Q: Why are you looking for a new position?
A: I’ve been at Cross-Cultural Solutions (CCS) for almost 2 ½ years and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience. CCS is a non-profit organization that sends volunteers overseas for 1-12 weeks. The downturn in the economy has brought a significant decline in the number of volunteers from previous years which has resulted in budget cuts, pay cuts for all staff, among other impacts. I am looking to take additional responsibilities at an organization with greater growth potential.
Q: Tell me how you like to work – what are your strengths?
A: I enjoy problem solving and taking complicated, inefficient operations and creating organized, simple systems. I like looking at things and saying, “You know what, this could be better. Lets take it apart, look at the pieces and build something that’s going to work.” When I’m done, the processes I create are more efficient, less prone to errors, and can often be run by a more junior person. I was going to add “marketing process reengineering” to my resume but was afraid that most people wouldn’t "get it." In addition to running a marketing operation, this is one of my unique strengths.
Q: What is your management style?
A: Most of my career, I’ve been sandwiched somewhere between marketing and IT – probably closer to marketing. Or maybe you could say that I’m a marketing guy with an IT focus. I enjoy the challenge of generating excitement and bringing people together to a consensus on a project. I understand that you sometimes have to sell to get people on board and to get through the difficult parts. It takes persistence but also and possibly more importantly, a good personality. You have to maintain good relationships so that people want to agree with you, work for you and see your project succeed. I’m definitely good at building positive relationships.
Q: Where do you hope to go with your career in the near future?
A: Having worked at a variety of large and small companies in several industries, I “get” marketing. I’m especially interested in continuing to move deeper into online marketing and social networking which is now seeing explosive growth. I enjoy learning and this is an important part of my personal growth and my career. The new technologies and techniques that I soak up during career training are where many of my new ideas come from. The ideas that make it to implementation benefit my employers immensely.
Case Study from my Current Employer: Improved Email Performance
Email marketing to the house list is our most effective channel at Cross-Cultural Solutions. Shortly after arriving on the job, I dug into this effort and worked with internal marketing staff to implement optimal timing, testing and tracking of emails, further improving results. I identified a large number of unsubscribes attributed to a single opt-out method: "all or nothing". I built a project allowing recipients to select email preferences and liaisoned closely with our IT team and Exact Target (our email marketing vendor) to implement. Our leads were happy to choose only specific emails of interest and the end result was 25%+ fewer unsubscribes.
