STAR Flashcards
(27 cards)
Tell me about a time you dealt with a difficult third-party partner/agency or person.
S - There was a time I was working closely with an external agency on a website build.
T - I was responsible for spearheading all communications and making sure the project moved forward. Sometimes it would take a week before the agency would email me back. I could definitely empathize with them as I know they were managing multiple projects, but I also had to recognize that it was slowing down an anticipated launch date for one of our brands.
A - What I did is I set a reminder for myself to follow up two days after sending any emails. I also scheduled phone meetings to allow us to communicate more information at once and manage expectations.
R - This resulted in us getting the project back up to speed and meeting the deadlines we each needed to meet.
Tell me about a time you made a mistake.
S - There was a time I was overseeing a content overhaul for a brand’s product listing pages to align with their recent rebrand. The brand had about 30 products, which totaled to around 300 new creative assets needed.
T - My responsibility was to oversee a copywriter and production artist and ensure the new content adhered to brand guidelines and was reviewed before going live. I made the mistake of overlooking a typo in one of the images that was published. Fortunately, we caught the error and were able to correct and re-upload it immediately.
A - Moving forward, I created a structured template for the copywriter to input copy which allowed the production artist to transfer text more smoothly. I also had our lead graphic designer assist with reviewing final assets for very large projects.
R - As a result, we were able to first, minimize the chance of errors with an improved workflow, but second we could also catch typos more easily prior to publishing by having more eyes on the final assets. I learned that it’s important to ask for help rather than compromise on quality.
Give me an example of a situation when you showed initiative and took charge of a situation.
S - When I was positioned on the Creative Services team at Growve, we began building out storefronts for many of our brands who sold their products on Amazon.
T - I was responsible for wireframing the page layouts, overseeing our copywriters and designers in creating the content, and communicating project status and revisions between my team and the brands. The storefronts were much larger and more complex than the typical requests we received (emails, social posts, packaging label edits, etc.). Many of the brands were struggling to request storefronts by either not providing enough information or they weren’t aware of their options. It became clear to me that there was a need for outlining expectations as well as educating them on this new content platform.
A - I took the initiative to create an electronic request form on the project management software we used, Monday.com. This form had Storefront examples and required fields asking the brands to make more informed requests. We would not move forward until the required fields were filled out and we had alignment.
R - This helped ensure the brands gave us enough information to work with, managed expectations upfront, minimized an excess of revisions down the line, and improved client satisfaction. My ability to take a hands-on approach to process improvements was one of the reasons I was promoted to my previous position.
Give me an example of a time when you didn’t meet a client’s expectations. How did you deal with the situation?
S - When I was positioned on the Creative Services team at Growve, we began building out storefronts for many of our clients who sold their products on Amazon.
T - I was responsible for wireframing the page layouts, overseeing our copywriters and designers in creating the content, and communicating project status and revisions between my team and the clients. The storefronts were much larger and more complex than the typical requests we received (emails, social posts, packaging label edits, etc.). One of the first storefronts we built was for a nutritional supplement brand with a large portfolio. We submitted what we believed to be a really solid first draft, but the client wasn’t happy and requested a lengthy list of revisions and additions to the layout.
A - The first thing I did was schedule a call with the client to walk through the storefront and better understand their needs. I wanted to make sure they felt seen and heard, and knew their satisfaction was our top priority. We made sure to address all of their concerns and adjust the content accordingly. Through this situation, it became clear to me that there was a need for outlining expectations as well as educating our clients on this new content platform. I took the initiative to create an electronic request form on the project management software we used, Monday.com. This form had Storefront examples and required fields asking the brands to make more informed requests. We would not move forward until the required fields were filled out and we had alignment.
R - Moving forward, this helped ensure the brands gave us enough information to work with, managed expectations upfront, minimized an excess of revisions down the line, and improved client satisfaction.
Tell me about a time when you had a problem or challenge you needed to solve.
S - In my previous role, I was helping launch a new brand on both their direct-to-consumer Shopify website and Amazon. This client sold special undergarments like double-sided fashion tape and backless adhesive garments for women wearing certain, more complex tops or dresses. These were really challenging products to market in our content because if we showed the models in regular clothing, the products wouldn’t even be visible, but if we showed the models wearing the tapes or adhesive products the content would get flagged and rejected by Amazon.
T - I was responsible for working with our lead graphic designer to find a way to repurpose the photography for our content on Amazon so that it would be accepted.
