Organisations are increasingly going to market to hire ‘digital specialists’, ‘digital project managers, ‘digital strategists’ and ‘digital marketers’. I monitor the job advertisements in my home town of Adelaide and it is clear that jobs with ‘digital’ in the title are increasing significantly.
Digital is a relatively new thing. The problem is that anybody who has a Facebook account with hundreds of friends can call themselves a ‘digital specialist’ and pull the wool over the eyes of a non-digitally-savvy hiring manager. In my time working in digital roles, I’ve encountered some pretty ordinary digital specialists who have little understanding of the fundamentals of digital beyond uploading a post to Facebook. Digital is much more than just social media.
First and foremost, digital specialists need to have the right mindset, demeanour and personal orientation – these soft skills are the most critical element. The best digital people are outgoing, effusive, inspiring, self-motivated, collaborative, curious, change-oriented, indefatigable, clever, flexible, experimental, articulate and motivating. They are leaders and change agents. They are great communicators, both orally and in written form. They are geeks with personalities. They possess a wide array of cross-disciplinary skills that have traditionally resided in other organisational verticals – namely sales, customer service, information technology and marketing. They don’t just consume and recirculate digital content, they create it themselves and publish it online. They can talk to hard-core coders, understand their unique language and get the very best of of them. They can argue a position persuasively to the CEO and convince him/her to take a certain path with a business decision. They can run multiple digital projects simultaneously, juggling developers, stakeholders, resources, budgets and a schedule.
These people are hard to find. So how do organisations make sure that they get the right person?
It’s true that past behaviour is a reasonably good indicator of future behaviour. A digital person worth their salt will be able to show you a portfolio of their previous work and this will give an clear indication of their digital credentials. Do they have a blog? A YouTube Channel? Have they headed up previous digital projects that are now available online? Have they worked as a community manager of an online community? Do they run a website? Have they skinned a WordPress site before? A quality digital person will already have an extensive online footprint that you will be able to check out.
Importantly, has some of their portfolio been done on a discretionary basis? Have they produced stuff under their own steam, rather than as a requirement of somebody else? Those that ‘live digital’ and create their own stuff, in their own time, are the ones that you want to get your hands on.
And just to be sure that you’ve hooked the right person, ask them to do this 70-question digital quiz. The quiz will test their technical understanding of the digital space – the hard skills. Granted, these are far less important than the aforementioned soft skills, but technical fluency is certainly a nice-to-have. This test will give you a comparative tool for assessing your candidates.
- What does HTML stand for?
- Why are ‘hits’ not a reliable metric?
- Name two web Content Management Systems
- What is a <TITLE> tag and why is it important?
- What is the name of Google’s mobile operating system?
- What does SEM stand for?
- What does https:// in the address bar signify?
- What does UI stand for?
- Name one of the two founders of Google
- What does SaaS stand for?
- What is a QR code?
- Explain what Big Data is
- What software uses the file extension .AI?
- Who is the founder of Facebook?
- What does CSS stand for?
- What is Google+?
- Name three different web browsers
- What software uses the file extension .PSD?
- Explain ‘bounce rate’
- What does VR and AR stand for?
- What is a unique visitor?
- What does RSS stand for?
- What is responsive design?
- What does SSL stand for?
- What is an Oculus Rift?
- Explain what a ‘call to action’ is
- What is a goal in Google Analytics?
- What is an IP address?
- What does API stand for?
- How many characters can a tweet have?
- What is A/B Testing?
- What does UX stand for?
- What are the three most common boolean operators?
- What does CPM stand for?
- Name two email marketing software programs?
- What is crowdsourcing?
- What is an XML sitemap?
- Name the three biggest search engines
- Who owns Instagram?
- What does SEO stand for?
- Explain what the ‘cloud’ is
- What is a hashtag?
- What does eDM stand for?
- What is a URL?
- Modern day smartphones have an NFC chip – what is that?
- What is the name of Google’s pay-per-click advertising service?
- What is iOS?
- What is a retweet?
- What is a CAPTCHA code?
- What does IA stand for?
- What is the difference between organic and paid traffic in relation to Google?
- What is the Internet of Things?
- The word ‘blog’ is short for what?
- What is a UTM tag?
- Who owns YouTube?
- What does IM stand for?
- What is Pinterest?
- What does VOIP stand for?
- If you saw this in Google Analytics, what would it mean – google / cpc
- What is a landing page?
- What does WYSIWYG stand for?
- What is ‘agile’?
- What does PPC stand for?
- What is FTP?
- What does CTR stand for?
- What’s the difference between an app and a mobile website?
- What search results would the Google search ‘site:www.mydomain.com’ return?
- In HTML, what does the tag <br> do?
- What is the most up-to-date release of the Android operating system?
- What is an infographic?