Six question sets for the employer side of the table: planning, budget and negotiation, measurement, channel depth, and behavioral, each with what a good answer sounds like, plus a 1-to-5 scorecard and a work-sample brief. Download as DOCX.
The first media planner I ever interviewed talked for forty minutes and I came out convinced. Three months later I understood that I had been sold a channel list, not a plan, and that I had never once asked what would make him stop spending. The mistake was mine. I ran the interview like a conversation with someone who knew more than I did, which meant I graded confidence instead of judgment.
This page is the interview I should have run. It is written for the employer side of the table: the owner or marketing lead deciding what to ask, with a stated reason for every question and a note on what a good answer sounds like, so you can assess a craft you may never have practiced yourself.
At FirstHR, we build for small businesses that hire without an HR department, where one person writes the posting, runs the interview, and signs the offer. Six question sets follow, plus a scorecard and a work-sample brief. If you have not written the posting yet, start with the media planner job description templates and come back here.
TL;DR
Interview a media planner on five things: planning judgment, budget ownership, buying and negotiation, measurement honesty, and depth in the channels you actually run. The most revealing opener is to hand over an objective and a budget and ask what they need to know before recommending anything. Score on a 1-to-5 rubric, then send finalists a paid work sample. Download six sets and the scorecard as DOCX.
What to Assess in a Media Planner
Assess five things: planning judgment, budget ownership, buying and negotiation, measurement honesty, and channel depth in the channels this role will actually run. A candidate can be strong on strategy and useless on execution, and at your size that combination fails, because there is nobody else to execute.
The role itself is the reason. A media planner decides where your advertising budget goes and why, then usually places the buys, watches delivery, and reconciles what the vendor billed against what actually ran. That is a lot of money moving through one person, and the interview has to test both halves of the job rather than the half that interviews well.
Media planning is also a regulated activity in a way many owners underestimate. Advertising claims have to be truthful and substantiated, and the FTC business guidance on advertising and marketing applies to a small company running paid social exactly as it applies to a national brand. A planner who has never thought about claim substantiation or disclosure is a planner who will eventually place something you have to take down.
The Six Question Sets
The questions below are grouped into five competency sets plus a scorecard. Each targets a different part of the role, and a candidate who is strong across all five is genuinely rare, so use the sets to find out where the gaps are rather than to look for a perfect score.
Core Media Planning
Ask this of everyone
How the candidate frames a problem before recommending a channel: objectives, audience, reach and frequency, flighting, and what they expect to change after launch.
Budget, Buying, Negotiation
The money questions
The budget they personally owned, how they split it, what they negotiated, and who reconciles the invoice against what the vendor actually delivered.
Measurement and Analytics
Can they prove it?
Whether they know the difference between a platform-reported conversion and an incremental one, and whether they will tell you when a campaign is not working.
Channel-Specific
Pick two or three
Blocks for paid search and social, programmatic and streaming, broadcast and out of home, and retail media. Ask only about the channels this role will run.
Behavioral and Stakeholder
How they really operate
STAR questions on the campaign that missed, the channel they had to argue against, and the budget cut mid-flight. Persuasion is half this job at a small company.
Scorecard and Work Sample
Score, do not guess
A 1-to-5 rubric, a red-flag checklist, and a second-stage work-sample brief you can hand to a finalist. The assets most question lists leave out.
Ask the Money Questions With the Same Seriousness as the Strategy Ones
Candidates rehearse strategy answers most, because that is what agency interviews reward. The sets that separate a planner who can work at your size are budget and negotiation, where you learn whether they have ever owned a real number, and measurement, where you learn whether they will tell you the truth when something is not working. Ask at least three questions from each of those two sets before you touch the behavioral ones.
6 Free Question Sets and a Scorecard to Download
Download all six as a single Word document, or copy the sets you need. Each follows the same structure: when to use it, the questions with good-answer notes, what to listen for, and space for notes. The final file adds the rubric, the red-flag checklist, and a work-sample brief you can hand to a finalist.
