Episode #46: Debbie Marquardt, Marketing Director, Procter & Gamble Professional

Summary: Debbie Marquardt provides listeners with interviewing advice and discusses how to display yourself as a good fit for a potential employer. To download this podcast, click hereDebbie’s first pointer is that preparation is very important for success. You need to work before the interview to (1) identify what the company is looking for and who will be interviewing you, and (2) to search within yourself to know what you want to communicate about yourself to the interviewer. Think about what your strengths are and how you are you uniquely qualified for the job. There are also general characteristics that every company looks for such as leadership and perseverance, and it is important to get these across as well. A resume is just a page full of statistics so you need to bring it to life in an interview. The interviewer needs to get a better idea of whether you are the right fit for the company. To determine if you are the right fit for a company, ask employees within the company what the culture is like and search the internet for articles about that company. Both can be extremely informative about the company environment so that you can decide whether this is what you want and also to help the interviewer understand how you fit into the company’s environment. The more you can learn about the company and the company learns about you in advance, the better off you will be during the interview. Debbie’s recommends that during the interview you need to answer questions in a way that communicates the facets that are unique to yourself. It is important to have stories that display the skills you want to communicate so that not only do they see you have the qualifications for the job, but they also know more about you as a person. Her final point is to be sure that you ask for the job at the end of the interview and let the interviewer know how much you want it. Debbie Marquardt is the Global Franchise Marketing Director for Procter & Gamble Professional, the away-from-home division of Procter & Gamble that provides cleaning products and solutions for the Foodservice, Hospitality and Building Cleaning & Maintenance businesses. Debbie has worked at P&G for more than 15 years on a variety of marketing assignments on Crisco, Jif, Charmin, NA Marketing Innovation and P&G Professional. Debbie graduated from Dartmouth College with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Education and then from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern with a Masters of Business Management in Marketing and Finance. Like this podcast, why not share it?