Interview questions · Marketing
8 questions for interviewing a Social Media Manager — each with what a strong answer sounds like and the red flag to catch. Written for founders interviewing without a recruiter.
Listen for: A named metric that missed, a kill decision made at a defined point, and a reallocated budget.
Red flag: Every campaign "learned us something valuable" — no actual kill discipline.
Listen for: They ask about your current mix first, then reason from CAC and payback, not fashion.
Red flag: A confident answer without asking a single question about your business.
Listen for: Small, measurable experiments with explicit success criteria before scaling anything.
Red flag: Brand-awareness spend or "it depends" with no committed starting point.
Listen for: Evidence they study the craft beyond the famous case studies everyone cites.
Red flag: Can only name Apple, Nike, or whatever went viral last month.
Listen for: Comfort with imperfect data, directional metrics, and holdout or geo tests where possible.
Red flag: Pretends attribution tools solve this, or gives up on measurement entirely.
Listen for: Learning before changing, early small wins, and questions about how you’d measure them.
Red flag: Grand transformation plans before understanding the context, or no ambition at all.
Listen for: Lived-experience insight that only someone who’s done the job would know.
Red flag: Generic answers that could come from reading the job description.
Listen for: A real weakness stated plainly, plus the compensating system they’ve built.
Red flag: A humblebrag ("I care too much"), or claiming the manager would say nothing.
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