Download All 6 Media Planner Question Sets
Planning, budget and negotiation, measurement, channel-specific, behavioral, and a scorecard with red flags and a work-sample brief. All in one DOCX.
Set 1: Core Media Planning Questions
Ask this set of every candidate. It moves from how the candidate frames a problem to how they build the plan, which is the order a real planning engagement follows. The first question alone will sort most of your shortlist.
Core Media Planning Questions
CORE MEDIA PLANNING INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Candidate: __
Business: __
Interviewer: __
Date: _
HOW TO USE THIS SET
This is the core set. Ask all of it, in this order, of every candidate for the
role. The questions move from how the candidate frames a problem to how they
build the plan, which is the order a real planning engagement follows. Use the
"good answer" notes to judge the response even if you have never planned media
yourself, then score on the rubric in Set 6.
QUESTIONS
1. Here is our business goal and a budget number. What would you need to know
before you recommended a single channel?
(Good answer: asks what the goal is measured by, what has already run, what
the margin allows, what counts as failure, and what creative exists. A weak
answer starts naming channels in the first minute.)
2. Walk me through how you built your last media plan, from brief to buy.
(Good answer: a repeatable sequence with named steps and real dates, not a
description of the finished deck.)
3. How do you define the audience for a plan, and where does that definition
come from?
(Good answer: ties audience to actual customer data or research, not to a
persona invented in a workshop.)
4. How do you decide the split between reach and frequency for a campaign
like ours?
5. How do you handle seasonality and flighting when the budget is small enough
that spreading it thin would waste it?
(Good answer: concentrates spend, explains the tradeoff plainly.)
6. What do you do when the objective you are given is not measurable?
7. Which parts of a plan do you expect to change after launch, and which ones
should not move?
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
•Questions before recommendations
•A repeatable process, described the same way twice
•Comfort saying that a channel is wrong for this business
•Plain language a non-marketer can follow
NOTES
__
__
Set 2: Budget, Buying, and Negotiation Questions
Use this whenever the role touches money, which at a small business means always. It asks for the budget they personally owned, what they negotiated and got, and who reconciled the invoice against what the vendor actually delivered.
Budget, Buying, and Negotiation Questions
BUDGET, BUYING, AND NEGOTIATION INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Candidate: __
Business: __
Interviewer: __
WHEN TO USE THIS SET
Use this set whenever the role touches money: allocating a budget, negotiating
rates, placing insertion orders, or checking what a vendor actually delivered.
At a small business the planner usually also buys, so these questions matter
more here than they would inside a large agency where buying sits on another
desk. Ask every candidate the same questions and write down the numbers they
give you.
QUESTIONS
1. What is the largest budget you have personally allocated, and over what
period?
(Good answer: a specific number and a specific period, with the channels
named. Vagueness here usually means they supported a plan rather than
owned one.)
2. Talk me through how you would split a quarterly budget across channels for
a business like ours.
3. How do you decide how much to hold back for testing, and what happens to
that money if the test fails?
4. Tell me about a rate or a package you negotiated. What did you ask for and
what did you get?
(Good answer: names the concession, added value, a shorter cancellation
window, a bonus placement, a make-good policy. A weak answer says they
"always get a discount" with no example.)
5. Who reconciles the invoice against what the vendor actually delivered, and
how have you done it?
(Good answer: has done it, describes the discrepancy process. This step is
the one most often left unowned at a small company.)
6. A vendor rep pitches you a package that is not in the plan. What happens
next?
7. How do you handle a campaign that is pacing to underspend with two weeks
left?
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
•Real numbers, real periods, real channels
•Negotiation described as specific asks, not charm
•Ownership of reconciliation and billing discrepancies
•Says no to vendor-led buying
NOTES
__
Still Using Spreadsheets for Onboarding?
Automate documents, training assignments, task management, and track onboarding progress in real time.
