It’s been said time and again by hiring managers and recruiters that an employment gap in a resume is a red flag for candidates who lack experience and are not the right fit for a company. However, is an employment gap really a clear and justified indicator of qualification? I like to believe the answer is “No,” because every candidate has a viable reason. You need only ask, or your company risks screening out those with amazing talent.

Company layoffs are abundantly common, often appearing with little time to prepare. Individuals go months, sometimes a year or more, without securing a new job due to factors that go beyond their talent. You can argue that employees should always be on their toes looking for the next job opportunity while currently employed, although what does this say about your employee’s loyalty? Sure they’re go getters, but is a job hopping mentality a better alternative for your company’s development?

Not every experience is included on a resume. There are individuals that possess 10+ years of experience, but being taught a resume should never exceed two pages with that caliber of expertise, they will opt to exclude some of the positions they’ve held. They choose instead to pick and choose what they view as relevant experience. After all, job experiences can’t be seamlessly chronological on paper. And explaining gaps in cover letters can be counterproductive when resumes are the first documents to be screened. The same can be said for new job seekers who are encouraged to have a one-page resume.

Lacking job experience straight out of college can lead to further inexperience and unemployment. Many graduates come out of college with a boundless enthusiasm to enter the workforce and change the world. Unfortunately, they are also entering it for the first time without much experience. Getting through their first door can pose a challenge, regardless of searching early. Now overqualified for retail jobs, they are additionally considered under qualified for company jobs (“Hello I’m a Recent Grad” comic), which doesn’t help their ever expanding employment gap.

Life experience is just as good as work experience. It shapes one’s attitude and personality. Whether it’s taking care of your children or sick family members, or traveling around the world, all life experiences teach us skills we can’t learn from school or from holding a job. They teach us to be positive, flexible, worldly and adaptable. They are the inspiration for our creativity. To an extent, tasks can always be taught and trained. But a candidate’s life experiences? They can be as applicable as work experience despite the presence of an employment gap.

In a perfect world we wouldn’t have employment gaps (or at least, no long ones). People would go from one job to the next, developing skills, growing as individuals, and making a difference without struggling to make ends meet. No doubt the job market is competitive, but screening a candidate’s resume for something as trivial as an employment gap seems unreasonable. Every candidate has the potential to bring something extraordinary to the table.

Regardless, all job candidates should be ready to fill in the blanks of their unemployment when the situation arises. Unpaid positions, volunteer activities, community involvement, special projects, consulting engagements, continued education, all of it counts. Just be sure to communicate why such experiences are significant to the job at hand.

When it comes down to it, employment gaps are ambiguous. The best recruiters will know this. The best recruiters will also put less weight on it. Instead of red flagging employment gaps, we should be focusing on the bigger issue: how to truly assess talent. Employment gaps are the thing of the past. Let’s keep them there.

Laura Hong is a Media and Public Relations graduate student at the University of the Pacific, and completed a social media internship at SmartRecruiters. Hire Her! 

SmartRecruiters is the hiring platform with everything you need to source talent, manage candidates, and make the right hires. Photo Credit ChristysLifeLessons.

“I knew I wanted to join a dynamic company with a good team that was working on something big, and trying to fix things,” says SmartRecruiters’ Natalia Baryshnikova.

As the new product manager, Natalia works to keep all teams on task and ensure the hiring platform is moving forward in its development. If there’s a problem, it’s a guarantee Natalia will identify it, assign the right team, and provide the solution in due time.

But Natalia wasn’t always building products. While doing her graduate studies at MIT, she was thinking of joining a big technology company, and considering offers from companies like Samsung. However, she was concerned that working for a big company would limit her opportunities to make an impact and move fast. After some time reevaluating her career path, Natalia decided that building products for a young dynamic startup would be the best way to apply her skills and experiences.

“I have always cared about the scope of the problems I’m working on. An MIT professor once told me, ‘Don’t just spend your life making money. Work on something that’s going to change the world.”

Natalia, originally from Russia, moved to California in search of a startup that would be a good match for her skills and where she could be happy, productive, and add value.

