Hiring a Freelance Copywriter is Challenging—Learn from Our Experience!

Back in 2019, before Workello existed, we were Content Distribution.com—a content company that had undertaken one of the most ambitious SEO campaigns of all time. In 18 months, we succeeded in growing our project from 0 to 1,000,000 organic monthly visitors. To make this possible, we had to consistently publish high volumes of top-quality content. This meant we had to scale our team lightning fast. As the workload increased, our company went from 1 to 45 content writers, Copywriters, and Editors in the same timespan to keep up with content demand.

We tried finding qualified candidates on various hiring platforms, such as Upwork and LinkedIn— but we soon realized that our current hiring model wasn’t optimized to source skilled applicants effectively. Dozens of lackluster portfolios and scores of sub-par resumes—it was an endless struggle to discern copywriting talent and separate good candidates from bad ones.

We sank thousands of hours and more than $100,000 into figuring out a more efficient, streamlined way to hire Freelance Copywriters. Our end product was Workello—a fully automated hiring funnel that efficiently sources the finest Copywriters in the market!

In the next 10+ minutes, we’ll give you a run-down of our hiring process, and show you:

• How to find Freelance Copywriters
• Why hiring a Freelance Copywriter can be tough
• What to pay attention to in the Copywriter marketplace
• How an automated testing system can help you hire a Freelance Copywriter faster

How Companies Find Freelance Copywriters—Top 15 Job Boards Evaluated

Check out the pros and cons of some of our favorite job boards to hire a Freelance Copywriter who’s suitable for your company’s needs:

Continue reading the article to discover an additional 15 hiring platforms where you can find Freelance Copywriters for hire.

Why Is It Difficult To Find a Qualified Freelance Copywriter for Hire?

Regardless of the job board you’ve chosen, you’ll soon realize that every marketing company is on the hunt for experienced Freelance Copywriters. The most qualified ones usually get hired quickly, leaving behind hundreds of sub-par candidates. The main problem with all hiring platforms is that they can’t source qualified Copywriters fast enough, which leads to sub-par candidates’ always being the majority.

We first started by looking for candidates on Upwork and LinkedIn, and afterwards on other major hiring hubs. Soon, we noticed several problems with each hiring platform we visited: 

• Submitted resumes and portfolios don’t represent a Freelance Copywriter’s true qualities
• Most websites didn’t possess adequate features for testing Copywriters
• The majority of platforms didn’t have an automated tracking system that notifies you of each candidate’s status in the hiring process

As no hiring channel will magically feature only top-performing candidates, we concluded that the best recruitment strategy for hiring Freelance Copywriters was to test and evaluate as many applicants as possible. After all, we wanted to identify and snatch up top copywriting talent before other companies extended them an offer!

What Problems We Encountered

We tried to find Freelance Copywriters on various different hiring platforms, but problems only increased with each new job board listing. Candidates started streaming in from multiple sources, including Craigslist, Indeed, Monster, LinkedIn, Facebook—it had become impossible to keep up with applications coming in from all these disparate networks!

Despite the modifications we introduced to improve our hiring system, the same issues persisted. It was still difficult to:

• Effectively track candidate applications and their status in the hiring pipeline
• Respond to candidate inquiries on time
• Communicate with top-performing applicants on the dot
• Filter out unqualified candidates
• Keep notes on skilled applicants we would potentially hire

We soon realized there wasn’t an easy fix that would address all these issues at the same time, so we decided to brainstorm an original solution and conceive something new.

In the following months, we committed all our time and resources into creating an automated hiring funnel with an optimized, streamlined ATS that would help us source, test, and keep track of applicants. The outcome of this project was Workello.

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

It became obvious that we needed to revamp our hiring system, or better yet—create a new, more efficient one. Our first step in designing a fresh hiring funnel was reviewing our old methods to see which did and which didn’t work as intended. After breaking down our hiring funnel to see what the problem was, we came to these conclusions:

1. To grow the number of our online visitors, we need a high-volume output of top-notch content
2. Creating good content with compelling copy requires skilled Freelance Copywriters
3. To hire a Freelance Copywriter who’s proficient in their role, we need to evaluate and review hundreds of applicants
4. To find an exceptional Freelance Copywriter, we have to filter out unqualified candidates quickly
5. Getting top talent means efficiently reviewing, testing, and employing good candidates before other companies have the chance

We quickly concluded that we didn’t have any problems with receiving applications—applicants were sending in their resumes round the clock. The issue was how to handle them once they were submitted. No system offered us a satisfactory solution, so we had to come up with one on our own.