This set separates a planner who spends money from one who can prove what the money did. You are not testing statistics. You are testing whether they know what a platform report is worth and whether they will tell you when a campaign is failing.
Measurement and Analytics Questions
MEASUREMENT AND ANALYTICS INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Candidate: __
Business: __
Interviewer: __
WHEN TO USE THIS SET
This is the set that separates a planner who spends money from a planner who
can prove what the money did. Ask it of every candidate, including junior ones.
You are not testing statistics. You are testing whether the candidate knows the
difference between what a platform reports and what actually happened, and
whether they will tell you the truth when a campaign does not work.
QUESTIONS
1. How do you know a campaign worked?
(Good answer: separates platform-reported conversions from incremental
results, mentions holdouts, geo tests, or a pre and post read, and admits
where attribution is uncertain. A weak answer reads a return figure off a
platform dashboard and treats it as fact.)
2. Which metrics would you report to me weekly, and which ones only at the end?
3. Explain the difference between a platform-reported conversion and an
incremental one, as you would explain it to an owner.
4. Tell me about spend you stopped. What was the signal and how long did it
take you to act?
(Good answer: names the channel, the signal, the timeline, and where the
money went instead. Answer without hesitation is a strong sign.)
5. How do you build a post-campaign report, and who reads it?
6. What would you do in your first 30 days here to work out what is already
working?
7. When the data is thin because our volume is low, how do you decide anything?
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
•Knows the limits of platform-reported numbers
•Has stopped something and can say when and why
•Reports in numbers an owner can act on
•Honest about uncertainty rather than confident about everything
NOTES
__
Set 4: Channel-Specific Questions
Pick two or three blocks and skip the rest. Testing a candidate on every channel rewards the person who claims breadth and shows depth in none, which is the opposite of what a small business needs.
Channel-Specific Questions (Pick Yours)
CHANNEL-SPECIFIC INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Candidate: __
Business: __
Channels this role will actually run: __
WHEN TO USE THIS SET
Ask only about the channels this role will actually run. Testing a candidate on
every channel rewards the person who claims breadth and shows depth in none.
Pick two or three blocks below, add them to the core set, and skip the rest.
PAID SEARCH AND PAID SOCIAL
1. How do you structure an account so the reporting is readable?
2. How do you decide between a broad and a tightly targeted audience on a
small budget?
3. How do you handle creative fatigue, and how do you know it has set in?
PROGRAMMATIC, CTV, AND STREAMING
1. How do you evaluate inventory quality and brand safety?
2. What do you check before you trust a delivery report from a platform?
3. How do you set frequency caps, and what happens when you do not?
BROADCAST, RADIO, PRINT, AND OUT OF HOME
1. How do you negotiate a schedule, and what added value do you ask for?
2. How do you handle a make-good when a spot does not run as booked?
3. How do you measure a channel that does not report a click?
RETAIL MEDIA, SPONSORSHIPS, AND PARTNERSHIPS
1. How do you decide whether a sponsorship is worth its price?
2. What do you insist on in the agreement before you commit budget?
3. How do you keep a partner honest about delivery?
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
•Depth in the channels you actually need
•Willingness to say "I have not run that"
•Practical checks, not platform talking points
NOTES
__
Set 5: Behavioral and Stakeholder Questions
Planning at your size is a persuasion job as much as an analytical one, because the planner has to tell you when your favorite channel is not working. Score these with the STAR pattern: a real Situation and Task, the Action taken, and a measurable Result.
Behavioral and Stakeholder Questions
BEHAVIORAL AND STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Candidate: __
Business: __
Interviewer: __
WHEN TO USE THIS SET
Media planning at a small business is a persuasion job as much as an analytical
one. The planner has to tell an owner that the channel the owner likes is not
working, and has to hold a position when a vendor pushes back. Score these with
the STAR pattern: a real Situation and Task, the specific Action the candidate
took, and a measurable Result.