After meeting people from all walks of life, from employees and entrepreneurs at startups to big companies, she figured out her skillset and interest was most applicable to product management.

“There are two components,” explains Natalia on the purpose of a product. “One is practical and one is emotional. The practical component is to serve, to help solve a big or small problem in an awesome way. The emotional component is to delight, because no matter how practical the thing you’re doing is, the key experience always involves user delightment. When something is awesome you can’t help but get excited about it.”

To Natalia, a great product experience is everything, a problem waiting to be solved.

“I didn’t apply to some jobs while I was in graduate school because companies were using complicated recruitment tools. I literally quit in the middle of the process because it was so painful. I was thinking to myself, ‘If the company doesn’t care about its applicants, then its level of care for its employees is probably worse.’”

SmartRecruiters of course, is all about a great user experience and making hiring easy, which is what stood out to Natalia.

“Recruiting is an industry in which you can potentially make a big impact by helping the unemployed gain employment, and employers find the best candidates. It’s a very honorable role. The problem is big. The market is big. It’s ambitious.”

It is with this passion and thought process that made Natalia a perfect fit for SmartRecruiters. That, and her cover letter began:

 “I am fun to work with but I get shit done.”

According to Natalia, what makes work fun is a great team, and how passionate you are in what you’re doing. What gets shit done on the other hand, is persistence and being nice to people because you can’t always get things done on your own. You always need the help of others.

Natalia is one of the many fun and passionate employees at SmartRecruiters with clear goals and a big future.

“When I talk to people [a year from now] and say I work at SmartRecruiters, everyone will be, ‘Oh I know you guys, I use you guys!’ That’s something I’m hoping to achieve. I think the plans the company has is ambitious and interesting to do. I hope to be a part of that and help our sales team focus less time on phone calls because the product will speak for itself. It’s a very noble goal. I look forward to getting there.”

One recruiter who has done this right? Harry Potter. Yes, Harry Potter who countless times went up against Voldemort and won. But Harry didn’t do this alone. He recruited a team of loyal allies and friends with various abilities and resources. Here’s who he recruited and how they helped him come out on top.

1. Hermione Granger

“That’s what Hermione does. When in doubt, go to the library.” – A Ron Weasley Endorsement.

Hermione is the brains of the trio. She brings extensive knowledge in pertinent subjects, such as history, potion making, and spell casting. Her intelligence has not only saved Harry’s life many times, it has helped him overcome obstacles that he and Ron alone would not have been able to do. She is also adept at planning ahead, like when she located a safe house and brought all necessary supplies during their immediate hunt for horcruxes. Let’s face it, Harry wouldn’t have made it past Book 1 without Hermione.

2. Ron Weasley

“I’m the sixth in our family to go to Hogwarts. You could say I got a lot to live up to. Bill and Charlie have already left – Bill was head boy and Charlie was captain of Quidditch. Now Percy’s a prefect. Fred and George mess around a lot, but they still get really good marks and everyone thinks they’re really funny.” – Ron Weasley on his family’s extensive network.

Ron is Harry’s best friend and right-hand man. Not only does he provide Harry the comedic relief and friendship he needs, but Ron also offers Harry a big network and an extensive knowledge of the wizarding world. Unlike Harry and Hermione, he’s had a magical upbringing that makes him “street smart.” Ron’s also got talented parents and six siblings connected to all kinds of people and industries, all of whom become Harry’s ultimate support team.

3. Fred and George Weasley

“’You know, I don’t get why Fred and George only got three OWLs each,’ said Harry, watching as Fred, George and Lee collected fold from the eager crowd. ‘They really know their stuff.’” – Harry Potter on recognizing value added beyond the credentials on a resume.

Twins Fred and George can be quite the mischief makers. They pull pranks, run bets, and do average in school because of their lack of interest. However, their mischievousness is a mere side effect to their cleverness and creativity. They give Harry the Marauder’s map, allowing him to move inside and outside of Hogwarts undetected for the greater good. Being masters of making random knick knacks for their joke shop, Fred’s and George’s trinkets serve as weapons for Harry to use against the forces of the Dark Lord. Need shortcuts and quick solutions? These twins have Harry’s back.