A - We collaborated and found some creative ways to edit the photography. We zoomed in and cropped some of the photos at different angles where the product was still visible, but with a lot less skin showing. We also utilized some of the brand’s unique design elements to layer onto the photos creating some interesting photo-illustrations that really helped carry the branding throughout the content, while also meeting Amazon’s content acceptance guidelines.
R - As a result, we were able to successfully use the same photos on the DTC and Amazon websites without having to completely reshoot the photography which saved a lot of money. I find it’s important to approach problems by working with the resources I already have and trying to see things through a creative lens, as well as collaborating to bounce ideas between myself and my team members.
Tell me about a time you went above and beyond your duties for a job or a task.
S - My former manager asked me to review and create a report on several of our client’s competitors’ direct-to-consumer marketing funnels.
T - The requirements were simple; I had to fill out the answers to questions about the competitors’ ads, funnel stages, promotions, and any pre or post-purchase upsells they were utilizing.
A - I saw an opportunity to go above and beyond by making a PowerPoint presentation with creative samples and colorful price comparison charts that displayed the information in a clear and precise way.
R - My presentation helped everyone in the meeting stay engaged and led to a successful brainstorming session on how to best position ourselves against our client’s competitors.
How do you adapt to sudden changes in the workplace?
S - While working at Growve, there was a time we had a sudden change in the cloud storage and file sharing platforms we used. All of our files had to suddenly be migrated to a new platform that we were unfamiliar with.
T - I sensed a bit of unease amongst our copywriters and designers who spent significant time using this system.
A - What I did is I first brought myself up to speed on the new platform, then decided to call a team meeting to review the new tech with the team and make sure everyone had the chance to ask questions or make suggestions for our file organization structure.
R - This meeting resulted in our team feeling more comfortable with this sudden change and prevented any problems or confusion happening in the middle of upcoming important projects by my ability to anticipate the need for clarity upfront.
Tell me about a time you had to think on your feet.
S - I was overseeing a project and working with one of our designers. The day before the first draft submission was due, she called in sick and did not have her current, working design files uploaded to our shared drive. The files she had uploaded in our drive were about two versions outdated.
T - Fortunately, since I had walked through every step of the project with her, I was well-versed in what edits had been made since her last upload.
A - Because of my experience using the full Adobe Creative Suite, I was able to roll up my sleeves and get the files back up-to-date.
R - This resulted in us meeting our deadline, but it could have been a bit less stressful if we had the up-to-date files to begin with. Moving forward, I made sure to send out EOD reminders to our designers to make sure their working design files were up-to-date should any unforeseen circumstances occur and myself or another designer need to step in.
Is there a situation you could’ve handled better or differently?
S - I was overseeing a project and working with one of our designers. The day before the first draft submission was due, she called in sick and did not have her current, working design files uploaded to our shared drive. The files she had uploaded in our drive were about two versions outdated.
T - Fortunately, since I had walked through every step of the project with her, I was well-versed in what edits had been made since her last upload.
A - Because of my experience using the full Adobe Creative Suite, I was able to roll up my sleeves and get the files back up-to-date.
R - This resulted in us meeting our deadline, but it could have been a bit less stressful if we had the up-to-date files to begin with. Moving forward, I made sure to send out EOD reminders to our designers to make sure their working design files were up-to-date should any unforeseen circumstances occur and myself or another designer need to step in.
Tell me about a time when you had to work with a difficult person.
S - While positioned on the Creative Services team, I worked cross-functionally with the campaigns and product launch teams to facilitate new product launches. One of their team members would often scoff at other coworkers’ ideas in meetings and loudly proclaim that he was smarter than everyone else.
T - As a Marketing Manager, I knew this behavior would not fly.
A - I approached him in tandem with the head of Creative Services department in a private discussion about the negative environment he was cultivating. We wanted to reach a resolution with him.
R - It turned out that he did not want to work on the projects we were partnering on, as he felt the projects were too ‘junior’ for his experience. He ended up being reassigned and we were able to complete our project in a positive environment. By initiating an open and honest conversation with this person, we were able to uncover his need. We were also able to look after the needs of our own team by protecting the workplace culture.
How do you handle conflict with a team member?
S - I had a copywriter who consistently submitted writing with careless errors.
T - As a Marketing Manager, I always voice to my team that effective marketing is all about teamwork and making sure your piece of the puzzle is always of the highest quality.
