We Spent Months Optimizing Our Hiring Funnel—You Can Copy It Instantly

When we started working on Workello, we were an ambitious content agency. As Content Distribution, we executed one of the greatest SEO campaigns of all time. We created huge quantities of consistently high-quality content, and we were very successful with our projects. To accomplish this, we had to scale incredibly fast. 

When we started hiring writers, we realized that our hiring system was in disarray. 

We had difficulties handling large amounts of applications, we kept losing track of where candidates were in our hiring funnel, and we regularly missed out on fantastic writers. 

We were constantly overwhelmed, and it quickly became apparent that we needed to optimize our hiring funnel. If we were to continue to excel at content production, we needed to hire qualified writers more efficiently. 

After months of work and $100,000+, we developed an automated hiring system that allowed us to scale our content team from 1 to over 45 in record time!

In this article, you will learn:

1. What copywriting job boards allow you to pay commission per project
2. Why hiring copywriters is difficult
3. How Workello can help you optimize your hiring process

Top Copywriting Job Boards That Let You Negotiate Commission per Project

Check out the best copywriting job boards that allow you to pay commission per project. Learn what makes them different:

Read on to find more copywriting job boards allowing you to pay commission per project. 

Posting Job Ads on Copywriting Job Boards Is Easy—Hiring Is the Hard Part

Freelance copywriters are in high demand, and the best ones receive offers immediately. Good writers are rarely unemployed, and even when they are, they don’t stay available very long. As a result, most of the candidates on job boards are either “taken” or underqualified. 

On top of that, seasoned copywriters can choose who they want to work for. So, besides being fast, you also have to give them a competitive offer. 

Your biggest problem will be identifying skilled copywriters. The only way to separate the wheat from the chaff is to evaluate and test every candidate. And if you lack the system to do it efficiently, someone will beat you to the best candidates. 

Hiring a freelance copywriter to work on a particular project may cause you even more headaches. Not only are there many companies looking for their services, but the best copywriters have the luxury to pick and choose a project they want to work on.

The Biggest Issues When Hiring Copywriters

Before we developed Workello, we had gone through the hiring process many times, and we know how hard it is to find great copywriters. Whichever job board we used, we ran into the same problems:

• Portfolios candidates submitted didn’t represent their true capabilities
• We couldn’t keep track of candidates in our hiring funnel
• Websites we used to source candidates offer no features specific to hiring writers
• It was impossible to respond to every single application, let alone reach out to everyone on time
• Keep note of candidates we remember seemed great
• Most applicants continued to be bad

We knew that we needed to evaluate hundreds of applications to identify one top-performer. But we didn’t anticipate that our problems would only multiply if we started using multiple job boards, hoping to increase the number of great candidates. 

We were committed to producing top-quality content that brought us fantastic results. Optimizing our hiring funnel received but a fraction of such commitment. Continuing in the same manner was pointless. 

We decided to invest the same amount of dedication and effort into developing an optimized hiring system designed explicitly for content teams. 

Use Pre-Hire Tests To Overcome the Struggle of Hiring a Skilled Copywriter

Hiring copywriters often turns out a mess. You get hundreds of applications, most of which are from underqualified candidates. You go through their resumes and portfolios, without ever knowing how true their portfolios are to their actual first-draft quality—you are well aware that the submitted samples have likely been heavily edited. Without testing your applicants, you risk hiring someone unqualified based on their solid interview skills—not their copywriting prowess.

To bypass this issue and hire only the top 1% of talent, you need to introduce pre-hire assessments.

When you do so, another issue will occur. How do you manage testing hundreds of candidates at once without losing your bearings? The only way to do it is to get reliable skill assessment software. Workello will automate the assessment process and facilitate your communication with candidates. All you need to do is:

1. Sign up for free and use the pre-configured settings to set up the hiring funnel in under 3 minutes
2. Post job ads on job platforms using the Workello link
3. Assess applications within your dashboard
4. Send tests to candidates to evaluate their skills
5. Reject or invite for interview and hire candidates without ever leaving your dashboard

Test Hundreds of Candidates Hassle-Free With Workello

Workello is high-volume recruiting software that automates your hiring funnel and speeds up the entire process, allowing you to save time and money. Most importantly, you won’t miss out on top candidates.

You can use Workello to test copywriters and SEO copywriters for any industry and niche. If you need a boost in your content team, use Workello to test content writers with ease. It’s an all-in-one platform that will meet all your needs. You only need to create a free account and hire top-quality copywriters in no time.

