Five interview questions you should ask a Head of Communications candidate

Building a structured interview is key to identifying the right candidate for a Head of Communications role. In this article, we share the five questions we advise hiring managers to ask potential Heads of Communications at an interview.

What should you ask a Head of Communications candidate at an interview?

You should ask a Head of Communications candidate about the following five topics:

1. Budget management
2. Crisis management
3. AI-generated content
4. Conflict resolution
5. Communicating return on investment (ROI)

The five questions below each test a specific technical or soft skill, listing the signal the interviewer is testing for, the framework a strong answer will use, and the red flags that signal a weak candidate.

Question 1: Campaign budget

"Walk me through a campaign budget you inherited, and tell me what you cut when finance asked you to halve it."

Ask about campaign budget to establish whether the candidate has the experience operating as a Head of or a Manager. A Head of Communications should frame comms as an investment portfolio tied to revenue, retention, recruiting and risk. Meanwhile, Managers frame it as an activity plan.

What a good answer sounds like

A good answer will follow the STAR structure and detail the hard numbers. The candidate should explain the strategic rationale for keeping or cutting line numbers, and ties decisions to a business metric (pipeline, employee NPS, share of voice, media reach against a defined target audience). 

Red flags include:

• They talk about efficiency savings without naming a line item or explaining how the cut affected a business metric. 
• They cut junior headcount first without explaining their strategic rationale.

Question 2: Crisis management

"Describe a crisis you actually ran, not one you planned for. Walk me through the first 4 hours."

By asking this question, you’re able to understand whether the candidate has simply read a crisis plan or has actually led one. You’re testing for their real judgment under time pressure, not their ability to recite a textbook process.

What a good answer sounds like

A strong candidate names the specific incident type (data breach, product recall, exec misconduct, safeguarding failure). They explain who they called first, usually General Counsel or CEO, and why. They explain their holding statement decision, issued, delayed or refused, and their spokesperson selection. Finally, they describe the outcome and illustrate it with a relevant metric, such as coverage volume, share price recovery window, customer complaints resolution, or employee turnover in the following quarter.

Red flags include: 

• They give a generic answer about assembling a crisis team, without giving a hard timeline or metrics. 
• They claim never to have made a wrong call and can't name the moment they escalated to the CEO or legal.

Question 3: AI-generated content

"What is your view on AI-generated content in your press releases, exec communications and internal comms? How do you use it, and where do you draw the line?"

With this question you’re assessing whether the candidate is AI-literate, resistant or reckless. In today’s market, hiring managers should look for candidates who can use AI tools effectively while bringing their own voice, judgment and media relationships.

What a good answer sounds like

A strong candidate will name specific tools they've deployed, such as:

• Claude for drafting
• Cision for monitoring 
• Muck Rack for building a media list 
• Poppulo for internal comms A/B tests

They explain their governance policy on AI disclosure to journalists and employees, and at least one thing they refuse to use AI for, whether it’s executive quotes for earned media, sensitive employee comms or crisis holding statements. 

Red flags include: 

• Answers, such as "I don't use AI" or "I use ChatGPT for everything." 
• They have no governance framework or cannot name anything they refuse to automate. 
• They’re unaware that AI-generated summaries are eroding the source materials junior comms professionals used to learn from.

Question 4: Conflict resolution

"A senior exec on your team wants to announce something you believe will damage the brand within 6 months. How do you handle it?"

This question allows you to assess the candidate’s political judgment, resilience and ability to push back on senior leaders without becoming a bottleneck.

What a good answer sounds like: 

A good candidate outlines a real instance where they’ve challenged a senior stakeholder. They explain their reasoning, whether it was a data point, historical precedent or stakeholder reaction they'd already tested, as well as their fallback solution. Finally, they explain the outcome, including whether they lost the argument and had to execute it anyway.

Red flags include:

• Escalating over an exec sponsor's head is career-limiting and shows poor judgment.
• At the opposite end of the sale, insisting that they’d find a way to make it work might suggest they lack the required resilience. 
• Claiming that they cant name a specific case, or that they've never disagreed with an exec, might also suggest that they struggle to challenge in a meaningful way.

Question 5: Communicating ROI

"How do you measure the ROI of the communications function and communicate it to the CFO in language they will accept?"

With this question you’re assessing their commercial fluency - their ability to speak the language of the business, not the language of comms. Communications professionals who can speak fluently to CFOs about ROI are more likely to be promoted and command the highest compensation.

What a good answer sounds like

A strong candidate names specific metrics tied to revenue, such as pipeline influence attribution, share of voice against defined competitors, brand lift studies pre-and-post campaign, employee NPS data linked to retention cost, and Citation Share across AI answer engines. They explain their attribution model and the metrics they do not share with the CFO (whether it’s impressions, Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) or reach). They also name the tool stack they use, which might include GA4, LinkedIn Campaign Manager, Cision, Muck Rack, Onclusive and Brandwatch.

Red flags: 

• They lead with technical metrics, such as Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) or media impressions. 
• They can't explain how comms activity influences a KPI in the CEO's board pack, and talks about brand awareness without a measurement methodology.

For more support with communications recruitment, get in touch

Our specialist communications and PR recruitment consultants have been supporting high-growth organisations with their Head of Communications hiring processes for over a decade. Whether you need support with interview design or the entire hiring process, our recruiters are best-equipped to connect you with comms leaders.