Our Hiring Process Was a Nightmare—Use Our Experience To Optimize Yours

In 2019, our content agency, ContentDistribution.com, took on a project despite having only one team member. That project proved to be one of the most successful SEO projects of all time. 

It took less than 2 years for our client to go from 0 to 1,500,000 organic monthly visitors.

The way we did this was by publishing a high volume (600+ articles each month) of top-notch content. One person couldn’t have done this, so we embarked on a journey of hiring Content and Copywriters. In under 2 years, our company scaled from 1 to 45+ Writers and Editors.

When we posted our first job ad, we thought it would be a straightforward task—people would apply, and we would pick the best ones.

It was nowhere near that scenario. Candidates sent in incomplete applications with poorly formatted documents (many portfolios were in Word). We received applications on multiple job boards and had trouble logging them all. We couldn’t keep track of candidates by their status in our hiring funnel. We had to spend 10+ hours each week sending emails to candidates.

The whole process was chaotic even before we got to meet candidates over Zoom and get them to do an interview. If we were to hire 45+ people in under 2 years, our hiring process had to be much more efficient.

We decided to invest $100,000+, brainpower, and countless hours in creating a fully automated hiring funnel that would allow us to find and hire Copywriters at lightning speed. The outcome was Workello, and our investment paid off.

In the next few minutes, we’ll show you:

1. What questions to ask before you hire a Freelance Copywriter
2. Where to find Copywriters online
3. Why it’s next to impossible to get to the best Copywriters without an automated hiring system
4. How automated testing speeds up the hiring process and lets you learn about candidates even before the interview

Brief Interview Guide—Questions To Ask When Hiring a Copywriter

Inviting a candidate for an interview allows you to assess their knowledge and experience in person. The way someone handles themselves during this phase of the hiring process should show you whether they’re a good candidate for your business.

Aside from more general questions, you should ask questions that will give you an insight into their copywriting abilities. Each question should have a clear objective, i.e., you should have an idea of what you’re looking for in their answer.

Include these 5 questions in your interview.

What Kind of Copywriting Have You Done Before?

This will help you learn about their experience and show you how diverse their writing can be. The more types of content and copy they worked on, the more adaptable their writing can be. This question also shows you how familiar they are with the copywriting world.

How Do You Approach a Topic You’re Not Familiar With?

Unless your copy demands comprehensive industry-related knowledge—which you should point out in your job description—your Copywriters will have to write about a topic they know nothing about.

This question allows you to gauge their approach to such scenarios and shows you how complex their research process is. The best Copywriters seek to educate themselves on the topic thoroughly, but their research phase never lasts too long.

What Does Your Writing Process Look Like?

The reason why you should ask this question is to get to know how meticulous a candidate’s approach toward writing is. Candidates should reveal their approach to making sure they hit the right tone of voice and learning about customers’ pain points and the way the service/product they’re writing the copy for helps the target audience.

How Do You Deal With Writer’s Block?

The majority of Copywriters have had to deal with Writer’s block one time or another. Your candidates should be forthcoming about this topic and go into detail about the method they use to get back to writing efficiently.

Ideally, you want your candidate to share various methods they used in the past and the way they figured out what works best for them.

What Was the Most Successful Project You Worked On?

Allow your candidates to fluff their feathers a bit. This will make them feel more confident in themselves during the interview.

More importantly, it will let you see how good they can be at copywriting—what can they sell if not themselves?

Their answer should also show you how much they understand the business they’re in. A detailed response will show you they know how to quantify their work and what impact their writing had on a project they worked on.

Before You Get to the Interview

Interviews are a great way to get to know your candidates, but they’re time-consuming. When you receive hundreds of applications, it’s senseless to invite each candidate for an interview. This doesn’t mean that you should reject some candidates blindly.

Before you interview a Copywriter, you can test their skills with a writing test and see how good their copy actually is. When someone hands in a good-enough test, you can then invest your time into an interview where you can use the questions we’ve laid out for you.

Best Job Boards To Use To Find Copywriters Online

In our search for Copywriters, we’ve used dozens of websites. We’ve selected 15 of them that proved to be the most resourceful. Check out their pros and cons:

Hiring Copywriters Without an Automated Funnel—Recruiters’ Circle of Hell

When you’re on a hunt for a Copywriter, you will join quite a hunting party. Companies all over the globe are seeking Copywriters, and the best candidates receive offers daily. They don’t wait around, and candidates that linger on job boards are usually unqualified.

If you want to hire a high-quality Copywriter, you need to go through hundreds of applications to spot the right candidate for you—and you need to do it fast enough so that you hire the candidate before someone else does.