QUESTIONS
1. Tell me about a campaign that missed its target. What did you do next?
(Good answer: owns the call, names what changed. Deflecting to creative,
the market, or the previous agency tells you how the post-campaign
conversation will go once they work for you.)
2. Describe a time you told a client or a manager that their preferred channel
was the wrong one. How did it land?
3. Give an example of a plan you had to rebuild after the budget was cut
mid-flight.
4. Tell me about a disagreement with a vendor or a rep. How did you resolve it?
5. Walk me through how you present a plan to someone with no marketing
background.
6. Describe a time you changed your recommendation because of the data.
7. What is the part of this job you like least, and how do you stay on top
of it?
(Good answer: usually reconciliation, trafficking, or reporting. Candidates
who claim to love every part of the job are performing.)
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
•Owns mistakes with specifics attached
•Holds a position without becoming difficult
•Explains media plainly to a non-marketer
•Answers the failure question without flinching
NOTES
__
Set 6: Scorecard, Red Flags, and Work-Sample Brief
A 1-to-5 rubric across six competencies, a red-flag checklist you can mark during the interview, and a second-stage brief to hand to finalists. Use it with any of the sets above, and use the same rubric for every candidate.
Media Planner Scorecard, Red Flags, and Work Sample
MEDIA PLANNER SCORECARD, RED FLAGS, AND WORK-SAMPLE BRIEF
Candidate: __
Business: __
Interviewer: __
Date: _
HOW TO SCORE
Score each area from 1 to 5 immediately after the interview, while it is fresh.
Anchor every score to something the candidate actually said. If more than one
person interviews, each scores independently before the group talks. Use the
same rubric for every candidate for this role.
Rating scale:
5 = Strong, specific evidence 4 = Solid evidence 3 = Some evidence
2 = Weak or mixed evidence 1 = No evidence or red flags
SCORING AREAS
Planning judgment: asks before recommending, has a repeatable process
Score [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ]
Evidence: ______
Budget ownership: real numbers, allocation logic, testing reserve
Score [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ]
Evidence: ______
Buying and negotiation: specific asks, make-goods, reconciliation
Score [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ]
Evidence: ______
Measurement honesty: platform-reported vs incremental, stopped spend
Score [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ]
Evidence: ______
Channel depth in the channels we actually run
Score [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ]
Evidence: ______
Communication: explains a plan to a non-marketer, holds a position
Score [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ]
Evidence: ______
RED FLAGS (WEIGH CAREFULLY)
[ ] Names channels before asking what the objective is measured by
[ ] A portfolio with no failures in it
[ ] Quotes platform-reported returns as if they were incremental
[ ] Cannot name a budget figure they personally owned
[ ] No answer for who reconciles the invoice
[ ] Recommends whatever the vendor rep pitched most recently
[ ] Claims depth in every channel
WORK-SAMPLE BRIEF (SECOND STAGE, PAID IF OVER AN HOUR)
Give the finalist the following and ask for a one-page written response:
•One business objective and how we measure it
•One budget figure and the period it covers
•One page of historical performance, redacted if needed
•The constraint that matters most (margin, seasonality, creative, geography)
Ask for: the questions they would need answered, a recommended channel mix with
a rough split, what they would measure in week one, and what would make them
stop. Judge the questions at least as hard as the recommendation.
Three questions do most of the sorting, and each has a strong and a weak version that an owner can tell apart without any media background. Read these before the interview so you recognize the pattern while it is happening rather than afterward.
Here is our goal and a budget number. What would you need to know before recommending a channel?
Strong answer: A strong candidate asks questions for several minutes: how the goal is measured, what has already run and what it returned, what the margin allows per customer, what creative exists, and what you would count as failure. The recommendation comes last, with a stated reason for each channel.
Weak answer: A weak candidate starts naming channels in the first minute, usually the channels they know best rather than the ones your business needs. Confidence arriving before information is the single most reliable warning sign in this interview.
How do you know a campaign worked?