4. Neville Longbottom  

“I’ll join you when hell freezes over.” – Neville Longbottom to Voldemort on his firm loyalty to Harry Potter’s team efforts and goals.

Neville starts out as a cowardly underdog, but over time he demonstrates immense loyalty and courage. When Harry told his other friends to stay behind while he goes alone to the Department of Mysteries to save Sirius, Neville stands his ground and fights alongside Harry. When Harry left Hogwarts to hunt horcruxes, Neville re-establishes and leads Dumbledore’s Army against the Death Eaters controlling Hogwarts. Let’s not forget how he killed Nagini, Voldemort’s basilisk, so Harry could go hunt down Voldemort. Way to make the boss look good.

5. Luna Lovegood

“I think they think I’m a bit odd, you know. Some people call me ‘Loony’ Lovegood, actually.” – Luna Lovegood on coming to terms with how school children don’t always value the ability to think outside the box.

Luna Lovegood can often be strange and eccentric, but that is not a bad thing. She perceives things in a different light, therefore noticing things and coming up with solutions others probably wouldn’t have thought of otherwise, which is a great asset to Harry. She is detail oriented, recognizing for example his disguise by just his expression when he is under the polyjuice potion. In addition, she has knowledge of bizarre facts that aids Harry in his missions.

6. Remus Lupin

“So we’ve finally got a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher who knows his remedies? – Madam Pomfrey on Remus Lupin’s exceptional talent and aptitude in the Dark Arts.

Professor Lupin is Harry’s favorite teacher, one he can count on during his greatest time of need. His expansive background in Defense Against the Dark Arts is significant to Harry’s continued success. While Harry has initially survived mostly with blind luck or the aid of his friends, it is Lupin who teaches and perfects Harry’s defense spells. As a result, Harry is able to deflect spells, slow down his enemies, and train fellow students to form Dumbledore’s Army.

7. Severus Snape

“My word, Severus, that I shall never reveal the best of you?” – Albus Dumbledore on Severus Snape’s dedication, humbleness, and long term goals for supporting Harry Potter.

Severus Snape has been Harry’s secret weapon and he didn’t even know it. While Snape doesn’t particularly like Harry, Snape’s loyalty to Harry’s mother holds great weight when it comes to Harry’s success and survival. It is not revealed until the end that Snape, a previous Death Eater, has been helping Dumbledore secure Harry’s safety. What has looked like suspicious behavior in the past turns out to be Snape protecting Harry the whole time with his expertise of spells, potion making, and his facade of working under Lord Voldemort. When push comes to shove, you find out who is one your side.

Take your cue from Harry Potter. Recruit your company’s dream team, and as a result, you will change the world.

SmartRecruiters is the hiring platform with everything you need to source talent, manage candidates and make the right hires. Photo Credit Modified 2.bp.blogspot. 

Making yourself stand out amongst hundreds of job applicants these days is not easy. That’s because we’ve all been taught time and again to follow the one-page cover letter template. However, why limit yourself from being seen and heard by doing what everyone else is doing? We live in a fast pace world where social media allows us to work past the gatekeepers of communication. A short and concise cover letter is easier to read than a long and dry one.

If done right, social media can be the key that opens the door to your next job. See how these 5 individuals used social media to grab the attention of their desired employers:

5. Pinterest Resume & Cover Letter – Jeanne Hwang really wanted to work at Pinterest. What better way to relay her zealousness and qualifications than with a Pinterest board? At a quick glance, you get the idea that she’s smart, adventurous, and highly motivated. On closer inspection, her education and experience back up her initial impression. Hwang knows her way around Pinterest, demonstrated by her aesthetically pleasing and carefully placed pins.

4. Creating a Cover Letter Website – Though not social media, Alice Lee utilized the internet by making her own website to communicate to Instagram why she should be hired. The website is simple, but beautiful, illustrating her great ability to design and build a web page in just 2.5 days. She doesn’t explain how she’s a self-starter, she shows it through mock-up ideas and images. Lee didn’t get the job, but she did get an interview and land herself a position at Path.

