Pocket Gems Marketing Manager Interview Questions
& Process

The job description mentioned math and data analysis, but no questions about those were asked. It was like I was taking an interview for channel manager, which I have limited experience at. So forget about the qualification of the job, since they are looking for someone with exact years of exp and exact skills in channel marketing and management. If you use other skill sets to finish the job they might not be happy. It does not matter that you built effective marketing campaigns with innovative machine learning methods or conducted campaign optimization with solid model. The performance evaluation and analytics parts are just there to make the job look fancy. The onsite interview lasted for FIVE hours and totally SEVEN people came in the room and talked to me one by one. People are nice but most of them do not have deep understanding about how data mining and machine learning would be applied in marketing campaign.

After a couple of initial calls with the recruiter and someone from the People & Brand team, I was given a second written assignment. The first assignment was to present my three favorite video games (mobile, PC, or console) and explain my reasoning. For the second exercise, I had to perform a quick audit of several mobile campaigns focusing on paid user acquisition and answer five data-driven questions based on provided pivot tables. Following that, I had a final call involving a skill quiz and a brief personality assessment. While the overall experience was acceptable, I had to actively follow up multiple times to get responses from them.

I'm glad I read Glassdoor reviews for this interview because they helped immensely with preparation. I had a phone screen with a recruiter within 2 or 3 days of applying. It was a basic get-to-know-you call to gauge my interest and knowledge of the video game industry. Right after, I was sent the infamous "homework assignment" to analyze data as if I were in the role. It's supposed to take 3-5 hours, but it took me a whole day. I submitted it the next business day. The next step was a phone screen with the hiring manager. She barely asked about me or my qualifications. Most of the call was answering case-like questions, including verbally running through a linear system problem about purchase selection. The second half focused on questions analyzing "my view of the world," like the iPhone question. I'm unsure what answers they wanted; I gave intuition-driven ones, but maybe they were looking for how I'd break down data needs. I didn't hear back for a week, then got an email saying I was dinged, with no feedback. As a suggestion, the homework is too time-consuming upfront and unpaid. This and the analytical questions could be covered by a 30-minute cognitive aptitude assessment. If the homework is essential, maybe use it as a tiebreaker after the on-site. It was disheartening to do so much upfront work and be rejected so quickly.