Nuria: SEO & Site Project Manager at Better Collective

Could you please present your professional background?

I studied translation for Portuguese and English, oriented into teaching and content for foreign people. However, I was not really into teaching, I was mainly studying this for foreign languages.

My first job was related to social media. I was working part-time, and even though it was not my field of study, I was lucky because they were looking for someone who spoke my languages. Since then, I started to be very interested in this field and focused more and more on digital marketing and SEO.

When I was studying at the university, there were no SEO related courses so I had to make my own way to it by finding a part-time job so I could discover this field.

For the company I worked for, it was easier for them to train someone that didn’t know anything about SEO rather than paying someone that didn't know how to speak the required language.

How did you hear about Misterbilingue?

Since I have a profile on LinkedIn, Jessica from MisterBilingue contacted me when I was open to work abroad.

How would you describe your previous experiences? How were they beneficial to you?

My experience in Argentina was mainly focused on content management, which I did for about 8 years.

Then, I was able to pursue my career in Lisbon, Portugal as a freelancer. That was my first experience in Portugal and in Europe in general, so I had to learn how to contact people in Portugal with the Portuguese manners and way of talking.

After that, I worked in Algarve, but the problem was that I couldn’t remotely work, which I did for almost 7 years. However, I took the challenge because I wanted to prove that I could be a SEO specialist by myself.

Did you encounter any difficulties during your job search? If so, which ones?

I started looking for a job back in November, I wanted to be specific with the interviews I was doing since I wasn’t in a hurry. I wanted to see what was going on since I wasn’t really happy with my job even though the environment was quite great.

It was kind of difficult to find a job because I realized that interviews were going differently before and after the pandemic and I also wanted to choose companies that best matched my criteria.

Companies used to ask candidates to do a practical case study during or before the interview. Nowadays, I feel like companies tend to ask candidates to do the practical case after the interview.

What skills did you acquire throughout your course and that seem essential for the position you hold now?

Language is one of the biggest tools that I have acquired during my experiences. It allowed me to organize, improve and create content for audiences from different backgrounds.

As for marketing, I learnt how to manage content, keyword research, strategies as well as data analysis.

In this specific field, you have to keep yourself updated since Google evolves really fast, and every niche can be a completely new world in which you have to apply new strategies.. At the position I have right now, I cannot describe how much I have learnt though.

How would you describe the hiring process you experienced? How many steps did it take?

I had two or three interviews with MisterBIlingue at the beginning, and then three others with Better Collective, so that makes it about 6 interviews.

The process took over a month but was really unique in comparison with other recruiters. Jessica was really comprehensive towards me and pushed me to value myself more than I did before. She really did take the time to know me and understand my expectations!