Hiring guide
How to Hire a Copywriter
Where to find copywriters, how to read a portfolio, a paid brief to test them, red flags, and how to choose between freelance, agency and in-house.
The short answer
Hiring a Copywriter comes down to verifying customer research habits: reading reviews, sales calls and support tickets to find the words customers use, clear, specific headlines and calls to action that match one goal per piece and range across the formats you need, such as landing pages, email sequences, ads, product descriptions or sales letters before you commit interview time. The process below runs 5 stages, screens on evidence rather than résumé claims, and scores every candidate against the same criteria.
- Watch for: A portfolio where every piece sounds the same regardless of client or audience
- Watch for: Cannot say what result a past piece was meant to achieve or how the client judged it
- Score on: Whether the sample addresses your actual customer and offer rather than generic benefits
- Score on: Clarity and specificity of headlines and calls to action
Paste your Copywriter job description; Cohesyve finds, contacts and tests candidates on the real work and ranks them. Ten candidates free, no card.
Applying for a role like this? Practise the assessment free →If you need to hire a copywriter, start by naming the job the words have to do: sell a product on a landing page, win back lapsed customers by email, explain a technical service to a buyer or give a brand a recognisable voice. Copywriters specialise, and a good direct-response writer is often the wrong person for brand campaigns or long technical pages. This guide covers where to find copywriters, the skills that separate them, a paid brief you can use as a work sample, red flags and how to onboard them so the first drafts land.
Why this role matters
Copy sits between your offer and every customer who reads about it. A strong copywriter turns customer research into headlines, emails and pages that make people act, and writes in a voice that stays consistent across channels. Weak copy is easy to miss because it reads fine: it simply fails to convert, repeats what competitors say, or makes claims your legal or compliance team later has to pull.
Where to find candidates
- The Professional Copywriters' Network (PCN) directory in the UK, searchable by sector and specialism
- Writers trained through AWAI (American Writers & Artists Institute), common among direct-response and B2B copywriters
- CIM (Chartered Institute of Marketing) members, for copywriters with a wider marketing background
- Freelance marketplaces such as Upwork and Contra, where you can read client feedback and see past projects
- LinkedIn and copywriting newsletters and communities, where many writers publish their own work in public
- Referrals from agencies, designers and marketing leads you trust, who know which writers hit deadlines and take edits well
Skills to look for
Red flags
- A portfolio where every piece sounds the same regardless of client or audience
- Cannot say what result a past piece was meant to achieve or how the client judged it
- Asks no questions about your customer, offer or competitors before quoting
- Relies on hype, invented urgency or unsupported claims such as "best in the world"
- Will not do a short paid test or disclose how they use AI writing tools in their process
- Samples you cannot verify were published or that look heavily rewritten by an editor
The interview process
- 1
Portfolio review
Ask for three samples closest to your format and audience. For each, ask what the brief was, who the reader was and what they would change now. The answers show judgement more than the polish of the samples.
- 2
Briefing conversation
Walk them through your product and ask what they would need to start. Strong copywriters ask about the customer, objections, proof points and where the copy will run.
- 3
Paid work sample
Pay for a short brief that mirrors the real work, such as rewriting your weakest landing page hero and three subject lines for a launch email, with a one-paragraph rationale. A job simulation of the real writing task is one option if you are comparing several candidates.
- 4
Edit round
Send back specific feedback on the sample and see how they revise. You will be working through many edit rounds, so this step tells you how the relationship will feel.
- 5
References
Ask a past client how the writer handled feedback, deadlines and research, and whether they would hire them again for the same type of work.
Cohesyve
Start the Copywriter interviews from a ranked shortlist
Cohesyve takes your Copywriter job description, finds and contacts candidates and tests each one on an AI job simulation of the job, so the stages above start with people who have already done the work. Ten candidates free, no card.
How to evaluate
- Whether the sample addresses your actual customer and offer rather than generic benefits
- Clarity and specificity of headlines and calls to action
- Quality of the rationale: can they explain why each choice should work
- Fit with your brand voice, or a sensible proposal for one
- How well they used your edit notes in the revision
- Reliability on deadlines throughout the process
Onboarding
- 1Share customer interviews, reviews, sales call recordings and support themes on day one
- 2Give them your style guide, banned claims list and any compliance review steps
- 3Agree one owner for feedback so they are not reconciling notes from five people
- 4Start with one high-impact page or email sequence and agree how you will measure it
- 5Keep a swipe file of approved copy so new work stays consistent
Common questions
Should I hire a freelance copywriter or bring one in-house?
Freelancers suit project work and specialist formats such as sales pages or launch emails. An in-house copywriter suits steady volume across many channels and builds deep product knowledge over time.
What is the difference between a copywriter and a content writer?
A copywriter writes to drive a specific action, such as a sign-up or purchase. A content writer usually produces longer educational pieces such as articles and guides. Some people do both, but most lean one way.
Do copywriters need a qualification?
No licence or required qualification exists. Training from bodies such as AWAI or CIM can help, but the portfolio and a paid test tell you far more.
How do I test a copywriter fairly?
Pay for a short brief based on a real piece of your copy, give everyone the same inputs and judge the work against the goal you set.
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