What expertise do you offer to companies today? To which industries do they belong? What types of companies?
I help my clients implement a traffic acquisition strategy. My typical client has a great website but struggles to generate sales or leads through his site, so he realizes that a website without people on it is useless. So I help him identify the best levers to generate traffic. This can be SEO, online advertising, social media, etc. I don't have a specific industry, I have a specialty in IT, but I like to discover new things. On the other hand, I work more with small and medium-sized businesses than with large accounts.
How would you define Digital Marketing? For which type(s) of position(s) is it interesting to test candidates' skills in digital marketing?
Digital marketing was specially deployed after COVID, and we saw all the companies talking about it. It has become essential for them, and therefore it is necessarily more complicated for their organizations to stand out because the competition is tough. For a company, recruiting in digital marketing is not easy because there are many different jobs, and it is impossible to be an expert in everything therefore solutions like Maki People seem to me to be essential today to allow recruiters to make the right choices in terms of candidates. There are a lot of schools and also a lot of people who have acquired their skills on their own. If we want to find the best talents, we must first test their skills.
How do you evaluate this skill in candidates?
The problem with digital marketing lies in the fact that these are jobs that are constantly evolving. Techniques, strategies, and tools can change every six months. Some fundamentals can be identified when you are an expert, and that allows you to "judge" the skills of candidates. Nevertheless, the key skill to judge is curiosity, a good "web marketer" must be constantly on the lookout, to continually learn new techniques and new tools. This will allow him and therefore the company to be ahead of its competitors.
How to read and interpret the results of the Digital Marketing test?
The Digital Marketing test that I conducted with Maki People allows us to gauge the fundamental technical skills of the candidate, and his curiosity because it covers many aspects of digital marketing.
At what point in the recruitment process do you advise a recruiter to take a Digital Marketing skills test? After the first selection of CVs, after a first interview?
If the recruiter is looking for someone who is immediately operational, it seems to me preferable to give a skill test very early in the recruitment process. Digital marketing can be learned if you are passionate about it, so if the company is willing to give the candidate time to improve his skills, the test can come later. It's not only for digital marketing, but soft skills are essential too, and a passionate candidate can quickly become more competent (6 months) than a candidate with better basic skills.
What are the questions that can be interesting to ask candidates during an interview in addition to the Digital Marketing test?
I would ask the candidate about their use of digital without being too intrusive. When you work in digital, I think it is important to be able to put yourself in the shoes of users and potential customers. For example, it seems complicated to me to be a good Community Manager on Instagram if you don't use this social network yourself.
How do you see the world of Digital Marketing in companies in the future?
It's changing and evolving so fast that it is difficult to make predictions. I see today a lot of "Swiss Army knives" in companies: the same person who manages social networks, the website, the newsletter, and SEO ... Tomorrow, I think we will be more on the hyper-specialization of each of these skills.
Guillaume Guersan is a Digital Marketing consultant, SEO, SEA, and Inbound Marketing and is the Maker of Maki People. He is passionate about IT and Digital Marketing and helps his clients generate more leads, traffic, and customers through digital levers. His goal is to grow and engage his clients' traffic by focusing on the most ROI-striking levers.
