Work samples and case interview questions you can use A HireArt Presentation

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Content

We cover the following jobs in this guide:

1.  Marketing Questions

2.  Sales Questions

3.  Customer Service Questions

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How we created these questions

We created these questions based on interviews with dozens of employers. We’ve used some of these questions in HireArt interviews before.

Feel free to use these questions in your interview process or as inspiration!

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Marketing Questions (1/3) Question Title Question

Users resistant to changes You and the team have been working hard to create compelling B2B marketing, but you are finding that many big corporations are resistant to change. What do you think is the best way to overcome this resistance so that they begin using COMPANY?  

Focus group COMPANY is organizing a focus group with a set of users who have been using COMPANY frequently. What would you want to ask these users during the focus group? What is your most pressing question?

. Website analytics Describe how you would set up the website analytics system.  What tool would you use?  What would you measure and how would you set it up?

Understanding spend analysis You are working for MortgageMaker, a national provider of mortgages and home refinancing. You receive the data below. What can you learn from this data? What hypotheses do you have from looking at this? What other questions would you ask?

 

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Marketing Questions (2/3) Question Title Question

Understanding users   You are trying to understand why some users refer their friends using COMPANY referral pop-up whereas others don’t. How do you go about understanding their mindset?  

Traffic versus ranking   You’ve just finished working on a project to increase search rankings. Although the website’s ranking jumped by 8 positions, the traffic has only seen a minor increase (3%). What are some possible explanations for this effect?  

Improvements     

Your team has 5 different ideas for what the copy on the homepage should be. You can’t decide which one is best. How would you determine the most likely to drive conversion?     

Google Trends   On Google Trends (www.google.com/trends), you can enter one or more search phrases and Google will indicate the total number of searches done over time for those key phrases, the number of times the phrases have appeared in stories in Google News (it also shows the news story), and the top regions, cities, and languages for the search phrases you typed in.     Please enter a few keywords related to COMPANY into Google Trends and analyze what you find by writing a short paragraph about it. Please also paste the link to the Google Trends analysis you conducted.     

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Marketing Questions (3/3) Question Title Question

PR   Please create a press release for this new feature we just built. We only need a rough draft so spend no more than 15 minutes on it.  

Bounce rate   What can you tell by looking at your website’s bounce rate (percent of traffic that stayed on your website for fewer than 10 seconds)?  

Checkout abandonment   You are working for an e-commerce website and notice a high check-out abandonment rate. How do you figure out why this is happening? What is the first thing you look at?  

   CLIENT’s website     

   Please take a look at COMPANY website. What changes would you recommend?     

   Resourcefulness     

   You work for a social networking start-up. Your company is thinking of expanding to Malaysia but the CEO has concerns around privacy regulations. Do a quick search on this topic and summarize what you find in an email to the CEO. If there is any recent news on this topic, list it here.  

Favorite blog   What is your favorite web analytics blog and why?  

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Sales Questions (1/2) Question Title Question

Frustration   All jobs have frustrating parts. What are some aspects of a sales job that frustrate you most?  

   

Pitching   You are speaking to someone from Europe who has never tried Peanut Butter before. Convince them of the merits of Peanut Butter and get them to try it. Sell the benefits as effectively as you can. Please record a 30 second response.     

Closing deals   You are working on a large sale. You spend multiple hours on the phone with a client and even visit him in person. He sends you dozens of emails with detailed questions about the product and you always respond promptly. He seems very interested and agrees that your product would benefit his organization. You feel you are about to close the deal, but the client never seems quite ready to do so. He always has an excuse for why he’s not ready, and you start feeling like he might be wasting your time. What do you do? Should you keep selling and if so, how do you close the deal?     

How to handle a lead   You are working in sales at a small start-up in San Francisco. You and your colleague disagree on how to handle a lead. Whereas your colleague thinks it’s best to call the lead and discuss the product over the phone, you think it’s worth it to fly to Seattle and make the pitch in person. How do you settle this disagreement?     

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Sales Questions (2/2) Question Title Question

Collecting leads   You’re hired to generate leads for a new bicycle brands that wants to sell its bikes to bike stores in New York. The company wants you to cold all and cold email bike shops in NYC. How do you go about generating a list of leads (names, phone numbers, email addresses) that you can target?  

Sales experience   What is the hardest sale you have ever made? Why was it hard?     

Reading a situation   What are some of the best ways to tell that a client or lead is upset or uncomfortable, even if they don’t specifically say so?     

Ask the engineers   You work in sales at a technology start-up. Leads you talk to keep asking for the same features, which your company currently doesn’t offer. Whenever you talk to the engineering team about adding those features, they blow you off and tell you they aren’t important. How do you go about convincing the engineering team that those features would have a huge impact on your ability to close more sales?     

Outrageous idea   What is the most outrageous thing you’ve ever done to close a sale? If you haven’t worked in sales, imagine having a really tough client. What are some ideas you’d have to close the sale?     

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Customer Service Questions (1/2) Question Title Question

Prioritizing issues   You are on call for customer support. You only have 2 more hours left in the day and about 25 unanswered emails and calls. What do you do?     

Disgruntled customer   You are working for a fashion start-up that sells women’s clothes online. You get the following email from a customer. Please type out a response. You have ten minutes. Hi, My name is Carolyn and I bought the Vero Moda twist blouse on your website. It arrived at my house 10 days ago while I was on vacation. I just returned home, opened the package and found that the blouse has a large rip on the side. I am really disappointed and can’t believe you sent me a damaged product. Now I looked at the return policy on your website which is a maximum of seven days. Because I wasn’t home when the damaged blouse arrived, I couldn’t have sent it back earlier. But I also don’t think I should have to pay for a damaged product. I thought your company had an interesting and fresh take, but now I see that you aren’t professional and don’t care about the customer experience. Seven days as a return policy is much too short and I've never received a damaged product from any other online vendor. Now I am left with a damaged blouse! What am I supposed to do with it? I can’t imagine ever buying anything from you again. Carolyn    

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Customer Service Questions (2/2) Question Title Question

   A micromanaging client     

   You are working with a new client. He has the tendency to call almost every week to talk about insignificant changes. He tries to keep you on the phone for a long time each call and begins telling you how you should be doing your job. How would you respond to this situation? What are some approaches you might use?  

Problem Solving   You run an online jewelry store. A disgruntled customer calls you and says he got the wrong order delivered. He's mad because he had ordered his girlfriend's anniversary gift and now doesn't have anything to give her. The anniversary is tonight and there's no way to get him the right order on time. How do you make it up to him? What do you do? Please record a 1 minute video.    

Your experience   What is the hardest customer service situation you have ever had to deal with?     

Twitter You work for a CRM software company. Your company receives the following tweet from a person with over 50K followers: @company I will never use your service again. I’ve been calling for days and still can’t access my client contacts on your system!!! What do you do? Do you respond via twitter? Do you call the customer?

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