Candidate Challenges: Software Engineering vs Marketing

The job market remains tough. (See image.)

While coding challenges for software engineer candidates are appropriate, marketing challenges remain an inappropriate request from potential employers.

Even should a marketing candidate be rejected, what’s been performed and submitted is ultimately unpaid consulting work.

The most notable delta between the two challenges in question is whereas software engineering has correct answers — eg. What are all of the different ways that numbers can be combined to equal the number 4? — marketing challenges request a candidate’s ideas, the number of which are as infinite as the number of candidates who’ve applied; thus this particular ask breeds mistrust.

Because if a marketing candidate’s current body of work isn’t sufficient enough for a company to make a candidate an offer

This same stance is echoed in "Stop asking candidates to make a marketing plan for your job interview process" by Jane Elizabeth for The Startup on Medium: https://lnkd.in/gp9ZQRu7

Are unpaid assignments in job interviews fair game?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unpaid-assignments-job-interviews-fair-game-nurturedbynatalia?trk=public_post_feed-article-content

Tests in general: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_k5xxzo_1q/?igsh=ajhpYnNnYXFyZnk2

Reddit Graph: https://lnkd.in/g_fJFa4X

A/B Testing: some of my favorites

A/B testing (also known as split testing) is the process of comparing two versions of a web page, email, or other marketing assets and measuring the difference in performance.

Think of it like a competition. You’re pitting two versions of your asset against one another to see which comes out on top.

Your champion is a marketing asset — whether it’s a web page, email, Facebook Ad, or something else entirely — that you suspect will perform well or that has performed well in the past. You test it against a challenger, which is a variation on the champion with one element changed.

After your A/B test, you either have a new champion or discover that the first variation performed best. You then create new variations to test against your champion.

Some of my recent favorite helpful guides and graphics:

How to Run Split Tests and Optimize Your Website for Conversions