Need to prepare for SEO internship interview.

Have no skills in it. I told them, but they said it can be learned on the job.

I still have to come in for an interview though and I feel like I might tank it since I don't have more to offer other than I want to get into the IT field and this feels like a good start. No significant skills in the field otherwise.

So anyone here have an idea of how I can prepare for the interview? Are there any resources that can help me quickly catch up to the analytics, html, analysis software/sites, and excel skills I need?

I know I can do this job given time, but will I be given that time on the job or do I have to be near to prepared beforehand? I have no clue.

Reasearch what the job entails and how the company functions. They'll want to know if you cared enough to do a bit of research beforehand. Ask a few questions about the job and the company relating to stuff you learned during the interview or after to show them you at least give a shit. Look up the list of interview questions and think about your answer before the interview. You don't want to draw a blank on "what do you think you can contribute to the company" or similar standard interview questions. Don't do canned cliché answers like "my biggest flaw is that I care too much". Be honest but not rude. Relax and everyhting should go fine.

Here's what I look for when I interview people

• Eager - Do I feel that the person wants and is ready to tackle the position (don't be over-eager though)
• Intelligence - Does the person seem intelligent and does it seem like the person is willing to learn new things
• Prepared - Is the person prepared, and does the person ask questions after we are done with the main interview
• Learning Capability - Is the person going to take the initiative to learn the skills in their off hours?
• Skills - Take a look at the requirements, go to google, and start to get an understanding of the field. Even if the person has no experience, did he/she go online and try to start learning the skills (relates to all three of the previous points)

Experience is great, but in starting positions I never expect a lot. I'm generally looking at the above bullet points and potential; what do I think the potential of this person is.

Also, when you say analytics, what do you mean exactly?

Be honest about your skills, but show you are incredibly eager to learn.

Learn as much as you can about the company before you step in for the interview: Their missions statement, vision, values, history, who owns it, who is in management, hiring philosophy (smaller companies may not have this), social pages, etc.. Show them you really did your homework and that you are taking this job seriously.

For analytics (assuming you mean website analytics) - play around in Google analytics. They may use that or the Adobe alternative (I miss using Omniture). But in general the data points are the same. It is a very powerful software and has great tutorials. Start with their help site and go from there: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/4553001?hl=en and https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/

Finally one piece of advice that may be difficult to follow through on: If you feel that they are using you for free labour. That this internship will not be valuable or educational for you. They they will be asking you to work very long hours with little pay and only a "resume builder", then it may be good to walk away. Most reputable places pay for their internships or reward with highly marketable skills (some even help you find a job). If they want you to pay for it yourself run away as fast as you can, that is a scam.

One question I have is when you say you want to get into IT what do you mean? I wouldn't really consider SEO an IT field, but more of a marketing field. I say this as a web developer that works with a content strategist that does our SEO for our websites. Our team is marketing instead of IT.

That said, SEO is still a great thing to learn and get into if you enjoy working with websites. The main thing I would look into is beyond understanding the basic analytics (Google is obviously the most popular), but try to learn a bit about actual content and what makes good content that the search engines will rank higher (keywords, length of content, not too many links, etc). Understanding the basic concepts about how a website works is great, but chances are anywhere you go will have a different way they run their site, so focus on the basics. Can you write a basic page that says "Hello World"? You should be good if you can.

As for the interview, just pay attention, answer honestly, and be sure that you show your willingness to learn. The job I got was going to be mainly asp.net, which I had no experience with. I said that I was willing to learn and I do best by learning by doing and I somehow got the job haha.

@aegon: My field in engineering so I won't try to answer any of your technical questions relating to IT. But I will say is that you were already upfront about the fact that you don't know much about the subject material. They're looking for you to prove that you can learn and that you interested in learning about SOE.

Try to do as much research that pertains to the job as you can so you show that you're motivated. Be prepared for some technical questions but it's important to convey to the people interviewing you that, yes you might not have all the knowledge now but you confident you can learn the material given the chance. No matter what happens in the interview make sure that message gets across if they are giving you a hard time, but I doubt they would.

Good luck duder!

It helps a lot to be articulate. I know almost nothing about SEO, but there's probably a lot of technical terms and concepts involved that are unique to the field. It sounds like you don't have time to really learn all the technical stuff, but you could at least learn all the important terms and be able to use them correctly in full sentences. Last time I was on the job market (in tech), I compiled a list of all the various terms I came across as I studied and wrote a short definition for each in my own words, and I think it helped a lot. Practice talking about them out loud, even. You'll sound much more professional and self-assured when you can put together a complete sentence with the right words in the right order. Don't worry so much about the occasional um or uh - of course you should minimize that, but even the best candidates do that so it's not a big deal. It's more about sounding as if you know what you're talking about.

Along the same lines, they may ask you about what you've listed in your resume, so you can prep for that in advance. For each skill you've listed out think of an example of a time you've used that skill, and for each job experience / course listed / prepare a short sentence describing it in a bit more detail than you have in your resume with an emphasis on the skills you've learned or results achieved.

You can also find lists of common interview questions and practice answering them out loud. If you can, maybe convince a friend to help interview you and give you feedback. If they can give you feedback on your resume as well, even better.

Good luck!!

D'oh, just realized this topic was super old! Why was it bumped to the top? Well anyway, the above advice applies to just about any job interview so maybe it will be useful to someone.

@kassadi: No problem, I don't get it though, how was this bumped? I don't see any post of yours.

[off-topic] Sometimes threads get bumped by spam bots (and then the spam posts get deleted)