eCommerce

Dealing with conflict or tough conversations at work. It’s comparable to the ‘we need to talk’ dread all of us have undoubtedly faced at some point in our personal lives.Whether it’s addressing distracting behaviours in the office, challenging your colleague on the accuracy of a report or confronting a long-overdue company problem – these conversations need to happen, and they need to happen for a few reasons:-         The problem can’t be fixed if there is no awareness of the problem in the first place.-         Get that weight off your shoulders, its liberating!-         It’s how we achieve professional and personal growth – your company will benefit from this too. The art of conversation is like any art. With continued practice you will acquire skill and ease.Finding the right words, and the right moment – it is no easy task in the fast-paced commercial world. Step 1) Conquer your fears and just do it.Here are some tips to make the conversation easier…Set a Positive Tone -         Mindset matters. Frame the conversation in a different way and put a positive spin on it. Be constructive, not negative. Can you offer an alternative solution to the one currently on the table? Make sure there is an action plan in place when a consensus (or even just an understanding) is reached to ensure you move forward.Keep Your Cool-         Don’t forget to breathe! Taking this brief moment to focus on your breathing will allow you to refocus and absorb any information. It’s important that whether you are the recipient or provider of a challenging discussion, that you make a conscious effort to slow down the pace of the conversation, listen, collect your thoughts, and respond rationally.Plan with Emotional Intelligence-         Think ahead. What do you anticipate the response will be to the discussion? Put yourself in the shoes of your counterpart to mentally consider their possible responses. You can have some flexible strategies to hand on how to move the conversation forward in a productive way. If you don’t feel confident on the recipients view beforehand, ask them.Be Concise and Direct-         Difficult conversations need to be clear and to the point, otherwise the message gets lost in a muddled delivery. To avoid receiving objections, be prepared with concrete examples. Focus on facts, not feelings. Try not to let your emotions get the better of you when you are trying to find a resolution.Make It a Conversation-         Feedback shouldn’t be a monologue - there should be two-way communication. Make sure there is an opportunity for an open discussion and questions to allow the meeting to end with unwavering clarity on both sides. Do you fully understand each other and what will happen next?  “Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.”- William Ellery Channing, American Theologian

The questions you ask during interview play a key role in the impression you make on a prospective employer – choose wisely...Even at the most innovative companies, interviews can follow a predictable pattern. When the interviewer is comfortable that they’ve completed their assessment of you, a familiar question rolls around:“Do you have any questions for us?”What you choose to ask can have a greater impact than you might suspect.If you produce the same questions as everyone else (“What do you like most about your job?”, “What does your ideal candidate look like?”), you might learn some valuable information, but you can’t expect to stand out for your innovation or make yourself memorable to the interviewer.If you ask something more thought-provoking, however, you can not only set yourself apart from the competition but take the conversation into unexplored territory which the interviewer has not talked about with other applicants.Your conversation becomes memorable, and you have a chance to score points not available to other candidates by discussing things they don’t discuss.Having a selection of insightful, business-focused questions ready can help you distinguish yourself from the crowd and create a unique exchange with the interviewer.Here are 6 examples and why they work:1. What short-term opportunities do you see for the team to improve results?Asking this shows that you’re focused on coming into the role to make an impact.You move away from typical interview generalities (candidate experience, desired skills etc.) to focus on tangible results and what actions can be taken to deliver better outcomes. At the end of the day, this is what the interviewer needs most on their team – no amount of experience or ability matters unless it’s applied to make a difference.Making the question about team rather than the individual role can also reassure the interviewer that you understand your function as being part of a wider collaborative effort.2. What’s the best investment the team has made?This question demonstrates an appreciation of budget and resources, understanding that team results are shaped by the resources at their disposition.Linking work outcomes to the investment and platform provided by the company reveals an ability to think about team performance from a more strategic angle, showing the interviewer that you have the capacity to think beyond the immediate confines of your personal role.It also gives the interviewer an opportunity to talk about positive aspects of the team you’ll be joining - if they are the hiring manager then they may well have been responsible for the investment they choose as their answer.3. How do you see the team in 3 years’ time?Asking questions with a time horizon creates confidence that you are thinking about your position in the long term, and expect to be part of that team after 3 years.The question implies a level of ambition, probing on opportunities that may be created as the team expands.It also invites the interviewer to talk about their own growth goals, and to share the plans they have for developing the group. You then have the opportunity to ensure that your interview performance and responses synch with these objectives.4. Are there trends you’re worried you’re not keeping pace with?This shows that you view your role in a commercial context, and don’t expect anything outside your job description to be someone else’s problem.Rather than be a passive member of the team, you are aware of threats and challenges in business and assume shared responsibility for overcoming these together with your manager and colleagues.Raising the issue of trends also takes the conversation into a wider reflection on industry news and developments, where you can have a chance to showcase your expertise and share your opinions of where things are headed.5. What will be the next big investment the team will make?Probing around future change to the team illustrates a potential to think big as well as small.In addition to joining the team to excel in your assigned function, you’re also interested in the roadmap for the team’s evolution.Are there any big changes coming up?What tools, infrastructure or additional talent would help the team’s performance move to the next level?You demonstrate a collaborative mindset, focus on team success and excitement for the future.6. What are you most proud of about the team?By inviting the interviewer to talk about what they’re proud of, you switch the conversation onto their own career and contribution, which inevitably generates a positive vibe in the discussion.Putting them and what they’re proud of in the spotlight helps show that you’re aware of your manager’s own career, and creates an opportunity for you to make clear that you will be an asset to their personal development and ambitions – joining the team to give, to support and not simply to follow instructions.***Ready to explore new digital marketing career opportunities?Adaptive Digital recruits across Europe and the USA for digital marketing and ecommerce professionals, filling roles with brands & agencies in more than 20 countries. To view Adaptive Digital’s full range of open jobs, click here.

