Sameera A.
Account Manager
SUMMARY OF EXPERIENCE
• 6+ years in digital marketing with deep PPC specialisation over the last 5 years. Most recently was working as a PPC Specialist at GUS Education India, managing campaigns across APAC markets.
• At GUS Education, delivered 50% growth in qualified leads whilst reducing CPL by 35% through advanced geo-targeting, audience segmentation, and automated bidding strategies across Google Ads, Meta, and LinkedIn.
• Previously managed LinkedIn Marketing Solutions accounts at Regalix, achieving quarterly revenue targets through strategic campaign optimisation and client upselling whilst maintaining strong customer relationships.
👍 What we loved about them
• Execution and client-facing experience – She has experience with both performance marketing and account management, which is a huge bonus. At GUS, she owned end-to-end campaign management across search, display, and video whilst simultaneously handling weekly client check-ins and translating metrics into business language. This probably ensures that she won't execute campaigns blindly, given that she understands how to position results to clients and tie them back to their goals.
• Doesn't quit easily – We really appreciated hearing that even when her role at GUS didn't match what was promised regarding growth and designation, she stuck it out for over a year because she valued the learning opportunity. She explicitly mentioned not wanting instability on her CV and being willing to work through challenges rather than jumping ship, which says a lot about her overall resilience.
• Consultative and understanding in her client approach – Throughout both conversations, she repeatedly emphasised making clients "understand" how things work rather than just reporting numbers. She mentioned backing things up with data, explaining metric interconnections, and walking clients through the "why" behind recommendations. We appreciated her consultative approach.
ℹ️ Things to be aware of
• She's available to join immediately.
• Whilst she's confident and articulate, she does tend to ramble before getting to the point, which came through in both the technical interview and discovery call. She often lists multiple considerations sequentially rather than leading with the key insight, which can make her sound less decisive than she probably is.
• She has limited exposure to SEO. Whilst she understands the basics, she admitted she hasn't applied it herself, which means if clients ask about organic strategy, she'd need support.
• She left her most recent role as the growth trajectory and designation that were initially promised simply didn't materialise, She stuck around for over a year because the learning opportunity was valuable and she wanted to give it a fair chance, but career progression and taking on greater responsibility are important to her at this stage in her career.
💁♀️ 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
• Marketing fundamentals [7.5/10]: Sameera demonstrates solid practical Google Ads knowledge that clearly comes from real experience. When discussing the CPC drop situation, she ran through a proper diagnostic checklist that felt grounded in having actually dealt with these problems before, and we particularly liked her SEO versus PPC explanation using the organic versus paid investment framing. What stood out to us was her understanding of bidding strategy progression – explaining the journey from max clicks to TCPA in a way that showed she knows campaigns need data before optimisation. Where she occasionally stumbled was in spotting strategic implications rather than just tactical fixes, though the ROAS discussion showed she's coachable once redirected.
• Client account management [7.5/10]: Sameera's strongest asset is her client service orientation – she consistently positioned herself as wanting to help clients succeed. When handling the pricing strategy conversation, she showed decent diplomatic skills by suggesting she'd back up observations with data whilst acknowledging it's ultimately the client's decision, and her instinct to document communications showed she understands building trust through transparency. Her approach to upselling Meta ads also hit the basic points about expanding reach and competitor activity – she showed appropriate persistence when faced with objections rather than folding immediately.
• Organisation and project management [7.5/10]: Sameera's Monday morning crisis response showed sensible prioritisation, correctly identifying the website-down situation as requiring immediate action and handling it by lowering budgets rather than pausing campaigns. We liked that she structured her day around fixed commitments rather than leaving things vague, and her familiarity with relevant tools like Looker Studio, Salesforce, and Asana covers what's needed.
• Analytical thinking and problem-solving [7/10]: In the gym membership case study, Sameera spotted the obvious performance variance and showed good judgement suggesting budget reallocation toward proven performers whilst not completely abandoning underperforming locations until understanding why they're struggling. Her suggestion to check for spam leads showed practical problem-solving from real experience, and she demonstrated adequate scenario analysis across questions, considering factors like conversion tracking issues, competitor activity, and audience targeting when diagnosing performance drops.
Areas of growth
• Sameera tends to list multiple possible causes rather than forming clear hypotheses about the most likely issues, which makes her sound less confident than she probably is. For example, when we specifically asked her to hypothesise one or two reasons for the CPC drop, she struggled to commit to a point of view and instead ran through an exhaustive diagnostic checklist.
• We feel that Sameera needs to learn to lead conversations with strategic account management thinking rather than immediately jumping into campaign tactics. When presented with the VP versus regional managers scenario, her first instinct was to discuss campaign structure and targeting rather than addressing the interpersonal dynamics and stakeholder alignment.