Strong answer: A strong candidate separates what the platform reported from what actually changed in the business, and names a way to tell them apart: a holdout, a geo test, or a clean pre and post read. They say out loud which parts of the measurement are uncertain and why.
Weak answer: A weak candidate quotes a return figure from a platform dashboard as settled fact and treats every reported conversion as caused by the ad. That answer costs a small business real money, because the reported number is almost always the flattering one.
Tell me about spend you stopped.
Strong answer: A strong candidate answers immediately, names the channel, the signal that triggered the call, how long it took, and where the money went instead. Most volunteer a second example without being asked, because stopping things is a normal part of the job.
Weak answer: A weak candidate cannot produce one, or produces one where the fault sits entirely with creative, the market, or the previous agency. Everyone who has planned media for a few years has funded something that did not work.
The most useful follow-up is always some version of what happened next. A strong candidate has the outcome ready, with a number attached. A weaker one retreats into process description, and that retreat is the answer.
Planning signals
Asks what the objective is measured by
Asks what has already been tried and failed
Describes the same process the same way twice
Budget ownership
Names a figure and the period it covered
Holds a testing reserve and explains the rule
Has personally chased a billing discrepancy
Measurement honesty
Separates platform-reported from incremental
Names spend they stopped and how fast
Says plainly where attribution is uncertain
Red flags
Names channels in the first minute
A portfolio with no failures in it
Recommends whatever a rep pitched last
None of these signals is disqualifying on its own. Two or three together should change your decision, which is exactly what the red-flag checklist in Set 6 is for: mark them as they happen, then read the marks back before you talk yourself into someone.
The Work Sample That Settles It
Give every finalist the same one-page brief and pay for it if it takes more than an hour. A media planner interview rewards presentation skill more than almost any other role you will hire for, and a written sample is the cheapest way to see the craft underneath the delivery.
What you give them
What you ask for
What you are judging
One business objective and how you measure it
The questions they still need answered
Whether they ask before they recommend
One budget figure and the period it covers
A channel mix with a rough split
Whether the split has stated reasons
One page of historical performance, redacted
What they would measure in week one
Whether they read what already happened
The constraint that matters most
What would make them stop
Whether they plan an exit, not just an entry
Judge the questions at least as hard as the recommendation. The recommendation is a guess made without enough information, and everyone knows it; the questions are the actual work. Build the exercise into your hiring process at the second stage, after the main interview and before the offer.
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A good interview is fair, legal, and structured, and the three reinforce each other. Asking the same job-related questions of every candidate keeps you compliant, reduces bias, and produces better hires at the same time. This is the part the generic question lists leave out.
Ask about the job, not the person
Federal anti-discrimination law, enforced by the EEOC, prohibits basing a hiring decision on protected characteristics, and questions that probe them create risk even when they are asked as small talk. Do not ask about age, race, religion, national origin, sex, pregnancy or family plans, disability, or genetic information. Media interviews drift into personal territory easily, because talking about the shows a candidate watches, the podcasts they listen to, and the platforms they live on feels like rapport and sounds like research. Keep the conversation on the plan, the budget, and the results. Every question in the sets on this page is written to stay on the job. This is general information, not legal advice.
Use the same core set for every candidate
Asking each candidate the same core questions is fairer and it also produces better hires. A structured interview, where every candidate faces the same questions scored against the same rubric, predicts on-the-job performance more reliably than a free-flowing conversation, and it reduces the chance that the decision rests on rapport rather than evidence. For media roles this matters more than usual, because candidates who present well are common and the craft is hard for an owner to assess directly. Write the questions in advance, ask them in the same order, and score them. This is general information, not legal advice.
Score independently, then discuss
When several people interview a candidate, have each interviewer complete the scorecard alone before the group talks. This keeps the loudest or most senior voice from anchoring everyone else, which is how good candidates get talked out of and weak ones get talked into. Compare written evidence first, then discuss the gaps. A 1-to-5 rubric per competency, filled in independently, turns a subjective debate into a structured decision. For an owner who is also the only interviewer, the scorecard still does useful work: it forces you to write down what the candidate actually said before the impression hardens.
