It Took Us Months of Hard Work To Fine-Tune Our Hiring Funnel—You Can Copy It in a Few Seconds!

Back in 2019, we were a small but ambitious content company—ContentDistribution.com. Around that time, we took on an SEO project for a VC-backed client that required us to grow their site traffic from 0 to 1,500,000 organic monthly visitors.

This would have been an impossible task with just one writer, so we had to scale our team fast. As soon as we received our first batch of applications the problems arose. Keeping track of candidates in our hiring funnel was difficult without a well-optimized process. Due to this, dozens of talented copywriters, content writers, and editors slipped under the radar.

To make matters worse, our managers had to work part-time as recruiters—which meant dedicating several hours daily to post ads, review portfolios, and schedule interviews. Our content production slowed down to a halt.

That’s when we realized that our whole approach to hiring writers had to change if we wanted to continue excelling in the content business. 

In pursuit of the ideal hiring solution, we spent $100,000+ and sunk hundreds of hours into R&D. After countless iterations, we got the answer we sought—a fine-tuned, fully automated hiring funnel. With Workello, we were able to scale our company from 1 to 45+ writers and editors in just 18 months!

In this article, we’ll show you:

• Which job boards source the best copywriting candidates
• What mistakes to avoid when hiring a copywriter
• How Workello helped us eliminate all our hiring problems in one go

Additionally, we’ll show you how to set up an automated hiring funnel that will cut your hiring costs and time-to-hire by IN HALF!

Top 15 Job Boards To Check Out in Your Search for the Ideal Copywriter

The table below shows you some of the best hiring websites to find and recruit a talented copywriter at an acceptable price point:

5 Major Mistakes To Avoid When Hiring a Copywriter

If you’ve ever hired a copywriter, you know how difficult it is to find a talented one that can consistently write compelling copy that converts. There are hundreds of candidates to choose from, and hiring a wrong one can mean sending thousands of dollars down the drain. 

To increase your odds of landing a top-performing employee, you should learn which 5 crucial mistakes to avoid when hiring a copywriter:

1. Hiring someone based on low rates—You shouldn’t extend a job offer to a copywriter who offers their services at the lowest possible rate. On paper, you’ll initially save some money—but such a candidate might not possess the necessary skills, technical knowledge, or experience to perform well in the role. They might end up becoming a burden if you have to train them, provide constant supervision, micromanage them, and edit or rewrite their copy. This is why you should strive to find the most qualified candidate for the job, even if their rates are slightly higher. After all, quality copy that reliably converts visitors into paid customers will more than pay off in the long run!
2. Paying your copywriter by the hour—While some companies prefer to pay their employees on an hourly basis, this is seldom the most cost-effective choice, especially when it comes to copywriters. Employees may slack on the job knowing they’ll receive compensation for time spent working—regardless of the actual quality of their work. Copywriters will have more of an incentive to create quality copy if you pay them per project
3. Not testing enough applicants—Don’t be tempted to hire the first copywriter with a semi-decent portfolio. You first need a reliable base for comparison—which means reviewing and evaluating dozens of copywriters, and then comparing their performance. This way, you’ll lower the odds of taking on a subpar candidate and reduce your employee churn rate, which will save you considerable time and money in the long run
4. Not specifying your business niche—You need to clarify the industry your candidates should be experienced in. This is vital, as a copywriter specializing in B2C content might not be the ideal candidate for a B2B SaaS project. State the niche your business operates in clearly in the job ad, and list the type of copy your new hire will be expected to write (e.g., email, pop-ups, sales pages, landing pages, etc.)
5. Conducting the hiring process manually—It can be a living hell to review hundreds of portfolios, send tests, screen candidates, reply to dozens of emails, and schedule interviews manually. You’ll find yourself lost in a heap of applications, and many promising candidates may lose interest due to inefficient communications. This is why you should set up an automated hiring funnel with Workello

Finding and Hiring a Skilled Copywriter Is an Uphill Battle Without Process Automation

Top-notch copywriters are in high demand. Successful marketing agencies and content companies alike snatch them up as soon as they spot them. You’ll always be competing with others for that ideal candidate—and you have to act fast before they fly off the job market.

To find and recruit a skilled copywriter, it’s imperative that you review as many applications as possible within a short timeframe. This will increase your chances of identifying a candidate whose abilities and experience match your expectations. After that, you need to test and interview them—and extend them a job offer before the competition does!