The Benefits of Our New Hiring System

What we desperately needed was an automated system that would help us surmount the many difficulties that stood in the way of hiring a Freelance Copywriter efficiently. We jotted down the necessary features our new system needed to have. Here is a list of those features:

1. A single platform that would display all candidate applications, no matter the job board they came from
2. A fully automated system that would allow us to sort out candidates by application status and update us on their progress through our hiring funnel
3. A user-friendly dashboard with all the tools required to review, test, set interviews, and ultimately hire Freelance Copywriters
4. An integrated testing functionality that would allow us to easily spot sub-par applicants with outstanding resumes
5. An automated email system that would save us time on repetitive manual replies while efficiently updating candidates on their progress

Before our Workello project was realized, the format we used was Google Sheets + Google Forms + Zapier. It was an improvement at the time, but we strove for something far better.

Attracting Freelance Copywriters—It’s a Piece of Cake With a Good Job Description!

Regardless of your intent to attract only top-performing Freelance Copywriters, you’ll always receive applications from sub-par candidates. Even though you can’t avoid them entirely, you can thin their numbers by composing a job description that goes into the smallest details of the position you’re looking to fill in your company. Being unambiguous and specific about the responsibilities, requirements, and precise qualifications for the role will drastically lower the number of unskilled candidates that apply for the job.

Also, you should state the specific niche they’ll write copy for (fashion, entertainment, online marketing, etc.) A candidate who’s knowledgeable in one area may know little to nothing about another. The more information you offer about the role, the better—this will let prospective applicants know if they meet your company’s hiring criteria.

Since top Freelance Copywriters get hired quickly, it is wise to also add the benefits that employment in your company offers—state why it’s in their interest to work for you instead of a competitor!

Want a Premade Job Description?

It’s important to go into details with your job ad, but you don’t need to go out of your way and write it from scratch. If you’re unsure about the precise role you’re looking to hire or don’t have inspiration for the job description, you can just swipe a premade template and adjust it slightly according to your needs.

Below is a selection of job description templates for various writing roles you could be searching for:

• Copywriter
• Technical Writer
• Writer
• Content Writer
• Junior Copywriter
• B2B Copywriter
• Senior Copywriter
• Pharmaceutical Copywriter
• Automotive Copywriter
• Social Media Copywriter
• Conversion Copywriter
• SEO Copywriter
• Fashion Copywriter
• Freelance Copywriter
• Medical Copywriter

Disseminate Your Job Ads Across the Internet

When we started out, our company didn’t have anyone dedicated to finding new candidates. This duty was relegated to our managers and Editors—this wasn’t particularly difficult, but it required a lot of time. It also distracted our content team from their main role—producing, editing, and publishing content.

One way to avoid this is to hire a Recruiting Officer, but you’ll first have to document the hiring process and educate them on it. To spare you the trouble, we’ve documented every step of the process—learn from our experience, and you won’t need to sink countless hours into research and development!

Register for Workello for free, and you’ll get access to our playbooks so you can delegate job ad distribution to someone else!

All You Need is a Well-Tuned Dashboard

When using Workello, you don’t need to worry about manually keeping track of candidates coming in from dozens of different job boards. You can liberally distribute your job ads across multiple websites without worrying that a qualified applicant will slip past you! 

Regardless of where they find your job ad, every applicant will open an identical Workello-hosted application form that will send their applications directly to your dashboard. As all candidates get the same application form, you won’t have to worry about incomplete applications any longer.

Check out what this application form looks like here.

Watch as Candidates Stream In

Your Workello dashboard will be the touching point along every step of your hiring process—you will use the same page for evaluating, testing, setting up interviews, and finally sending offers to qualified candidates. The process is simple—to change candidate status, all you need to do is pick the appropriate option in the drop-down menu.

The following list shows you all the statuses your candidates can have through each phase of the hiring process:

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

To help you navigate the hiring process, each status is color-coded so you can easily see how many candidates you have and at what stage.

Reject Unqualified Freelance Copywriters

Upon receiving an application, you can give your Editors and Content Managers access to your Workello dashboard so they can evaluate a candidate’s resume.

If their portfolio doesn’t meet your company’s hiring criteria, they can change their status to Application Rejected. Workello will immediately send the candidate an automated email to politely notify them that they have been excluded from the hiring process.

This will save you the trouble of manually communicating with each rejected applicant—you also won’t be swamped by emails from candidates who are curious as to the status of their application.

Point, Click, Test

A well-written portfolio may show a candidate in a favorable light, but don’t take it at face value. These portfolios are often heavily edited beforehand, and they could easily fool you into mistaking a bad applicant for the perfect addition to your copywriting team!

