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Gauri T.
Social Media Strategist
SUMMARY OF EXPERIENCE
• 3+ years of social media and digital marketing experience, spanning community management, content strategy, SEO, and campaign execution across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, with certifications from HubSpot, Google, and Meta.
• At Wildlife SOS, she independently ran advocacy campaigns across platforms that generated 150,000+ engagements at a 22% ER and drove 35,000+ direct actions including donations and petition signatures; all while managing media partnerships, press communications, and crisis response for a high-scrutiny, cause-led brand.
• Earlier roles at Sukham and Inventiva covered social media calendar management, SEO content production, paid ads, and video scripting – giving her a broad foundation across both content creation and digital marketing fundamentals.
👍 What we loved about them
• She understands the underlying dynamics of different platforms: When she was explaining the difference between Meta and X/Reddit she was genuinely thinking about the psychology of the audience on each one. The point she made about Reddit requiring you to be ready for criticism, and that you can't just turn off comments the way you can on Instagram, showed she understands the culture of these platforms, beyond just the mechanics.
• Proactive and highly responsible: This came up almost as an aside in the discovery call, but it's worth highlighting. She noticed that the same email content was going to supporters in India, the US, and the UK, and flagged that this wasn't going to land the same way across different audiences. She segmented the list and tweaked the content accordingly, and it contributed to hitting the fundraising target. She wasn't even directly responsible for email; she just spotted it and did something about it.
• Genuinely motivated to learn: Her answer about what she wants from the next 6–12 months was refreshingly specific – she talked about getting hands-on with AI tools in content creation and building her ability to understand brand psychology beyond the Indian market.
• Handles ethical complexity with confidence: This came through most clearly in how she approached the NCPC scenarios. She didn't shy away from the uncomfortable parts of the brief, instead, she leaned into them. Whether it was the coordinated troll situation, the emotionally charged Facebook comment, or simply being asked if she was comfortable working in the pork industry after years in animal welfare, she engaged with each one directly, showing plenty of emotional maturity, without getting flustered.
ℹ️ Things to be aware of
• She's available to join immediately.
• She's coming from a nonprofit environment where resources were stretched. This has actually made her quite resourceful and creative, but it also means she's used to doing a lot herself. She asked several questions in the discovery call that suggested she was still figuring out where her remit ended and others' began. This is not really a concern; it's just something to give her clear direction on from day one.
• She's specifically motivated by international exposure and AI upskilling. Overall, we do believe her motivation is genuine and specific to what this role offers, which is a good sign for retention. But it also means if those two things stop being part of the job (i.e., if the role gets narrow or the AI integration doesn't happen), she's likely going to be asking questions. Keeping that pipeline of learning alive for her will matter if you want her to continue staying engaged in the role.
💁♀️ Where he may need support
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Although he lacks extensive experience with LinkedIn and Bing ads, his proficiency in Google ads suggests a high adaptability to new platforms.
👩💻 Technical interview performance
Objective
This candidate was invited to a 60-minute follow-up interview to assess their technical capabilities in more detail. During this interview, we assessed their critical-thinking skills, technical expertise, and overall conversational skills.
Technical abilities
• Content strategy and planning [7.5/10]: Gauri showed a solid understanding of how to build content around a clear objective rather than just filling a calendar. She talked about starting with the goal (i.e., brand awareness vs. community building), and then working backwards to decide format, frequency, and tone. Her mention of audience demographics shaping the content mix (more video for Gen Z, carousels if it's a 50/50 split) showed she's thinking about who she's talking to, not just what to post. The Google Sheets workflow with two separate views, one for approved content and one pending review, also tells you she can manage operations without things slipping through. Where it got slightly less refined was in the deeper strategic layer; things like how she'd measure content against specific campaign KPIs over time, or how she'd adjust strategy mid-month if something wasn't working. These aren't dealbreakers at coordinator level, but worth developing.
• Community engagement and crisis management [8/10]: This is where Gauri felt most confident, and it came through. Across all three scenarios: the viral Twitter thread, the emotionally charged Facebook comment, and the coordinated troll campaign, she had a clear instinct for reading the nature of the problem before deciding how to respond. For the Facebook comment, she correctly identified it as emotional rather than factual and suggested leading with the community angle rather than going on the defensive. For the coordinated troll situation, she went beyond just "delete the comments" and talked about building a report, researching the accounts, and even using Stories to acknowledge the issue publicly. Her one softer moment was when she was asked how she'd handle a client who was annoyed about a post going live without approval. Her first instinct was to justify the decision rather than acknowledge the client's frustration.
• Platform knowledge and audience understanding [7.5/10]: Gauri has a genuinely good grasp of the platforms she's had the most hands-on experience with (Instagram and Facebook in particular), and it shows in how she talks about them. Her distinction between Meta as a visual-first platform and X/Reddit as conversation-led platforms was well-articulated, and her unprompted mention of Bluesky showed she pays attention to what's happening in the space. On the metrics side, she covered platform-specific indicators reasonably well (i.e., saves and poll participation for Instagram, upvote/downvote ratios for Reddit), and her point about looking at comment quality as a qualitative measure was a cut above the usual answer. However, Reddit is the clear gap; she acknowledged it herself, and her subreddit suggestions ("people who care about food, people who support farmers") were too broad to be actionable. The branded vs. unbranded Reddit engagement question also caught her off guard – it's not a disqualifier, but it's worth noting given the role.
• Writing ability and tone adaptability [8/10]: The written exercise was, honestly, one of the more impressive parts of her interview. All three pieces felt like they were written with the platform in mind, not just copy-pasted with minor edits. The Instagram caption was warm and personal (e.g. "a farm and a family that shows up for their land, their animals and their neighbours") without being sentimental or over the top. The X post was tight, data-driven, and ended on a punchy line. And the Reddit comment was the strongest of the three; she opened by acknowledging the controversy rather than dodging it, presented the community angle without being promotional, and closed with genuine questions that invited discussion. Overall, this was very impressive as it's not something that's easy to do in 15 minutes with a sensitive client in mind.
Areas of growth
• Reddit is clearly not her strongest platform, and she admitted as much. Her subreddit targeting suggestions were quite surface-level — "people who care about food" and "people who support farmers" are broad starting points, but she didn't go further into specific subreddit communities or how you'd actually establish credibility there over time.
• When asked how she'd manage the client if they were unhappy about a post going live without approval, her first response was essentially to justify why she posted it rather than acknowledge the client's frustration first. She got there eventually, but leading with "the engagement would've dropped" rather than "here's how I'd have that conversation" is something worth coaching her on.