Hiring Funnel of a Top 1% Hiring Agency

Our hiring system was apparently broken, but we didn’t know exactly what was holding us back. So we took a step back and analyzed our work process. We broke it down into the following segments:

1. Only top-quality copy can ensure high conversion rates
2. To create engaging, powerful copy that converts, you need experienced copywriters
3. The only way to find great copywriters is to evaluate hundreds of applications
4. The way to find great applicants is to weed out bad ones fast
5. Identifying bad candidates quickly was our greatest stumbling block

Copywriting job boards are very efficient when it comes to sourcing applications; there is no doubt about that. We never lacked candidates. In fact, we had no idea how to handle the stream of incoming applications. 

We tried to find a system that would help us solve all of our problems, but nothing we could find was comprehensive enough to address every issue we had. So we decided to build our own. We created a list of features that an ideal hiring system should have, and this is what we came up with:

• A single platform that gathers all applications in one place, regardless of how many job boards we posted our ads on
• An automated system that allows us to move candidates through our funnel easily
• A dashboard that lets us handle every phase of our hiring process from the same place
• A system that sends a writing test automatically so that we can identify bad candidates with good portfolios fast
• An automated communication system that eliminates human error and saves time

Our first attempt at such a system was a Google Sheets + Google Forms + Zapier combination. It wasn’t ideal, but it revealed what we needed to focus on, and eventually, it led us to create Workello.

A Good Job Description to Post on Copywriting Job Boards Is Half the Battle

A killer job description will do two things:

1. Attract the best candidates
2. Deter bad candidates

While you can’t completely eliminate the possibility of unqualified applicants sending their resumes, at least you can considerably reduce their number. You will do that by writing a specific and informative job description. 

Here is what you need to include:

• Basic requirements—Previous experience, education, necessary skills
• Job responsibilities—What type of copy candidates would be writing (sales pages, landing pages, banners, etc.)
• Benefits—Salary, health and pension plans, paid time off, career advancement and learning opportunities, etc.

If you’re having trouble composing your copywriter job ad or figuring out what exact role you need, tap into our database of pre-vetted job description templates. Keep in mind that your job ad should cater to the specific type of copywriter, based on the project you are hiring them for. 

Click on the role you need, copy the template, adapt it to suit your company’s needs or the specifics of the project at hand. Then, all that’s left to do is post the ad on job boards you like!

• Junior Copywriter
• Senior Copywriter
• Freelance Copywriter
• Pharmaceutical Copywriter
• Automotive Copywriter
• Fashion Copywriter
• Direct Marketing Copywriter
• B2B Copywriter
• Radio Copywriter
• Beauty Copywriter
• Conversion Copywriter
• Social Media Copywriter
• SEO Copywriter
• Medical Copywriter

Distribute Your Job Ad Across the Internet

It’s always best to have a person dedicated to posting job ads. If you don’t, another employee will have to deal with it. Job ad distribution is not a difficult task, but it’s time-consuming. 

When we first started hiring, our editors handled posting ads. But that is not what they were hired to do. As they began to spend more and more time neglecting their primary duties, we realized it was time to find somebody new who would take over.

It was not an easy task because it required us to document our hiring process and educate the new person on everything. 

We went through that painful ordeal, but you don’t have to!

Registering with Workello for free grants you access to all our playbooks. You will quickly learn how to delegate job ad distribution to someone else with ease!

See All Applications in One Place

The greatest benefit of signing up with Workello, is that no matter where candidates apply, their applications will all end up in the same place—your dashboard. That’s because of the link to a Workello-hosted application form you will include in your ad.

All the applications will also be uniform, and you won’t have to waste time on incomplete submissions. 

Check out an example of an application here.

Watch Candidates Stream In

Not only will all your applications be accessible from a single page, but you will use that same page for every step of your hiring process. You will be able to evaluate, test, reject, invite for interviews, and extend offers without leaving your Workello dashboard. 

All you need to do is click on the appropriate application status from the drop-down menu:

1. Application Received
2. Application Rejected
3. Test Candidate
4. Test Complete
5. Reject Candidate
6. Invite for Interview
7. Send Offer

Each status is color-coded, which makes it easy to estimate how many candidates you have in each stage of your hiring funnel.

Reject Unqualified Writers

Applications will start coming in, and they will be easily accessible to your editors and content managers in your dashboard. If they think that a candidate is unqualified even before the testing phase, they can easily remove them from the race by changing the status to  “Application Rejected.”