Match the questions to the media you actually buy
A planner for a business running paid search and paid social on a modest monthly budget and one placing broadcast, out-of-home, and streaming buys are different hires. Weight the questions to your reality: pick the two or three channel blocks that match what this role will run, and drop the rest. A small business hiring its first media planner should also be explicit about whether the role buys as well as plans, because at your size it almost certainly does, and the budget and negotiation set is then the one that decides the hire.
Same Questions, Scored on a Rubric, Predict Better Hires
A structured interview, where every candidate answers the same questions scored against a consistent rubric, predicts on-the-job performance more reliably than an unstructured conversation, and asking the same job-related questions of everyone also keeps you within the EEOC rules against basing decisions on protected characteristics. Structure is both the fairer and the more effective approach.
Keep every question tied to the plan, the budget, and the results, and avoid the small-talk traps about age, family, origin, or religion. If you want the full list of questions to steer around, the guide to illegal interview questions covers them. This is general information, not legal advice.
What a Media Planner Costs
No federal occupation carries the media planner title, so benchmark against the nearest classifications and adjust for scope. The right anchor depends on whether the role executes a plan, owns a budget, or also negotiates and manages vendors.
Median $78,760 for the Nearest Occupation
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (May 2025), market research analysts and marketing specialists had a median annual wage of $78,760, about $37.87 an hour, with the lowest 10 percent under $43,390, the 25th percentile at $58,350, the 75th at $108,310, and the highest 10 percent above $155,480 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). The category folds higher-paid research analysts in with marketing specialists, so treat the median as a ceiling-leaning benchmark for a first planner hire.
For a senior planner who owns the budget and the vendor relationships, the closer benchmark is advertising and promotions managers, which the same survey put at a median of $133,660 a year. Most small businesses are not hiring at that level, but knowing the band tells you when a candidate is priced for a job you are not offering.
What the role does
Associate planner
Senior planner
Executes a plan someone else built
Owns the budget and the allocation call
Negotiates rates and manages vendors
Reconciles invoices against delivery
Benchmarks near the 25th percentile
Pay also interacts with classification. A planner who allocates budget and advises leadership is generally exempt under the administrative test, while an associate executing someone else's plan is usually non-exempt and owed overtime, a distinction covered in detail on the job description page. Several states now require a pay range in the posting, so set one before you advertise.
Interviewing a Media Planner Without an HR Department
A large advertiser interviews media planners through a marketing organization that already contains people who do the job. A small business interviews through one person who has never done it, usually between everything else. That gap is where the avoidable mistakes happen, and all three of them have cheap fixes.
You are hiring for a craft you have never practiced
Most owners hiring a media planner have never built a media plan, which makes it hard to judge whether a candidate knows the work. The fix is to stop assessing the answer and start assessing the questions. Hand over a business objective, a budget figure, and one page of historical performance, then listen to what the candidate wants to know before they recommend anything. A strong planner asks what the objective is measured by, what has already been tried, what the margin allows, and what you would count as failure. A weak one names channels in the first minute. That difference is visible to anyone, whether or not they know the craft, and it is why the work-sample brief in Set 6 exists.
At your size, the planner is also the buyer, the analyst, and the person chasing the invoice
Inside a large agency, planning, buying, trafficking, and reconciliation sit on four different desks. At a small business one person does all of it, so an interview weighted entirely toward strategy will hire someone who cannot execute. Ask the budget and negotiation questions with the same seriousness as the planning ones, and ask directly who reconciled the invoice at their last job. Reconciliation is the least glamorous part of the role and the one most often left unowned at a small company, which is exactly why the question separates candidates so well. Decide before the interview whether this role buys as well as plans, and say so in the posting.