3. Introducing Yourself with Facebook Notifications – Morgan Brown made it clear he wanted to work at Facebook by utilizing its popular features. He joined the “Future Facebook Employees” group, used his status updates to display his skills and experience, and tagged companies he worked for. He even made due with Facebook’s fun applications, like “throwing a sheep” at the HR Director.

Your company may come across plenty of candidates that meet your qualifications, but will they really be the best fit? Will they share your philosophy, adding value and promoting growth? It’s hard to say, but there is one sure way to increase your chances of finding “the one.” Attract your potential hires by showing your company culture. If they identify with it, chances are there’s a good match. A great way to do this is with recruiting videos.

In fact, that’s how SmartRecruiters stood out to me when I applied to be an intern. From the passionate coworkers I’d be working with, to the green and white office I’d sit in, and to its “Hiring Made Easy” philosophy, they got me. Here are the 8 Company Culture Videos that scream the personality of 8 very different types of companies:

Recruiting Videos

8. Twitter expresses its company quirkiness by making a cheesy recruiting video about making a recruiting video. It’s funny, showcases its workers and office space, and even features CEO Dick Costollo.

7. R/GA London presents its culture well through it’s two-day “Make Day” event, where the whole agency is encouraged to make things they want to make. This video reflects the company’s belief in collaboration, innovation, and finding new ways to work.

6. Sculpt, a Social Media Agency in Iowa City, went against the grain of the Harlem Shake. A short opinionated statement on “what’s trending on the internet today for whatever reason” is a clever way to get impressions on your brand.

5. chmedia’s channel shows its fun side with a company-wide lip sync of Harvey Danger’s “Flagpole Sitta.”Considering that chmedia’s entities include CollegeHumor.com, Dorkly.com, SportsPickle.com, an entertaining company culture video is to be expected. One continuous shot pans the office and onto the many happy faces of the company. Who wouldn’t want to join in?

4. Sea Breeze, a family-owned manufacturer and distributor of premium beverages on tap, does a wonderful job when it stresses the value of great customer service, quality, and community. Every small and medium sized business has a story. Share yours.

3. Shopify creates an amazing atmosphere by introducing a few company teams in a light matter, offering benefits (like free catered food and open space), and providing genuine testimonials from its employees.

2. Atlassian gives a great inside look onto its employees and products. They even have comedic videos on how to be productive in the workplace, such as the following. Notice how the jokes are targeted at people who who have the agile skills i.e. jokes are for the type of people they are looking to recruit.

1. Rackspace compiled footage of a typical day at the company, jam packed with ongoing events. Lets not forget the tour of it’s huge and active workspace. You have to dig the shot and edited in one day approach.

As these company recruiting videos demonstrate, your company doesn’t need a fancy video camera or team of professionals to make an impressive video covering your company’s culture and attributes. All you need is a video recorder (or even just a phone), team spirit, and determination.

Yahoo kept this in mind when they hired their current CEO Marissa Mayer. In 1999, Mayer was Google’s first female engineer and their 20th employee. During her 13 years with Google, she was an engineer, designer, product manager, and executive. Within a year of becoming Yahoo’s President and CEO, Mayer oversaw the policy change that required all remote employees to work in-office, boldly dealing with the problems created by Yahoo’s “huge, bloated infrastructure.” Let’s not forget how Mayer acquired Tumblr in a $1.1 billion acquisition. Barely a year in, Mayer has played a crucial role in cultivating Yahoo back into shape.

Fellow tech companies have followed suit and hired their own key players. Here are the Most Important Tech Hires in 2013 (so far):

5. Instagram: Emily White

White is Instragram’s new Director of Operations. She was Facebook’s Director of Mobile Partnerships, where her primary focus was to get Facebook on as many devices as possible. Prior to Facebook, she was an early employee of Google, helping to build GoogleAdWords among a few things. In addition to Instragram, she currently holds a board seat at Lululemon. With her rich experience with partnerships and business operations, White is an important hire for Instragram. A protege of Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, White has the potential to monetize Instagram’s under-leveraged popularity without sacrificing user experience, and expand its brand partnerships for the future.

