THE OVERKILL APPROACH TO
SCORING YOUR DREAM SEO ROLE
ORIT MUTZNIK
HEAD OF SEO,
SILKFRED
Orit jumped into SEO over 11 years ago, and has been leading SEO teams since 2011. After leading eToro’s SEO department for two years, she moved from Tel Aviv to London in 2018 to head up SilkFred’s SEO efforts. Her other skills include ASO, Content Marketing and Digital Marketing.
I have a confession to make: I love London.
I fell in love after one visit to this great city. And I decided I wanted to live there.
Being in Israel made the move a little more challenging. If I was going to move to London, I would have to find a company willing to look at me, even though I was thousands of kilometres away.
BURST THROUGH THE DOOR
With more than a decade in SEO and my then-current role as Head of SEO for a major online trading company, my prospects were promising. But with my geographical limitation, I knew I had to do more than most candidates if I was to win a job offer.
If a company opened the door even a little for me, I would have to burst in. That is how I do things professionally, and it is what won me other positions, so there was no reason to change that attitude.
When I found an opening for Head of SEO at SilkFred, I went for it.
FIRST HURDLE: THE AUDIT
As part of the application process, candidates had to provide a list of 20 things they thought could be improved with the SilkFred site.
I wasn’t going to do that.
With so much riding on this, I wanted to go much, much further than a basic laundry list of SEO improvements. To do this, it meant exploring, auditing and investigating their site to a much deeper level.
That said, I did not have any special advantage. I used the typical SEO tools, like SEMRush, Screaming Frog and Google Search console, that everyone else had. I also had no access to special information, and what I gathered could be collected by any other applicant.
The difference I hoped would stand out was the level of work and detail. If everyone used the same tools to look at the same site, then the conclusions would likely be similar. By presenting a far more comprehensive report and plan, I intended to show my dedication and grab attention from the cluster of “same old” lists other applicants submitted.
So, I ran the site through test after test. I audited it using every tool I had. I collated a list with hundreds of SEO-related tasks and ideas I would love to do with their site. And I built a yearly plan and presentation to give all my findings and recommendations sharper context.
All up, it was over 20 hours of work, crammed in during late evenings and on a single day off.
But it worked.
By hitting them with the biggest audit they would have most likely ever seen, I scored an interview with them. The next hurdle: flying to London for the first time to convince them I was the perfect person for the job.
SECOND HURDLE: THE INTERVIEW
Being a small company, several people interviewed me, including the tech lead. This was another chance to stand out, as I could give him a tech-focused plan for SEO (i.e. a cut-down version of my Master Plan purely related to technical SEO).
The interview itself went well, and I got the chance to go through the detailed Gantt chart and plan I’d built for their site.
(As a bonus, this meant I had already finished most of the planning when I joined SilkFred!)
There was one moment that effectively won me the job. SilkFred’s site at the time was heavily client side JS based, back when Google's ability to render it were slim to none. So, I showed them a blank page telling them “this is how Google sees your site right now”. In other words, Google didn’t see the JavaScript because SilkFred was blocking the resources. Just off the back of this explanation, they soon after unblocked the resources on their homepage, which was a quick fix.
When I showed them the blank page, there was silence in the room for several minutes... and not long after, they offered me the job.
4 TIPS TO BURST THROUGH THE DOOR
Let me go into the things I actively did to make the most of this opportunity.
Do the work
All up, I invested around 40 hours into the application process with SilkFred, including...
But I didn’t mind at all. I was 100% focused towards getting the job, and spending this time was a great way of showing that to my employers-tobe.
Be generous
If you want a job as a senior SEO, a site audit is one way to show you will go above and beyond. But you may worry that if you give away too much, the company can use your report without hiring you. However, I think you should always look to do something like this for two reasons:
  1. Highlighting potential problems is only half the story; they still need the “how to fix”, which is where your real value lies.
  2. When the stakes are high, you show you are more willing to put in extra work to set yourself apart from the crowd.
Seize the element of surprise
The element of surprise was an important factor in my hiring. SilkFred asked for a list of 20 items in the next three to four days. Instead, I went into overkill mode to give them a full-blown audit and report, all within that time limit. They weren’t expecting the quality and scale I delivered, and it was one of the big reasons I secured an interview.
Get the techs on side
If you can talk with the techs early on – or even in the interview – that’s perfect. You get the chance to show you sympathise with them and want to collaborate to improve the site at all levels. When I mentioned switching to server-side JavaScript to the lead tech, he whole-heartedly agreed and said he’d been saying the same thing. This set the scene for a great working relationship before I ever started, and added another feather to my cap during the interview.
A SHORT EPILOGUE
It is no spoiler to say I got the job.
The company had been so impressed by my audit and plan that not only did they offer me the position, they started implementing action items I had recommended. The result: a double-digit increase in traffic by the first day I walked through the door.
As the first in-house SEO specialist for SilkFred, it was a balancing act to build trust, advocate for SEO and secure the resources I needed. But now the company has seen the wins that come with SEO, I am confident the successes will nourish each other and let me achieve more and more.