The interview is the easy part; the access and the paperwork come next
A media planner arrives needing more access than most hires: ad accounts, analytics, the payment method behind the buys, vendor contacts, historical spend files, and brand and claim guidelines. That is a lot of trust granted in week one, and it is worth handling as a sequence rather than a scramble. FirstHR fits the people side of that: e-signature for the offer and the confidentiality agreement, document management for the signed paperwork and vendor records, task workflows for account access and policy sign-off, and training modules for brand and disclosure rules. FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not an ad-buying, analytics, or accounting tool, so pair it with those. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
The practical shortcut: use one core set for every candidate, add the two or three channel blocks that match what you buy, and run the interview the same way each time. Consistency is what turns a single founder's hour into something you can compare.
Score every candidate on the same rubric immediately after the interview, while the answers are fresh, and anchor each score to something the candidate actually said. A written interview evaluation form is what keeps a persuasive hour from becoming the decision by itself. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
From Interview to Onboarding
The interview is step one. Once you choose someone, a media planner needs more access than most hires in their first week, so the offer, the paperwork, and the access sequence are worth running as a process rather than a scramble.
Send the offer and the NDA
Confirm scope, pay, and start date in writing, and have the planner sign a confidentiality agreement before any customer or spend data changes hands.
Grant access in a set order
Ad accounts, analytics, and the payment method behind the buys, with the owner keeping admin rights rather than handing them over.
Hand over the history
Past spend files, vendor contacts, insertion orders, and brand and claim guidelines, so the first plan is not built from guesses.
Set the first 90 days
A read of what is already running, a first plan, and an agreed reporting cadence, so you know by day 90 whether the hire was right.
Get the offer letter and the confidentiality agreement signed before any spend or customer data changes hands. A planner who will be moving your money and seeing your customer data should not be doing either on a handshake.
After that, the rest becomes a repeatable onboarding checklist: ad account and analytics access, vendor contacts, historical spend files, brand and claim guidelines, and the approval path for buys. Hand over the history in the first week, or the first plan will be built from guesses.
FirstHR runs that sequence the same way for every hire, with e-signature for the offer and the agreement, document management for vendor and access records, task workflows for the first-week checklist, and training modules for brand and disclosure rules. FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform, not an ad-buying or analytics tool, so connect those separately. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR. More hiring templates sit in the hiring templates library.
Key Takeaways
Assess a media planner on planning judgment, budget ownership, negotiation, measurement honesty, and depth in the channels you actually run.
Hand over an objective and a budget and judge the questions the candidate asks, which is assessable even if you have never planned media yourself.
At a small business the planner also buys and reconciles, so weight the money questions as heavily as the strategy ones.
Ask what spend they stopped and how fast: a portfolio with no failures in it means the candidate is editing.
No federal occupation carries the media planner title, so benchmark against a median of $78,760 with a 25th to 75th band of $58,350 to $108,310 (BLS OEWS, May 2025).
Give every finalist the same paid one-page work sample, and judge the questions at least as hard as the recommendation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What questions should I ask a media planner candidate?
Ask questions that test five things: planning judgment, budget ownership, buying and negotiation, measurement honesty, and depth in the channels you actually run. The strongest opener is to hand over a business objective and a budget figure and ask what they would need to know before recommending a single channel, because a good planner asks for several minutes before proposing anything. Follow with the largest budget they personally allocated and over what period, a rate or package they negotiated and what they got, how they tell a platform-reported conversion from an incremental one, and a time they stopped funding something. Close with behavioral questions on a campaign that missed its target and a channel they had to argue against. This page groups all of these into six downloadable sets with notes on what a good answer sounds like.
How do I evaluate a media planner if I have never planned media myself?
Assess the questions the candidate asks rather than the answer they give. Hand over a business objective, a budget number, and one page of historical performance, then listen. A strong planner wants to know how the objective is measured, what has already run and what it returned, what the margin allows per customer, what creative exists, and what you would count as failure. A weak one starts naming channels in the first minute, usually the channels they personally know best. That difference is visible to anyone. Beyond it, weight three signals you can judge without craft knowledge: whether they give real numbers and periods, whether they can name spend they stopped, and whether they explain the plan in language you can follow. A short paid work sample at the second stage tells you more than any interview answer.