4. Eventbrite: Mark Rubash

Rubash joined Eventbrite as its first-ever CFO and brings with him over 30 years of finance, accounting and investor relations experience. He was formerly the VP of Finance and Investor Relations at eBay and later the Senior Vice President of Finance at Yahoo. He has also held executive roles at Heartflow, Readen Commerce, and Critical Path and currently serves on the Boards of Intuitive Surgical, Iron Planet and Line 6. With Rubash’s experience and “a proven track record of leading teams through periods of extraordinary growth,” it will be no surprise when Rubash is the one that leads Eventbrite through their IPO. This of course comes after Eventbrite raised $60 million of venture capital in April.

3. Facebook: Richard Williamson

Williamson was recently hired to manage Facebook’s expanding mobile-software group (there is some ambiguity around his official title but LinkedIn states “Director of Engineering”). You may remember him as the Apple engineer who led the Apple Maps team in replacing Google’s mapping service and was fired when the results were subpar. However, it can be said that Williamson and his team can’t be entirely blamed. Rather, according to VentureBeat, it was “Apple’s hubris in assuming it could duplicate in a year or two what took Google many years and thousands of engineers to do: build a great mapping service.” With that said, Williamson had worked at Apple over a decade and was one of the top engineers Steve Jobs put on the iPhone. With enough time and confidence, Williamson has the drive it takes to make monumental strides for Facebook for years to come in the mobile department.

2. Twitter: Simon Rogers

Rogers was hired by Twitter to be its very first Data Editor, a position created to uncover the most fascinating stories as told by aggregated tweets. He was previously a data journalist at the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper. There he created guardian.co.uk/data, an online data resource which publishes hundreds of raw datasets and encourages its users to visualise and analyze them. He was also a news editor at the Guardian, working with the graphics team to visualize and interpret huge datasets. With 15 years of data journalism, Rogers will play a critical role in helping Twitter make sense of all the information coming through its servers. He will be key in moving Twitter several steps forward toward becoming the reliable, compelling, and competitive go-to news source.

1. Google: Noah Falstein

Falstein was hired by Google to be its Chief Game Designer. According to TechCrunch, the position is rumored to be catered for the Android Play Studio. Falstein has been in the games industry since 1980, having worked and designed hit titles for companies such as LucasArts, 3DO, and Dreamworks Interactive. More recently, he’s been the president of The Inspiracy, his own consulting firm specializing in game design and production. Though it is unclear what Falstein will be working on at Google, it must be something very big if his gaming expertise has been enlisted among Google’s ranks. If it is for an “Android Play Studio”, Falstein is the best player to substantially expand the gaming platform on the Android. At the same time, Google will be capitalizing on Falstein’s interest in the field of “Serious Games,” defined as “Using Games, Game Technology, or Game Industry Techniques for a purpose other than pure entertainment.” As gamification becomes more important to all software development and adoption, who knows what Google has up their sleeve?

P.S. Photo Credit SoftIcon. Google’s great, and getting more social. All SmartRecruiters Job Ads have one click share to Google+.

Software development is an increasingly growing field, earning it the Number 7 spot on U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of the best jobs of 2013. The Bureau of Labor Statistic projects a 27.6 percent employment growth for software developers from 2010 to 2020, during which 143,800 software developer jobs will need to be filled.

Top businesses are creative in finding, enticing, and hiring the best developers. In this age of cost and time efficiency, lengthy job postings are not enough. That’s why smart companies have found new and unique ways to call upon job seekers with the right qualities. Here are the 5 most creative developer job posts:

5. McKinsey & Company, a top management consultancy firm, sought out information technology graduates by campaigning on college campuses. They hung posters with a tearable phone number written in the form of a formula. Following this campaign, there was an increase in qualitatively better applicants. This saved McKinsey & Company a lot of time and graduates had minimal frustration of rejection.

4. Electronic Arts (EA) in Canada, the gaming development company, wanted to hire programmers. To do so, they projected an advertisement in ASCII code onto a billboard, which read “Now Hiring” and was strategically placed in front of a competitor’s building. While it caused some controversy in the gaming industry, it was certainly noticed by programmers who were interested, bringing in a rich pool of candidates.

