Hiring PPC talent - what to look for and what questions actually reveal ability
Hiring paid search practitioners is genuinely difficult because the skills that matter - commercial judgment, pattern recognition across accounts, strategic thinking under ambiguity - are not reliably revealed by standard interview questions. Most interviews test knowledge of features rather than the judgment to use them correctly.
I have hired paid search people across a 20-year career and made my share of mistakes. The hires that worked out had certain qualities in common. The ones that did not work out were often technically knowledgeable but lacked the commercial judgment that makes technical knowledge valuable. Here is what I look for now and the questions that surface it.
What actually matters in PPC roles
Technical platform knowledge is a baseline - anyone who has worked in paid search for two years should know how match types work, what Quality Score measures, and how smart bidding operates. This knowledge is necessary but not differentiating. What differentiates strong practitioners is: commercial judgment (understanding why a campaign change matters to the business, not just the account), curiosity about data (noticing patterns and asking what causes them), and communication ability (explaining technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders clearly).
Questions that reveal judgment
"Walk me through an account that was underperforming and what you did about it" - this question reveals how they diagnose problems, whether they go straight to the data or to assumptions, and whether they can explain their reasoning. A strong answer identifies a specific problem, describes the diagnostic process, explains the intervention, and quantifies the outcome. A weak answer is vague about the diagnosis and heavy on the happy ending.
"You inherit a campaign that has a very low impression share lost to budget but poor conversion rate. What do you look at first?" This question tests whether they understand the difference between budget constraints and performance constraints, and what the right sequence of investigation is.
The practical test
Give candidates a real (anonymised) account screenshot and ask them what they notice, what they would change, and why. This is more revealing than any interview question. Strong candidates identify the most important issues, distinguish symptoms from causes, and prioritise actions by impact. Weaker candidates either go straight to obvious surface metrics or suggest changes without explaining the reasoning behind them.
Red flags
Candidates who speak in platform terminology without connecting it to business outcomes. Candidates who attribute all performance improvement to their own actions without acknowledging market factors or automation. Candidates who cannot explain why a particular bidding strategy would be better than another for a specific situation - only that it is what they did. The best PPC practitioners think commercially first and technically second.
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