How do you check for HTML and SQL ability in interviews for email marketers?
My company is in the process of hiring an email production manager, but we haven't figured out a great way to check that candidates are self-sufficient with regard to HTML and SQL.
We are a fairly technical and data-driven company, and we need our new email manager to be able to update HTML templates and create new ones without being reliant on a developer. We also need this new email manager to be able to write SQL queries and understand our database structure.
What best practices or questions do you use in your interviews to check for technical ability? Do you ask open-ended questions; ask candidates to provide examples of previous work; or give the candidates HTML or SQL tests?
All suggestions and feedback are helpful. Thank you in advance!
Just give them the actual test. If they can't find the Hrefs, or write a simple SQL statement from scratch then they are not proficient. Don't be shy. If they are a manager level, they should be able to do it. If they are a coordinator or researcher, then perhaps they can learn on the job and be trained. But we all need to start holding people more accountable for backing up the skills they claim. And a person who edits HTML and SQL wrong can do a lot of damage to your deployments and automations. Don't let them run amok in your code if they don't know what they are doing.
Give a test. I was given a Sketch file to convert it to HTML when I was interviewing for my current job. The task should not be difficult I think, it's just to give you an idea about the candidate level of HTML knowledge. Or give some smaller tasks, like a broken email to fix, or show some Litmus previews of broken emails and ask how she/he would fix that particular issue.
I'm interested in this role.