When we started off our hiring spree, we relied solely on UpWork—though we soon branched out onto other job boards. No matter where we posted our ads, the same issues persisted. We couldn’t:

• Efficiently sort candidates by their application status in our hiring funnel
• Find a job board that would allow us to target an industry-specific type of copywriter
• Rely on candidate’s portfolios, as they seldom gave us an accurate portrayal of their actual skills

The Biggest Problems We Faced

Eventually, we started posting job listings on numerous other hiring platforms, including LinkedIn, Craigslist, Facebook, Indeed, etc. Instead of solving our issues, the various job boards we used only compounded our problems. It was still difficult to:

• Keep track of applications coming in from different sources
• Categorize candidates by their status in our hiring funnel
• Respond to each transactional email we received from our applicants
• Follow up with promising copywriters who had piqued our interest
• Effectively spot and filter out subpar copywriters with great resumes

The problem wasn’t with any one job board—it was with our approach to hiring!

With the same zeal we had for content, we went back to the drawing board and began working on a solution that would rid us of all our problems at once. After thousands of dollars and countless iterations, we created 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

To come up with the perfect solution to our hiring problems, we had to understand what they are and how to approach them. 

We went ahead and broke down our work process to its fundamentals—and carefully evaluated each component. This is what we concluded:

1. To reliably convert prospects into paying customers, we needed top-notch copy
2. Only expert copywriters can create such persuasive, compelling copy
3. To find and recruit professional copywriters, we first had to review and assess hundreds of candidates
4. To snatch a qualified expert before the competition gets to them, we needed to filter out the unqualified ones as fast as possible
5. Identifying unqualified copywriters quickly is what we sorely lacked

We never had any issues receiving applications—our job ads attracted candidates in vast numbers. The problem was—how to efficiently track them once they arrived in our hiring funnel?

How We Envisioned our Ideal Hiring System

No system we found online could resolve all our issues at once—and we needed a robust solution that would cover every aspect of the hiring process. So we decided to build our own.

We wrote down list of features that our new hiring system needed to possess—and it consisted of the following elements:

1. A single platform that collects all our applications in one place, no matter the website they arrived from
2. An easy-to-use candidate sorting functionality that would let us categorize candidates by their application status in our hiring funnel
3. A comprehensive dashboard that can be used to conduct the entire hiring process—from reviewing applications and testing candidates to interviewing and extending job offers
4. Automated tests that could allow us to quickly distinguish skilled copywriters from unqualified ones
5. A streamlined communications system to keep candidates updated about their status in the selection process while also eliminating the possibility of human error

Our first iteration was a combination of Google Sheets + Google Forms + Zapier. It took us in the right direction, but we needed something better, more refined, and fine-tuned for hiring copywriters and content writers. After countless additional iterations, Workello was born.

A Detailed Job Description Is the First Step in Hiring a Superb Copywriter

Your job description is what determines the quality of candidates you get into your hiring funnel. A good job description should:

1. Attract candidates with the right skills and competencies for the role in your company
2. Dissuade unqualified candidates who don’t meet your minimum hiring criteria from applying

No matter what you do, some unqualified candidates will apply, but an in-depth list of requirements and responsibilities can help you thin their numbers considerably. 

This is why a comprehensive job ad needs to cover the 3 vital aspects of the role:

• Requirements—List out the prerequisite copywriting experience, technical skills, credentials, and industry-specific knowledge required to perform the job well
• Duties and responsibilities—State their day-to-day tasks, what type of copy they will be expected to write, and who they will report to
• Perks and benefits—Mention your PTO and insurance policies, bonuses, learning and career advancement opportunities, possible raises, and other elements that could give skilled copywriters the incentive to apply with your organization

Bear in mind that you should thoroughly customize the job ad according to the specific requirements of your business niche. Still, you don’t need to go out of your way to be overly original or unique—Workello’s database has an extensive list of copywriting job descriptions that you can choose from. 

Swipe the template that suits your needs best, adapt it to the role in your company, and you can start posting across various websites in under 10 minutes!

• Copywriter
• 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

Review All Applications In a Single, Robust Dashboard

With Workello, it’s no longer important where a candidate has sent their application from. Regardless of the job boards, each one will invariably arrive in the same place—your Workello dashboard!

All you have to do is include a link to a unique Workello-hosted application form in your job ad. This will automatically reroute all applications to your dashboard—while also ensuring uniformity and consistency. You won’t need to waste time reviewing incomplete submissions or manually reaching out to candidates for additional information.

Take a look at what the application form looks like here.