This triggers an automated email, so you won’t have to manually inform each candidate that you won’t be moving them to the next step.

Point, Click, Test

It’s never a good idea to hire candidates based on their applications and portfolios alone. 

Most of the time, candidates will submit heavily edited portfolios. It’s only natural—that’s how candidates promote themselves, and they have to present themselves in the best possible light. 

Regardless of the type of project you need copywriters for and how you want to pay candidates—by the hour or per project, you still want to make sure that the copywriters you choose know what they are doing. The only way to be sure you have made the right choice is to test them. 

At first, we didn’t test our candidates. It was a big mistake because we ended up paying for unusable content, and our talented editors wasted their time rewriting it. 

We threw thousands of dollars down the drain, but we learned from our mistake—we integrated the automated testing feature into Workello. 

Changing a candidate’s application status to “Test Candidate” triggers an automated email that congratulates them on moving on to the next hiring stage and provides them with a link to the test.

Once they open the link, candidates will see a tab like this:

How To Make a Good Test

A good test will reveal candidates’:

1. Command of the English language
2. Research skills
3. Formatting skills
4. Technical skills
5. Use of persuasive language
6. Understanding of SEO

Your test needs to be complex enough, but it mustn’t be too demanding. Most candidates won’t have enough motivation to spend an entire day working on a test that may not even get them the job. 

The key is to find that sweet spot between test thoroughness and candidate willingness. 

The good news is that Workello allows you to shift that balance a little more to the test thoroughness side. 

Since candidates receive quick email updates whenever their application status changes and your ad was informative, they now perceive you as a professional, transparent, and well-organized company they want to work for. It allows you to be a bit more demanding with your test. 

Are you having trouble creating a test? Check out how easy it is to set up an automated test in Workello. See what the test we used to scale our team looks like! 

Interview Candidates

The moment candidates submit their tests, their application status will change to “Test Complete,” allowing your editors to check it out. 

If the candidate didn’t demonstrate an adequate level of writing skill, your editors can quickly remove them from your hiring funnel by clicking on “Reject Candidate.” Again, the candidate will receive an automated rejection email thanking them for their time and informing them politely that you won’t be moving them forward.

If the candidate met your company’s standards, your editors can select the “Invite for Interview” option, and Workello will send an email containing a Calendly link to schedule a video meeting. 

The Candidate Status Page

Although candidates will receive an email every time you move them to the next phase of your hiring process or remove them from the race, there is still a chance that some will send emails with transactional questions. 

To mitigate that, Workello has a Candidate Status page that your candidates can access and check their application status. This is where they can also find all the information about your hiring process, so they will always know what happens next. 

This feature ensures you never lose a great candidate again because you were too late to reach out to them or follow up with them. 

You can click here to see what the Candidate Status page looks like.

Our Investment Paid Off Big Time

Automation makes hiring sound simple, but nothing was simple when we first started looking for writers.

We struggled with every single aspect of the hiring process except ad posting on various copywriting job boards and receiving applications. We couldn’t keep track of where candidates were in our hiring funnel, we failed to contact many of them, and we were often too late to reach out to some good candidates. As a result, we missed many fantastic copywriters. 

Our talented editors and content managers spent a lot of their time posting job ads, creating tests, and checking multiple platforms to see who had applied, instead of producing content. 

Our hiring process was inefficient, and there was nothing that would help us solve all of our problems. 

Now, we have Workello!

Thanks to this optimized hiring system, we managed to :

1. Scale our team from 1 to 45+members in 18 months
2. Decrease our content costs by 75%
3. Execute one of the most successful SEO campaigns ever
4. Let our editors and content managers focus on their actual jobs

Workello cost us $100,000+ and countless hours, and it was the best investment we have ever made! You can get it for the price of a single page of content, and you get to try it for free!

More Copywriting Job Boards That Allow Per Project Commissions

Since all the applications you receive will go to your Wokrello dashboard, you can use as many copywriting job boards that allow per project commissions as you like. You won’t have to bother checking each job board individually to see new applications. 

Here are some more websites where you can negotiate fixed project prices with copywriters:

• Creative Jobs Central
• Get Copywriting Jobs
• Mediabistro
• Creative Hotlist
• Coroflot
• Dribble
• FlexCareers
• Guru
• Carbon Made
• Lensa
• Creative Pool
• Ebyline
• Skyword