A - To further iterate this point, I decided to pull the copywriter aside in a private meeting to express my concerns that they were not pulling their weight and explain how it was having a significant impact on the project speed for the team. I continued to review this person’s submissions, sending them back with markups instead of correcting them myself. Correcting it myself would have been faster, but it would not have taught them to be more aware of their own proof-reading.
R - With each piece of feedback I provided, this person noticeably improved. They kept their job because of their fast improvements, and our team became faster at completing content projects by minimizing revision time.
Tell me about a time you were unable to meet a project deadline.
S - I was overseeing a handful of content projects and noticed the designers were struggling to meet deadlines and asking for extensions, causing some frustration with our client.
T - As the Marketing Manager, it was my responsibility to identify areas we could improve efficiency.
A - I reviewed the designers’ meeting calendars and noticed they were participating in a couple lengthy, weekly progress meetings that touched on many projects, only a couple of which they were actually working on. I decided to remove them from these meetings and act as the main communicator between the designers and meeting members on informing status and needs.
R - As a result, this freed up several hours of time in their schedule for them to work on their graphic design projects, making sure we were able to meet future deadlines and ensuring our client was satisfied.
How do you work under pressure?
S - At my previous employer, many of our brands sold products on Amazon so there were often peak periods where we had a higher than normal volume of creative requests surrounding key dates like Prime Day causing many simultaneous deadlines and a high-pressure environment.
T - As the Content Manager, I had to make sure the assets were completed on time, approved by Amazon’s acceptance process, and published by Prime Day. It was a lot to get through, but pressure invigorates me–rather than getting overwhelmed and stressed out, my adrenaline kicks in, and I feel energized.
A - During that hectic period, I busted out my time-management skills and effectively delegated tasks to our team of copywriters, designers, and production artists. I created a progress checkpoint calendar for us to use internally to make sure we were moving forward at a pace that would allow us to meet our deadline.
R - As a result, I was able to oversee the successful completion and publishing of quality content for all our Amazon clients in time for Prime Day.
How do you juggle multiple priorities?
S - There was a time when one of my colleagues took off a week of PTO. My manager asked me to take on some of her responsibilities and ensure the projects she was working on kept moving forward.
T - Suddenly, I had to multitask quite a few responsibilities and reprioritize my own clients and projects to make room for her most important ones.
A - I re-evaluated my projects and reprioritized them based on the company’s goals, my availability, and other factors (along with a bit of input from my manager). I was able to automate some of the tasks and also utilize our production artists who had availability in their workload to assist with several design projects.
R - Thanks to successfully prioritizing and delegating tasks, none of our clients realized there had been an internal shift on our end, and our team’s high quality of service was maintained.
Tell me about a time you worked well with a team.
S - In my previous job, I worked cross-functionally with campaigns, legal, developer, and finance teams to launch new products.
T - There were so many moving pieces. Everyone had different responsibilities as we were each positioned on different teams, but we all had to work as one unit to bring the product to life.
A - I organized a virtual project management system that would allow us to check in with each other daily with status updates, needs, or bottlenecks. I was able to delegate tasks across the entire team.
R - Thanks to the new system, we were all individually able to keep offline momentum and our team meetings were far more productive.
Tell me about a time you had to demonstrate leadership skills.
S - There was a time we hired several production artists in an effort to speed up the production of heavily templated creative assets for the product listing pages of brands with larger portfolios.
T - As the Marketing Manager, I was tasked with onboarding the new hires. The production artists we hired did not speak English as their first language, so there was a bit of a communication barrier. We were training over video calls, and I noticed that although I felt I was giving helpful verbal explanations, their communication style seemed to be more receptive when I provided visual examples.
A - I saw this as an opportunity to step up and create a visual-based aid that outlined each step of the production process so they could reference this guide while working.
R - Thanks to the training material I made, the new hires were ready to start working for us prior to their initially anticipated start date.
Tell me about a time you and a teammate had a disagreement.
S - There was a time I was working with a team on a new product launch.
T - We were responsible for creating and launching a direct-to-consumer marketing funnel. Two of the team members wanted to hold daily meetings to discuss the plan and progress. Other team members, including myself, disagreed with this approach because we already had a log to report project progress. We thought these meetings would use up valuable time needed to complete the project.
