Thursday, February 17, 2011

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

8 SEO Interview Tips


Here are some SEO interview tips that might just do the trick. Kidding aside, seriously it’s not a trick. And some of these tips are not only applicable for SEO interviews. It’s also for other job interviews.

Learn more about the company
Few things turn off employers or interviewers more than folks who turn up and know nothing what to say or to expect in an interview. If you’re interviewing for an SEO job in an agency, most probably, the web site of the company interviewing you can easily be found with a simple search on Google, Yahoo! or Live Search. Include the person interviewing you in your search.
Be direct to the point
Sometimes we want to be sure that we please our interviewer that even if s/he asks a simple question, we elaborate it too much. If a question is answerable by yes or no, then say yes or no, and wait for the “why” for a while.
Be honest
Being honest to tell we don’t know what is the difference between cloaking and hidden text will impress the interviewer than us giving all sorts of off-tangent answers. Being honest in job interviews reveal humility, while the act of pretentiousness is interpreted as hypocrisy. It could be perceived as the way we handle clients, ie. giving an irrelevant answer to a totally different question.
Ask the right questions
Just because we’re told to ask questions, we have the liberty to ask anything we like. Ask questions related to the position (training, benefits, speaking opportunities or the SEO team we’ll be working with) or the company background and reserve personal questions when the interviewer invites you for a drink. Asking questions show we’re interested in the job that’s why we’d like to find out how we could fit into the organization.
Do your homework
Many questions could come as practical, work-related scenarios where sometimes it doesn’t matter if the answer we give is right or wrong, it’s how we formulate our reasoning and attack certain issues. For example you’re given a certain situation, how would you address if you found out that your previously recommended SEO method was flawed and get noticed by the client, who came to you to seek your explanation?
Review your resume
Just because we typed our own resume doesn’t mean we can answer all questions that can be derived from that two-page document. While the focus of the question lies on the most recent experiences we had, a little background check on previous jobs are likely. Think of questions like “How did you come across doing SEO when you’re were a freelance copywriter three years ago?”, “What made you switch careers from a promising junior executive job into search marketing?”.
Don’t put extraneous information on your CV
Sometimes, it is so tempting to put something we don’t know or have on our resume. While this can be classified as under “Be honest” it also deserves an extra emphasis. Don’t inflate your resume with job descriptions you haven’t actually executed or client you haven’t really worked with. Your resume represents you. After hundreds of rounds of interviews, your interviewers must be able to detect the slightest sign of inconsistency and begin to trap you with questions like “Oh, you worked at Four Fingers SEO firm, so you must know (a fictional character named) Bo Boomingdale, right?” And you nod half-heartedly. This triggers the interviewer to dig deeper into your troubled thoughts and eventually end up in embarrassment. Kiss the bid goodbye then.
Be prepared for surprises
It may be a lengthy SEO quiz. It may be a real-life client-vendor campaign dilemmas. It may be an SEO puzzle that doesn’t really have an answer. Or questions that have nothing to do with SEO at all. Be prepared for these possibilities. As SEO isn’t necessarily a rocket science, these surprises are good measurements into how creative candidates we can be and show how we react on different situations.


Source:-http://www.seo-hongkong.com/blog/8-seo-interview-tips-405.html
Some other Tips:-

1:  Use the most general of job titles. You are ,after all,a hunter of interviews,not of specific titles.Cast your net wide, use a title that is specific enough to put you in the field, yet vague enought to elicit fuether questions.

2:  Avoid giving a job objective. If you must state a specific job as your goal, couch it in terms of contributes you can make in that position . Do not state what you exoect of the employer.

3  Do not state your current salary.If you are earning too little or too much , you could rule yourself out brfore getting your foot in the door. Do not mention your desired salary for the same reason.

4: Remember that people get great joy from plesant surpries .Show a little gold now, but let the interviewer discover the mothelode at the interview.

5: Take whatever steps aare necessary to keep the resume length to a two- page maximum. No one reads long bresume.they are boring.

6: Your resume must be typed.As a rule of thumb, three pages of double -spaced ,handwritten notes make one page of typescript.

7: Finally , emphasise your achievement and problem-solving skill.Keep the resume general.