market to potential customers. In that case, the ground will eventually give way under you.
What did your candidates learn from their research? Ask them? Do they have any other priorities besides the search engine, such as how visitors might become customers?
Which profession do they seem more interested in, hacking or marketing? Since your SEO client will ultimately want revenue rather than just rankings, look for people who are more in love with the idea of using the Internet as a tool to connect businesses with their customers. Some people are really taken with the idea that they can manipulate search engines to do what they want.
Are they compassionate?
Empathy is another quality that you need to assess during the interview process. Can they explain why a company might want to spend money on search? Ask them to come up with some worries or fears that a small business owner might experience when launching an Internet marketing campaign.
This is crucial for agency work, where communicating success necessitates knowing your client’s objectives and worries.
Could they write?
Even if your goal is to develop a technical SEO rather than a content creator, SEO requires strong writing. You’ll need to be able to develop on-page components that engage users as well as search engines in order to convey topical relevance.
Their resume should be free of typos and grammatical errors, which ought to be obvious. This not only shows that they can write independently but also demonstrates their attention to detail and how seriously they are taking the job.
Any type of writing experience is a huge plus when reviewing a resume, but it’s not always necessary. However, it’s useful to have some idea of their potential. Request writing samples, or even better, look for writing samples online that are already published. Do they currently blog? Before an interview, you’ll almost certainly exchange emails with a candidate; pay attention to their email style. Is it difficult to understand what they’re saying? Good writing is about conveying ideas, not just about grammar.
What are their critical thinking and data analysis skills?
You can teach a new digital marketer how to use analytics tools like Google Analytics even though they are likely to lack any prior experience with them. An ability to think and use data to make decisions critically is harder to teach.
Have any of your candidates ever found themselves in a predicament where they had to use data to determine what to do next? Why not share a story, provide evidence, or influence someone’s opinion? Regardless of their major, recent college graduates ought to all have some experience with this; after all, critical thinking and data analysis are what higher education is all about. How adept are they at using Microsoft Excel?
Although they don’t have to like it, if they despise it to the point of insanity, SEO is probably not for them. Would they find it miserable to spend the majority of the day (not every day, but fairly frequently) in a spreadsheet?
Are they internet savvy?
A new employee will find it simpler to learn how SEO works even if they have never heard of it if they are already fairly Internet savvy. An active web presence also suggests a general interest in the Internet, which is a sign of potential future interest in the field of digital marketing. Check to see if they use social media. Do they currently blog? What does Google reveal about them?
Prior experience
You’ll have the best idea of the skills someone will need to bring to the table to fill the role you need because different applicants will come from different backgrounds. Experience in any of these fields is a positive indicator:
- Marketing
- Advertising
- Public relations
- APIs
- Web development or coding
- Web design
- Copywriting
Conclusion
Look for someone intelligent, motivated, and enthusiastic about the career opportunity. Everyone you speak to will be stronger in some areas than others, and very few candidates will be excellent in every one of the areas listed above. Keep in mind the duties you’d actually like the candidate to perform on the job.
Hiring novices carry some risk; you never know if the person you hire will be good at doing SEO work. They might find it harder to learn than you thought they would, and once they get into it, they might decide that SEO work isn’t something they want to do in the long run.
A better employee is frequently produced by hiring and training someone who is a great fit for your company culture and enthusiastic about learning rather than someone with experience who doesn’t fit in with your team.