Have you always wanted to use work samples to interview your applicants? This quick guide gives a list of questions you can use. Each questions is a real world scenario that the candidate needs to solve. Research shows that work samples are the most effective way to hire. A Don't waste more time.
Investment in The Coconut Industry by Nancy Cheruiyot
Case Interviews and Work Sample Questions in Marketing, Sales and Customer Service
1. Work samples and case
interview questions you can use
A HireArt Presentation
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2. 2
Content
We cover the following jobs in this guide:
1. Marketing Questions
2. Sales Questions
3. Customer Service Questions
3. 3
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!
4. 4
Marketing Questions (1/3)
QuestionTitle
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?
5. 5
Marketing Questions (2/3)
QuestionTitle
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?
GoogleTrends
On GoogleTrends (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 GoogleTrends and
analyze what you find by writing a short paragraph about it. Please also paste the
link to the GoogleTrends analysis you conducted.
6. 6
Marketing Questions (3/3)
QuestionTitle
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?
7. 7
Sales Questions (1/2)
QuestionTitle
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?
8. 8
Sales Questions (2/2)
QuestionTitle
Question
Collecting leads
You’re hired to generate leads for a new bicycle brands that wants to sell its
bikes to bike stores in NewYork.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?
9. 9
Customer Service Questions (1/2)
QuestionTitle
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 theVero 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
10. 10
Customer Service Questions (2/2)
QuestionTitle
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?
11. HireArt lets you recruit candidates who have
already taken work sample tests
12. Thank you!
If you’re interested in using work sample to
hire, visit us at www.hireart.com