Marketing Tips from a Marketing Agency: Brand Your Interviews

It would only stand to reason that a marketing & branding agency would be pretty good at branding and marketing itself.

So I thought it might be fun to explore some branding & marketing concepts using our own agency, McLellan Marketing Group, as the guinea pig.

Brand your interviews

Interview We brand ourselves so consumers can decide if we’d be a good match.  We make a promise so that someone who isn’t interested in our promise just moves on.  We should be using our brand to do that same kind of sorting/weeding for employees too.

Your interview questions should do more than tell you about the candidate.  They should tell the candidate about you.

Here are some MMG favorites:

  • What rules do you break at work?
  • What’s the first thing you do in the morning?
  • In a team environment, are you a motivator, player, leader, or enthusiast?
  • If you were a salad dressing, what kind would you be and why?
  • Persuade me to move to Des Moines.
  • How do you manage stress?
  • What’s your personal motto?
  • You’ve got one seat left in the fallout shelter, family not included, who gets the seat?
  • What’s your definition of working too hard?
  • If I met one of your former co-workers at a BBQ and they’d had a beer or two, what would they tell me about you?
  • If you could have one super power, which would you choose?

I’m not suggesting these are the questions for you. These questions speak to the MMG brand. Each of these give a little clue about the company and the people who work there. 

So knowing your culture like you do — what might your branded interview questions be about?

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5 comments on “Marketing Tips from a Marketing Agency: Brand Your Interviews

  1. Drew, you’d certainly find out some interesting things about a future employee. Far different than the conventional questions. Love your approach.

  2. Drew,

    When you ask these kind of questions, are you looking for a particular answer? If my super power of choice is “x-ray vision”, what might that tell you? How will it play into your decision making? Just curious, as always!

    Cory

  3. Robyn,

    And isn’t that the goal — to get answers that are not the norm? Most job candidates have canned answers for the canned questions.

    But not for these!

    Drew

  4. Cory,

    No..for the most part, it’s not the answer that I care about. It’s how they handle the unexpected. It’s how they answer out of the blue questions. It’s what elements of their character they reveal.

    Let’s face it, we have all been blindsided by a client’s weird question or comment. This is one way to see how they’d handle that sort of heated situation.

    Besides, it makes the conversation more fun!

    Drew

  5. Lewis,

    Without a doubt. These questions reflect McLellan Marketing Group. I’m using them as an example but you’d have to develop your own set.

    Unless you want to screen employees for me!

    Drew

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