See also:

• The 10 Most Innovative Job Ads
• Best 10 Company Career Pages
• 5 Coolest Recruiting Campaigns

3. Bing found its own way to target potential applicants for a new developer. It hid a job link to the position in the code of its homepage. The catch? You have to be using Internet Explorer and the debug settings enabled in order to see it. If these criteria are met, IE users would encounter a popup asking if they want to debug the web page. Running the tool prompted a new message to apply for the position, including the link. Bing was able to cut down the number of applicants, making way for an increase in the number of talented, Internet Explorer using candidates.

2. Flickr has been all over the news for its recent website redesign. What isn’t as viral is its “Currently Hiring” announcement and job url link, hidden in the source code on the home page. Some job openings include a software and mobile engineer. While these positions are made available on Flickr’s career page, the hidden job ad streams in the type of developers they seek: Those with the technical curiosity and ambition to take a peek at the source code.

1. Google, seeking out the best engineers, had banners consisting of a complicated math problem placed at Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The same problem was on a billboard in California’s Silicon Valley, with Google’s name nowhere to be found on these ads. The correct answer led to a website that posed a second problem solving question. Upon answering correctly, Google would request a resume. How’s that for screening talent? Answering these problems is no easy feat. Therefore the engineers that made it through were the exact talents Google was looking for.

In a field like software development, competition for the perfect developer is at an all time high. Why would a talented developer choose your company? Your employer brand must stand out where developers are looking. To save time and resources, take a lesson from these companies.  Reach the exact talent you’re looking for by marketing creatively.

SmartRecruiters is the hiring platform with everything you need to source talent, manage candidates and make the right hires.

The news market has become saturated and competitive, with the news media struggling to support the many journalists in the industry. “There is more news created today than there ever has been. There are more readers of news than there ever has been in the past. Ironically at the same time, there is less money being made by the news industry,” says Samson.

The market for news is evolving; there are less traditional journalism jobs while more news is being consumed. The evolving demand for news creates a challenge for the employer to decide what kind of worker they need, and for the worker to describe what they bring to a news organization.

“We want to make it possible for every journalist to take control of their work and their personal brand. That is truly our mission,” explains Pressfolios co-founder Marc Samson.

Samson is no stranger to the plight of writing professionals. As a former freelance media relations professional who later grew a consultancy of his own, Samson soon realized there wasn’t a way for him to easily and cleanly showcase his writings to new clients. Building off this revelation, he teamed up with programmer and co-founder Dan Kauffman to create Pressfolios, an online portfolio for journalists, reporters, writers, copywriters, bloggers, and public relations professionals.

And how do journalists show they can be the right one? That’s the question Pressfolios aims to help answer. Samson expresses the advantages and disadvantages facing old and new journalists. He states that while older, classically trained journalists have 15-20 years of experience, they are up against younger professionals who have knowledge of emerging technologies and technical expertise, such as coding HTML or CSS. Yet younger journalists don’t have the experience and networking resources necessary to break into the industry.

Pressfolios seeks to balance this dilemma between generations with three features: a personal repository, cloud storage, and a website builder. Pressfolios love journalists who can code. However for those who can’t, Pressfolios makes it easy to automatically pull online clips from various websites into a repository and provides advance content management tools to organize and keep track of your work.

Samson says Pressfolio is geared towards digital and technically inclined journalists, and young journalists in college or coming out of college. Journalists who are beginning to have clips and thinking about how to keep track and access them, and how to build a portfolio to make the jump to their first or second job, or start a freelance career. As Pressfolio expands its features, it will be relevant and applicable to a wider range of journalists.

To that end, Samson stresses the importance of having a strong online presence and developing your personal brand. “Even though we all realize we’re likely to work for 10, 15, 20, maybe 30 employers over the course of our career,” explains Samson, “A lot of people will think of themselves as employees when they should think of themselves as sole proprietors.”

For this reason, it is Pressfolios’s philosophy to help all journalists leverage their talent through its platform.