Watch Candidates Stream In

The Workello Dashboard can be used for every step of the hiring process—from evaluating applications, testing and assessing candidates, and scheduling interviews to extending job offers to the most proficient copywriters.

To move candidates through the hiring funnel, you only have to select the appropriate option to change their status. There are 7 options overall:

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

For convenience, each status is color-coded, allowing you to easily assess how many candidates you have at what stage of the selection process.

Reject Unqualified Copywriters

Once applications start streaming in, you can assess the candidates’ portfolios. If you spot an applicant who fails to meet your minimum hiring standards, you can immediately filter them out by updating the candidate’s status to Application Rejected.

This option will trigger an automated email informing them that they will not be moving forward in the selection process. You’ll no longer have to worry about answering a bunch of emails from applicants wondering about their application status.

Point, Click, Test

You should never hire someone based solely on their portfolio. While they may give you a general idea about a candidate’s capabilities, the stuff they include is often edited and polished by a third party. As such, portfolios are rarely an accurate representation of someone’s actual copywriting capabilities.

To make an informed hiring choice, you need to see their skills in practice..

We didn’t have any sort of testing system in place when we first began scaling our company. This blunder cost us big time, and we wound up with copywriters whose abilities were far below what their portfolios suggested.

Our editors had to rewrite their work from scratch, and we lost a lot of money on mediocre copy. Still, we learned from our mistakes and decided that Workello needed to have an integrated testing functionality.

To test a candidate, all you need to do is select Test Candidate. This option:

1. Sends them an automated email congratulating them on passing to the testing stage
2. Provides them with a link to the assignment along with instructions on how to complete it

Once they open the link, your candidates will see a page that looks somewhat like this:

How To Make a Good Test

A thorough copywriting test should assess a candidate’s:

• Language proficiency
• Research skills
• Formatting abilities
• Knowledge of the relevant industry
• Ability to identify and leverage your audience’s pain points

While the assignment should be exhaustive enough to test all the major skills in a copywriter’s repertoire, it shouldn’t be too long or demanding. After all, no copywriter—no matter how proficient—will set aside an entire weekend to create 2000+ word long sales copy.

It’s important to respect your candidates’ time and balance between thoroughness and a candidate’s ability to complete the assignment. Still—with Workello, you’re allowed to be a bit more demanding. 

The hiring system is completely transparent, and your candidates will receive updates about their progress on a regular basis. This will give them the push they need to complete even a slightly more complex assignment—especially if they know they’re dealing with a serious, professional company.

Setting up an automated test with Workello is as easy as can be. Click here to see how you can set up a copywriting test in Workello in under 5 minutes.

Interview Candidates

The moment a candidate submits the finished assignment, their status will update to Test Complete. You can then inform your managers, so they may review the candidate’s performance. Upon finishing the assessment, they can select either of two options:

1. Reject Candidate—Sends them an automated email politely informing them that they have failed the copywriting assignment
2. Invite for Interview—Sends them an automated email congratulating them on passing the test and inviting them to set up an interview with your HR team via Calendly

The Candidate Status Page

Workello also provides candidates with a separate Candidate Status page. It has all the information they need to stay updated about their progress through your hiring funnel, removing the need to spam your managers and editors with dozens of transactional emails.

In addition, the Candidate Status page has a “What to expect next” section, which candidates can access to learn about each subsequent step in your selection process.

With these features at their disposal, you’ll never worry again about missing out on promising copywriters just because you failed to answer their email on time!

Click here to see what the Candidate Status page looks like.

Our Investment Paid Off Big Time

Everything seems easy with Workello streamlining every step of the hiring process. Sadly, we didn’t have anything of the sort when we set out on our hiring spree.

Our editors and content managers had to post ads manually, and keeping track of applications was a needlessly difficult task. We couldn’t efficiently stay in touch with promising copywriters, which prompted many to seek employment elsewhere. Our business was suffering all due to an inefficient hiring system with no automated features whatsoever.

Something had to change—so we rolled up our sleeves and got to work.  But the reward we got for our trouble was well-worth it. Workello allowed us to:

1. Efficiently scale our company from 1 to 45+ employees in under two years
2. Reduce the costs of content production by 75%
3. Reduce time-to-hire and hiring costs by 50%
4. Execute and lead one of the most ambitious SEO campaigns ever envisioned
5. Let our editors and content managers focus on their primary duties

Workello cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless work hours—but you can have it for the paltry price of a single page of content! 

Try out Workello, hop into your pre-configured account, and you can immediately test up to 3 copywriters, free of charge!