How to get hired
Performance marketing interviews come down to one question asked many ways: have you spent money on ads and can you explain what it bought? Everything below is about getting a credible answer to that.
The certifications, and what they're worth
Google's Google Ads certifications (Search, Display, Video, Shopping, Apps, Measurement and the AI-powered campaign ones) are free on Skillshop and have to be renewed each year. Agencies care about them for a business reason: Google's Partner programme needs at least half of an agency's account strategists certified, so a hiring manager at an agency will often ask you to finish Search and Measurement in your first week anyway. Do them before you apply.
Meta's exams are paid and taken online. For this job the relevant ones are the Digital Marketing Associate at entry level and the Media Buying Professional later; the current list and fees are on Meta's certification page. Treat Meta's as optional until someone else is paying.
Get spend on your record
If you have never run an account, create one. Run a small Search campaign for a real local business (a clinic, a tutor, a furniture shop) with ₹5,000 to ₹10,000 of their money, set up conversion tracking through Google Tag Manager and GA4, and write a one-page note: what you set up, what it cost per call or form, what you changed in week two and why. Freelance work for two or three small businesses gives you more to talk about than a course.
The test assignment you'll get
- Account audit: they share screenshots or read access to an account and ask what's wrong. Look for broad match keywords wasting money, missing negative keywords, no conversion tracking or the wrong conversion counted, all budget in one campaign, ads with no extensions.
- Plan a launch: "₹3 lakh a month, a new D2C skincare brand: split it." Show channel split, campaign structure, expected CPC and CPA, and how you'd decide in week three what to cut.
- Maths round: CTR, CPC, conversion rate, CPA, ROAS and break-even ROAS from a gross margin. Practise until you can do it on paper.
Agency, D2C brand or app company
| Agency | D2C or e-commerce brand | App or fintech | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you run | Several client accounts | One brand's Google, Meta and marketplace ads | App install and in-app event campaigns |
| What you learn | Breadth, fast | Margins, creatives, Shopify, Amazon ads | Attribution tools (AppsFlyer, Branch), cohorts |
| The catch | Client calls, monthly reports, many small budgets | Your number is the business's number | Fraud, iOS tracking limits, heavy analytics |
Many people start at an agency for one to two years and then move in-house with a bigger budget.
The ladder
Performance Marketing Executive, then Specialist or Senior Executive, Performance Marketing Manager, Lead or Head of Performance, and Head of Growth. The title matters less than the monthly spend you managed: "managed ₹40 lakh a month across Google and Meta at a 3.2 ROAS" is the line that gets you shortlisted at the next level.
What the work is like
You live in dashboards. Mornings start with yesterday's spend against target, and a bad day means pausing ads before lunch. Sale periods (Diwali, Big Billion Days, Amazon Great Indian Festival, end-of-season sales) bring late nights and daily budget changes. The job is increasingly about creatives and tracking, because Google's and Meta's automated campaign types do much of the bidding: the people who rise are the ones who can brief designers on what to test and fix broken tracking themselves.