A - Instead of wasting time arguing, we gathered everyone to explain the reasoning for their side. When there’s a disagreement, I find it’s best to listen to others and understand someone else’s perspective. It turned out that the team members who wanted to hold daily meetings had a bad experience with a previous project because there was a lack of consistent communication.
R - Eventually, we decided to hold a daily meeting that would last no more than ten minutes to provide short updates on task progress. By making this healthy compromise, it minimized the anxiety some of the team members felt from not having daily contact, allowing them to focus on their work, and because the meetings were only 10-minutes long, it didn’t use up valuable time needed to complete the project. Ultimately, this was the best decision for the team and the company, and it helped us to complete the project ahead of schedule.
Tell me about a time you set and achieved a metric goal.
S - There was a time I was working on a direct-to-consumer landing page for a client.
T - I was tasked with increasing the page’s conversion rate.
A - I like to use the “SMART” method when setting a goal, so I make sure it’s “specific,” “measurable,” “achievable,” “relevant” and “time-bound.” In this instance, my goal was something along the lines of, “By conducting an A/B test with a new hero image, I will increase the landing page’s conversion rate by 5% within 2 weeks.”
R - After implementing this split test using the SMART method, I had a clearly defined plan and was able to successfully reach the target conversion rate goal.
Describe a time you motivated unmotivated team members.
S - There was a time during the holiday season where many of our brands needed new creative assets and we had a high volume of requests. I could sense our team was feeling a bit overwhelmed and unmotivated.
T - As the Marketing Manager, it was my job to make sure our team was equipped for success.
A - One of my favorite ways to keep employees motivated is to break projects into smaller, achievable milestones and provide positive feedback to team members as we reach those milestones. This helps with motivation and keeps projects from seeming too large or intimidating.
R - As a result, I saw our team become more at ease and we were able to complete the full volume of requests on time.
Tell me about your biggest accomplishment.
S - In my previous role, I was responsible for overseeing a DTC marketing funnel for a new brand we were launching, focusing on generating awareness and sales for their main product.
T - This brand had little brand awareness so we were practically starting from the ground up.
A - I worked closely with our Social Media and Email Marketing Managers to strategize a full-funnel approach and determine messaging consistency at each stage of the funnel from TikTok, to a Shopify landing page, to a Klaviyo post-purchase email flow.
R - By working together as a team and dialing in our strategy alignment, we saw a huge success. Our TikTok went viral with over 1 million views driving significant traffic to our landing page. We secured thousands of dollars in revenue for the brand from landing page sales and post-purchase email upsells.
Tell me about your experience managing budgets.
S - During my time at Growve, our clients gave us advertising budgets to use for our DTC funnels.
T -
A - I worked alongside our Social Media Manager and head of Creative Services to create and monitor data dashboards which tracked our ad spend, conversion rate, revenue, and ROAS.
R - As a result, we were able to make informed decisions on our targeted advertising, make sure we were staying within our client’s budget, and track the money we were earning through our funnels.
Tell me about your experience with metrics.
S - During my time as a Content Performance Manager, I was responsible for tracking a large variety of metrics.
T - Some of these metrics included conversion rate, click-through-rate, time on page, bounce rate, average order value, return on ad spend, etc.
A - I use the SMART method to set goals that are “specific,” “measurable,” “achievable,” “relevant” and “time-bound.” For example, “By creating a minimum order value to qualify for free shipping, I will increase the website’s AOV (Average Order Value) by 10% within 3 weeks.” Then I would keep track of data using software like Google Analytics or custom dashboards.
R - As a result, I met or exceeded our metric goals by having a well-defined goal-setting system and organized data.
Tell me about a time you used data analytics to make a decision.
S - A previous client was launching a new and improved product that targeted a male audience with specific health goals.
T - As the Content Manager, I was tasked with determining the best strategy for the creative on their product listing page.
A - I used Helium 10 to conduct a split test with two different directions to determine which content most effectively resonated with our target demographic.
R - By using data analytics, we were able to determine the highest performing content and confidently publish this to the client’s product listing page.
Tell me about a time you achieved a marketing metric set by your boss.
S - My previous boss had me working on an e-commerce website for one of our clients.
T - I was tasked with increasing the average order value (AOV).
A - I used the SMART method to set a goal for this project, making sure it was specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. The goal was, “By creating strategic product bundles, I will increase the brand website’s AOV by 10% within 4 weeks.”
R - After implementing the new product bundles with a clearly defined plan, I was able to successfully reach the target AOV increase.