What is the difference between a media planner and a media buyer?
A media planner decides where the budget should go and why: the objective, the audience, the channel mix, the flighting, and how success will be measured. A media buyer executes that plan in the market: negotiating rates and packages, placing insertion orders, trafficking creative, monitoring delivery, and reconciling invoices against what actually ran. Inside a large agency these are separate jobs on separate desks. At a small business they are almost always the same person, which is why an interview weighted entirely toward strategy will hire someone who cannot execute. Decide before you post whether the role plans, buys, or both, and weight the budget and negotiation question set accordingly. Ask directly who reconciled the invoice at the candidate’s last job, because that step is the one most often left unowned at a small company.
How much does a media planner cost?
No federal occupation carries the media planner title, so benchmark against the nearest classifications. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (May 2025), market research analysts and marketing specialists had a median annual wage of $78,760, with the 25th percentile at $58,350 and the 75th at $108,310. Advertising and promotions managers, a fair benchmark for a senior planner who owns the budget and the vendor relationships, had a median of $133,660. In practice an associate planner executing someone else’s plan sits nearer the 25th percentile, a planner who owns a real budget sits around the median, and a planner who also negotiates and manages vendors sits above it. Several states require a pay range in the posting, so set one before you advertise. This is general information, not compensation or legal advice.
What are the red flags in a media planner interview?
Seven recur often enough to be worth writing down. Naming channels before asking what the objective is measured by. A portfolio with no failures in it, which means the candidate is either very early in a career or editing heavily. Quoting platform-reported returns as though they were incremental. Being unable to name a budget figure they personally owned, which usually means they supported a plan rather than owned one. Having no answer for who reconciles the invoice. Recommending whatever a vendor rep pitched most recently. Claiming depth in every channel, which almost always means depth in none. None of these is disqualifying on its own, but two or three together should change the decision. The scorecard on this page includes the full red-flag checklist so you can mark them during the interview rather than trying to recall them afterward.
How long should a media planner interview be?
Plan 45 to 60 minutes for the main interview, with a shorter screen before it and a paid work sample for finalists. An hour covers the core planning set with real follow-ups, the budget and negotiation questions, two measurement questions, one or two channel blocks, and two behavioral questions, and still leaves room for the candidate’s own questions, which are themselves a signal. Depth beats breadth: pushing one strong question with what happened next and what did you change tells you more than racing through thirty. Score immediately afterward while the answers are fresh, and if more than one person interviews, have each score independently before the group talks. Most small businesses run two rounds plus the work sample, which is enough at this level.
Should I give a media planner candidate a test task?
Yes, for finalists, and pay for it if it takes more than an hour of real work. A media planner interview rewards presentation skill, and a written work sample is the cheapest way to see the actual craft. Give one business objective and how you measure it, one budget figure and the period it covers, one page of historical performance with anything sensitive redacted, and the constraint that matters most. Ask for a one-page response: the questions they would need answered, a recommended channel mix with a rough split, what they would measure in week one, and what would make them stop. Judge the questions at least as hard as the recommendation, because the questions are what you are hiring. Give every finalist the same brief so the comparison holds. The brief is included in the scorecard file on this page.
Are these media planner interview questions legal to ask?
Yes. Questions about planning experience, budgets owned, negotiation, measurement, channel depth, and how a candidate handled a past campaign are job-related and permitted. The legal caution is general to all interviewing: avoid questions that touch characteristics protected under federal law, which the EEOC enforces, including age, race, color, religion, national origin, sex, pregnancy or family plans, disability, and genetic information. Media interviews drift into that territory easily, because asking what shows someone watches or which platforms they live on feels like both rapport and research. Keep every question on the plan, the budget, and the results, and ask the same core set of every candidate for the role. Using one structured question set and one scorecard for everyone is itself a safeguard. This is general information, not legal advice.