In 2019, we posted our first job ad on Upwork but quickly started looking for Copywriters on other job platforms as well. We soon realized that we faced the same issues with every job board:

• Job boards aren’t designed for testing and hiring Copywriters
• We couldn’t sort candidates by their status in our hiring funnel
• The portfolios we received wouldn’t tell us how good someone actually was

No matter how many job boards we posted ads on, none of these problems would go away. We soon became overwhelmed with applications coming our way from multiple sources, including Monster, Craigslist, Facebook, Indeed, LinkedIn, etc.

Regardless of the job board in question, we always struggled with:

• Keeping track of applications
• Sorting candidates by their status in the hiring funnel
• Taking note of candidates that impressed us initially
• Getting back to the most promising applicants fast enough
• Reducing the number of bad applicants

Every website we used gave us the same problems. We realized that the solution wasn’t seeking new sources but revamping our hiring process entirely.

We decided to invest time and money into remodeling the way we hire people. That’s how Workello was born—a fully automated hiring funnel dedicated to hiring Copywriters and other members of a content team.

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

Before we could remodel our hiring process, we had to understand the current one and see why it wasn’t working. We tasked ourselves with breaking it down into segments, and here’s what we came up with:

1. Securing high conversion rates required top-quality copy
2. Top-quality copy could only come from hiring the best Copywriters
3. Finding a Copywriter that delivers every time meant we had to evaluate hundreds of applicants
4. Getting to the best candidate required filtering out bad ones swiftly
5. Spotting bad candidates required something—we didn’t yet know what

Job boards are full of copywriting candidates—you will never lack applications. The problem occurs once those applications arrive. How do you deal with them?

Our answer to that was to create an automated hiring funnel that would give us:

1. A single platform that collects all applications from every job board
2. An optimized system that allows us to sort candidates by their status in the funnel and move them through different stages with a single click
3. A single-page dashboard that lets us evaluate, test, interview, and hire new Copywriters
4. A writing test sent automatically so that we could spot a bad candidate with a great portfolio
5. Automated email correspondence that saves time and gets rid of potential human error

Our first step was to start using Google Sheets + Google Forms + Zapier. This showed us our hiring process could be miles better than it was and gave us an insight into what we had to make to have a fully optimized hiring system. After thousands of hours and even more back-and-forths, we finally came up with the solution—Workello.

Copywriter Job Description—The First Step Is Just as Important

No amount of automation will help you get rid of unqualified candidates that apply all the time in the hope of landing a job they’re not really fit for. You can’t stop such candidates from applying, but a well-written job description can reduce their number remarkably.

When you write a job description, make sure you go into as much detail as possible about the role you’re offering. You should list out every responsibility that comes with the job, as well as all the criteria someone needs to meet to be considered.

You should also specify the niche you’re dealing with. A B2B Copywriter might be great at what they do, but they might fail to understand the pain points in the fashion industry.

The more specific you get, the more obvious it becomes underqualified candidates won’t make the cut, and many of them will decide against applying.

In the same way that you want to discourage bad candidates, you want to attract top ones. High-quality Copywriters can choose from a variety of companies, and you should show them why they should pick yours.

Use the description to mention any benefits you offer to your employees, such as health plans, bonuses, salary increases, career advancement opportunities, and so on.

Don’t know how to write a job description? Not sure what specific position best suits your needs? You can use our comprehensive database of pre-vetted job description templates for free!

All you need to do is copy our template, adapt it so that it fits your organization’s needs, and you can start posting your job ads. Click on the job title to find the template you need:

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

Distribute Your Job Ad Across the Internet

As we had to expand our content team fast, we focused on hiring Writers and had no time to make our hiring process more sophisticated.

That meant we had no Recruitment Officer, and our Content Managers and Editors had to post job ads on various websites. It wasn’t brain surgery, but it took time to do it, and our Managers had to focus on it instead of content production.

The issue with finding a Recruitment Officer was that we hadn’t documented our hiring process, and we couldn’t educate someone else on how to deal with job ad distribution.

Creating documentation was a painful task we had to go through, but you don’t!

When you register for Workello for free, you’ll get to use our playbooks and delegate job ad distribution to someone else in an instant!

One Dashboard for All Applications

With Workello, you can post job listings on as many websites as you want without having to worry about application tracking. That’s because our dashboard allows you to view all applications in the same place, regardless of the job board they come from.

When you post an ad, you can include a link to a Workello-hosted application form that will upload all applications to our server.

Since you’ll be using the same form on all job boards, candidates will submit same-format applications, and you won’t have to reach out to applicants who failed to provide a CV or a portfolio.

Check out an application example here.

Watch Candidates Stream In

From the moment you receive an application, you can use the Workello dashboard to complete the entire hiring process. The dashboard allows you to evaluate, send a test, review, invite for an interview, and extend an offer to a Copywriter.