The digital marketing community is filled with warnings lamenting the demise of organic search – but is SEO dead, dying… or even sick?Over the past few years, digital marketing prophets heralding the end of SEO have come and gone with seemingly every new trend or development in the industry.The first perceived SEO-killer was the threat posed by the huge captive audiences of social media platforms, led by Facebook.The fear then resurfaced in reaction to social media’s ever-more-accurate ad targeting capabilities and surging user numbers.A fresh panic was triggered by Google’s Panda and Penguin updates - once more, eulogies were composed in memory of the bygone era of search engine marketing…Yet SEO persists. It’s not dead – far from it. Adaptive Digital’s recruitment team receives new inbound hiring requests from clients on a weekly basis for top SEO professionals – jobs with some of the most prestigious companies in Europe.So what’s the deal - if SEO’s not dead, why the fuss?The reality is that while organic search as a profession is alive and kicking, it is in a state of significant change.SEO itself isn’t dead (or dying), but outdated tactics are – and obsolete methods will now not only fail to make a positive impact on search rankings, they can actively harm results.Spearheading the change in SEO are several powerful drivers, and marketers who are up-to-date on the latest trends find themselves with the pick of places to work and commanding premium pay packages.Here’s a rundown of what’s topping the list in today’s evolving SEO landscape:Keywords don’t stand aloneIf SEO itself isn’t dead, then mindless keyword-stuffing of aimless content to attract search engine rankings certainly is.Google’s smarter algorithms are no longer fooled by clunkily-written blog posts and filler pages which have target keywords appearing 100 times in the headline, sub-heading and opening paragraphs.Readability, user engagement and an effective solution to the original search query will win out over keyword-dense articles every time, and rankings will belong to the pages that most effectively answer the user’s original enquiry.  Link quality mattersOld-school SEO was all about building as many links as possible to your site and watching it rise through the SERPs.While link-building is still an important component of a rounded SEO strategy, links are now far more contextualized. The authority and relevance of the sites you link to matters substantially and impacts rankings, and a crazed free-for-all driven purely by link volume won’t get the job done.Evolving SEO tactics include building relationships and demonstrating value to high-authority partners and developing a link profile which supports the overall user experience.Quality beats quantityMore pages, more content, more keywords… right?Not exactly.Though it used to be the case that more online ‘real estate’ meant more space for keyword-dense content (and therefore more exposure to search engines), bloating your site with unnecessary pages is no longer an effective way to dominate rankings.Given that Google focuses on individual pages and not whole sites, building a sprawling mass of content doesn’t necessarily help if each individual piece fails to rank highly.It’s often more effective to zone in on a few key areas and go deep in creating really standout content, rather than spread low-quality content jammed with keywords all over your online presence.User experience is the goalAlong with effectively answering queries, site content is ranked by Google based on overall user experience.This means time spent on pages, number of other site pages visited, read completion rates (how far users scroll down pages) etc.What does this mean?Site design, engaging layouts, use of imagery, a browsing experience free from cluttered ads or distracting popups, and – crucially – device-optimised performance are no longer ‘nice-to-haves’ but will show a demonstrable impact on organic rankings.From a skills perspective, modern SEO professionals need a broader ability to cater to the overall user experience instead of simply concentrating on ‘back-end’ topics and leaving the rest to someone else.There are no shortcutsPutting this all together, the net result is that SEO has shifted from a series of silo-ed tactics designed to ‘game’ search engine algorithms into a holistic effort to provide quality responses to search queries in an engaging way.To succeed online, search marketers need to outperform their competitors in all areas – it’s no longer enough to be keyword-savvy and build a busy link profile.SEO experts need to be consistently providing value and collaborating effectively with other marketing teams to ensure brand, content, design and site usability all support SEO goals.***Where does all this leave today’s SEO job-seeker? Without a doubt, there’s a renewed emphasis on staying on top of industry trends and developments, deploying the latest tactics and keeping informed of upcoming disruptions to established methodologies. With so many new factors already impacting the way online users search for and consume information – from voice search to advancing AI capabilities – SEO will continue to evolve, and the role of those who are truly masters of their craft will only increase in value. ***To view Adaptive Digital’s full range of SEO jobs across Europe and North America, click here.