When you’re hiring a PPC expert, it’s vital to evaluate your candidate’s level of knowledge on the subject. And the best way to do it is by assigning them some homework. Here are some thoughts on how to set up a test for your future digital marketing specialists.
Micro-testing your candidates
Hiring a digital marketer based only on your candidate’s past job performance is a mistake. A good résumé is not all it takes. They might be great at what they do and exceptionally qualified, but they should be able to prove it. So how do you go about it? Set up micro-tests that can determine what and how much the candidate knows.
A micro-test is a particular task that would be an assignment on a real-life project. It typically takes 15 minutes to complete, consisting of one or two problems dealing with a specific part of a given project. Micro-tests have three purposes:
- To test the candidate’s knowledge of a specific aspect of the work;
- To find out if they have any gaps in knowledge that need to be filled;
- To give you a sense of how they would approach an actual project.
Here I give you some ideas for three micro-tests for your next PPC expert:
PPC expert specialist micro-test ideas
- Provide a landing page and ask the candidate to write two ads. Ask why they wrote that specific type of ad and which techniques they used, having performance in mind.
- Set up a basic campaign to sell chocolate cookies in 10 cities around your location (or location of interview). With this, you can identify how comfortable they’re using Google Editor, spreadsheets, and mass manipulation.
- Import a campaign from Google Ads into Microsoft Ads.
Some insights for your Google Ads micro-tests
Over the years, I’ve learned some essential things about running tests with job candidates. Here are some of those learnings:
- Set them free to show all their skills – Don’t give your candidates too many directions. Instead, let them be free to follow their way through the assignment. It will give you a more precise idea of their technical knowledge, creativity, and problem-solving capacity.
- Avoid setting a deadline – Unless you’re impossibly pressed for time, leave the candidates to deliver the micro-test whenever they prefer. Instead, try and assess why the candidates take more or less time to finish it: it might hint what to expect if you hire them.
- Compensate candidates for their time – If you don’t hire the tested candidate, you should strongly consider paying them fair compensation for the time spent on the test. After all, you’re taking away time they could spend on some other job—and paying them properly also favours your business’ reputation.
After you assign your candidates their micro-tests, move on to the next step, which is the final interview. This is a critical moment in the hiring process, so let’s dwell on it in the following article.