How do you do that in a single dashboard? Easily! All you need to do is change the candidate’s status from the drop-down menu, and they will move through the funnel automatically. The menu offers the following statuses:

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

Every status is color-coded so that it becomes obvious how many candidates there are in each stage of your hiring funnel at a glance.

Reject Unqualified Copywriters

Once a candidate submits their application, it’s time to evaluate them. If their application is not to the liking of your Content Managers, they can remove the candidate from the funnel by changing the candidate status to “Application Rejected.”

Once they’re out of the funnel, you no longer have to deal with them. Workello will send them an automated email that informs them politely that your company won’t extend an offer to them. This saves you time because you won’t have to send dozens of rejection emails manually or respond to candidates’ inquiries regarding their application status.

Point, Click, Test

When a candidate submits an impressive application, it’s time to prove that their quality actually matches their portfolio. Copywriters use only their best work that has likely gone through several rounds of feedback and was polished in QA in their portfolios.

This means that every example you read has been fine-tuned to perfection with the help of Editors.

The only way you can learn about their 1st draft quality is by testing them.

We didn’t know this when we started out. There was no testing stage in our hiring process, and we hired people based on their portfolios.

Many Copywriters soon showed that they couldn’t match the quality of the deliverables in their portfolio, and we had to spend thousands of dollars on unusable copy. Our Editors had to edit their work heavily, usually ending up rewriting the copy.

We knew we couldn’t repeat this mistake ever again, which is why we introduced testing as fast as we could.

Workello allows you to automate the testing process by changing the candidate status to “Test Candidate.”

An automated email will go the candidate’s way, congratulating them on reaching the next stage and allowing them to access the writing test.

When they open the test, they will see something like this:

Testing Candidates—What To Consider Before You Hire a Copywriter

Making a good test can be tricky because you have to hit the perfect balance between the complexity of testing and the candidates’ willingness to complete the test.

A copywriting test should be thorough enough to let you assess a candidate’s:

1. Language proficiency
2. Brand voice alignment
3. Pain point understanding
4. Product or service presenting

The test needs to be challenging, but it can’t be overcomplicated. If you task them with writing 1,000+ words that would take them a whole day to complete, most candidates will decide against going through with it and start looking for a different job.

Workello can help you in this segment as well.

When a candidate applies, emails will go their way every time there’s a change to their application status, and they will be informed about everything relevant to their selection process. This will show candidates your company is professional and transparent. Most of them will be willing to complete a more thorough test for an organization that demonstrates they value their candidates and employees.

If you don’t know how to make a test, you can take a look at the one we used to hire Content Writers and get an idea of how to create one for your copywriting applicants.

Interviewing Candidates

When a candidate completes the test, their status will automatically change to “Test Complete.”

Your Managers and Editors will be able to assess the test and, according to the results, change the candidate status to:

1. Reject Candidate—Triggers an automated email informing the candidate they failed the test
2. Invite for Interview—Triggers an automated email with a Calendly link they can use to schedule a Zoom meeting you can use to ask the questions we’ve given you

The Candidate Status Page

Workello also has a page your candidates can use to inform themselves about their application status.

The Candidate Status page will let the candidate know everything about where they are in the funnel and what they can expect in the next stages of the selection process.

Thanks to this page, candidates won’t have to send emails to your Recruiters to ask for information, and the Recruiters won’t have to spend time informing the applicants manually.

This eliminates the risk of missing out on a top-performing Copywriter as a result of failing to follow up with them on time.

Check out what the Candidate Status page looks like here.

Our Investment Paid Off Big Time

Workello makes hiring Copywriters easy, but there was no Workello back when we started hiring new people.

Our hiring process was a nightmare in the early days. Applications would fly our way from various sources, and we couldn’t keep track of them. It would take us days and weeks to go through all applications, and many great candidates would grow disinterested or get hired elsewhere in the meantime.

Our Content Managers and Editors had to deal with job ad distribution that took the time they could have spent on content production. The whole business suffered because of our inefficient hiring model.

We realized that no investment was big enough if we wanted to create an automated hiring funnel that would be perfect for our needs. After $100,000+, numerous hours, and countless tweaks went into creating the system, we finally came up with Workello.

The new system allowed us to:

1. Grow our company from 1 to 45+ Writers and Editors in under 2 years
2. Cut the cost of content by 75%
3. Develop one of the most ambitious SEO campaigns of all time
4. Let our Content Managers and Editors focus on their job instead of acting as Recruiters

Now, we’re offering you the chance to do the same for the price of a single page of content!

Try out Workello for free! Once you sign up, it will take you less than 3 minutes to set up everything so that you can start accepting new candidates.