“If you’re able to keep track of your work over the course of your career and you’re able to show it off, we truly believe you are going to be more successful. You’re going to do a better job overall in your professional development,” says Samson.

Pressfolios is taking aim at the unemployment gap one portfolio at a time. How do you see Pressfolios changing the way news creators are hired?

Public relations is one of the most diverse and ambiguous fields out there. In fact, if you ask any given individual what it is, chances are you’ll get a different response 75% of the time. One thing is for sure, public relations is important. I see public relations as the practice of managing the relationship and spread of information between an organization and its publics. Whether it’s a recruiting agency and its clients, a sports team and its fans, or a product and its consumers, a positive two-way communication model must be maintained to effectively elevate an organization’s brand. After all, a happy public is what draws sales and a wider audience. What organization wouldn’t want that?

The trouble however, lies in the specifics of public relations. Is it like marketing or advertising? Is it about press coverage, crisis management, or media relations? What is it exactly and how is a company to know how to hire the best PR professional? It’s a bit of everything and it all comes down to your company’s philosophy and goals. I spoke with three top PR professionals to uncover the best PR interview questions, and what you need to learn from the candidate’s answers. Ask the following interview questions and you’ll be able to assess whether a candidate will fit what your company is looking for:

1. What does public relations mean to you?

This question evaluates a PR candidate’s mindset and approach to public relations. Because public relations can be broken down further, touching upon such areas as marketing, crisis control, or online community management, this question allows you to see whether a candidate’s perceptions of public relations are in line with your company’s philosophy. A PR pro should be well rounded, but a specialization can help your company move forward in the right direction.

2. What skills have you acquired that would help you communicate a client’s message?

Overall a good PR candidate is one who has great written and oral communication and is able to be persuasive, meet deadlines, and make long lasting connections. Betsy Hays, the lead Public Relations Professor for the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism at California State University Fresno, says, “A great PR professional is a great writer that understands human nature. They have beautiful intuition and can articulate their ideas in a clear, concise way.” What makes them even better is their ability to be energized and creative in communicating a client’s message. Does the PR candidate have skills in video production and editing? Photography? Community management? Diversity of skill is key.

3. How can you use social media to reach and impress traditional media?

We live in the digital age where social media can either leverage your company’s brand or break it. Social media goes hand-in-hand with traditional media like print, television, and radio. How good is a PR candidate in promoting their own personal brand on social media? Mark Ragan, CEO of Ragan Communication and publisher of PR Daily, points out, “The successful PR candidate will understand the connection between producing great content and social media. If I look at a job candidate’s LinkedIn page or Twitter feed, and it’s unimpressive, why would I think the candidate would be any more successful representing a client?”

Moreover, does the candidate have a good understanding of the media to be effective with social media? Dr. Alan Ray, a Media Relations Professor at the University of the Pacific states, “The qualities that make a great MR candidate are an understanding of current issues, a great media writing style (short, succinct sentence structure), superb time management and organizational skills, and good listening techniques.”

4. How would you handle… (a product recall, corporate fraud, etc.)?

This is the problem-solving / crisis management question. Pick a situation that could  – in the worst of circumstances – happen to your company. Take a moment to flush out the scenario, i.e. explain why the product was recalled or what corporate fraud occurred so you can see how the candidate spins a story. How well will your PR candidate work within deadlines and under pressure? With this interview question, you are able to understand how a candidate may structurally or creatively handle a particular situation. It can be small problems such as working with colleagues and resolving conflicts. Or it can be much bigger, like managing a product recall. Can your candidate stay calm, collected, and act rationally? A strong and confident candidate is what you should seek in a PR pro.

With these interview questions, your company will find the perfect PR pro to build your company’s brand in no time.

Laura Hong is a Media and Public Relations graduate student at the University of the Pacific, and the social media intern at SmartRecruiters. She is also a Comic Reviewer at CC2KOnline and the Web Editor for Blue Lyra Review.

SmartRecruiters is the hiring platform with everything you need to source talent, manage candidates, and make the right hires. Check out more interview tips on our blog.