To see the full extent of your candidates’ capabilities, you need to put them to the test.

When our company first started out, we didn’t test our applicants and hired them based only on their resumes. This ended up costing us big time—our Editors had to revise or rewrite entire articles, which increased their workload greatly.

This was a major problem, and we had to introduce testing to identify which Freelance Copywriters didn’t make the cut.

That’s why Workello uses a fully automated testing system—with one press of a button, you can change a candidate’s status to Test Candidate. Doing so will send an automated message to the applicant congratulating them on making it through to the next stage of the hiring process. It will also provide them with a link to the writing test.

Here is an example of our writing test, which you can modify to make it suitable for testing Copywriters:

How To Make a Good Test

Sending a test to an applicant so that you can assess their abilities is quite reasonable—any skilled Freelance Copywriter would be glad to show you an example of their work.

When testing for the freelance copywriting role, it is crucial that your test be thorough enough to evaluate three main aspects of their work:

1. Mastery of language
2. Ability to craft creative, compelling copy and impactful CTAs
3. Understanding of the key selling points of your company’s products and services

Keep in mind that, while your test should be thorough, it doesn’t need to be longer than necessary. Nobody is going to dedicate an entire weekend to completing a 3000-word test for a position they might not get. A 600–800-word assignment is more than adequate for the purposes of testing.

A good test should adequately test your applicant’s skills while still being easy to complete within a reasonable timeframe. After all, if you send a test that takes a whole day to complete, even top-notch candidates will be discouraged knowing that there’s a chance they won’t get hired.

The good news is—Workello allows you to test each candidate more thoroughly! The process is so transparent—with features streamlined for maximum efficiency—that most applicants won’t mind taking on a significantly harder challenge. This way, you’ll show the professional character of your company—what’s more, top-performing Freelance Copywriters will be more likely to join your team!

Workello makes it incredibly easy to integrate a test that you can automatically distribute to candidates once they reach the appropriate stage. Take a look at our example to get a general idea of how you should achieve that balance between a test’s complexity and a candidate’s willpower.

Interviewing Candidates

When a candidate submits the completed test, their status will automatically change to Test Complete, and your Editors will be able to assess the quality of their work. Once they have evaluated it, they will have two options: 

1. Reject Candidate—Sends an automated rejection email to the candidate
2. Interview Candidate—Notifies the candidate that they have passed the test, and sends them a Calendly link to schedule a Zoom meeting

The Candidate Status Page

To ensure you won’t be swamped by thousands of candidates’ inquiries, Workello has created the Candidate Status page. Here, applicants can keep track of their application without manually reaching out to your recruiters. 

Most job seekers value transparency, and they’ll appreciate knowing their status in the hiring funnel, as well as being aware of what to expect next.

Having this page available to candidates means your HR department won’t be flooded with needless questions. You also won’t have to worry about missing out on a great Freelance Copywriter just because you didn’t manage to reply to their email quickly enough.

You can check out how the Candidate Page looks here. 

Our Investment Paid Off Big Time

We know Workello makes hiring Freelance Copywriters seem like a breeze, but make no mistake—without an optimized ATS with an integrated testing feature, it is all but easy.

When our company started growing and we had to hire new Copywriters, it was difficult keeping track of all the different applications on various platforms. Because of this, many top-notch Freelance Copywriters lost interest, and we consequently missed out on top talent.

Incomplete applications were common, and our Editors had to postpone their editing work to post ads. The whole system was chaotic and disorganized, so we decided to build a new, more effective one from the ground up.

Our haphazard trial-and-error process had cost us more than $100,000 and required numerous hours spent on constant research, but the resulting product was worth it—with Workello, you skip all this and hire candidates efficiently for the cost of a single content page!

In the long run, we have managed to:

1. Scale our writing team from 1 to 45 people in under 2 years
2. Reduce the cost of top-notch content by up to 75%
3. Spearhead one of the biggest SEO campaigns ever
4. Unburdened our Editors and Content Managers of the added responsibility to hire candidates

You can try out Workello for free right now—the whole platform is automated and pre-configured, so you can start hiring candidates in under 3 minutes!

How To Find Freelance Copywriters—Check Out Other Job Boards

When using Workello, you can distribute your job ads across as many hiring platforms as you like! Here are some other excellent job boards for hiring quality Freelance Copywriters:

• Copify
• Pitchwhiz
• Mediabistro
• Pure Content
• Skyword
• ContentGrow
• Craigslist
• Zerys
• Muck Rack
• Pod Reacher
• Scribewise
• Freelancer
• Masthead Media
• HireMyMom