Sample shortlist: Copywriter

The brief they were screened against

Role: Copywriter · Band: $1,250–2,200/mo

Must-haves: email sequences and landing-page copy for a subscription business, writes backwards from the action the reader should take, defends word choices with a reason, pushes back on a brief that will underperform

Nice to have: A/B test history with numbers, paid-social ad copy, product descriptions

Scored by the same rubric the production screener runs on real applicants (content-marketer, claude-sonnet-4-6), on 2026-09-23. Nothing below was edited afterwards — including where it went against a candidate. The rubric and weights are published.

Zanele K.

SCREEN 84/100

South Africa · asking $1,900

Screening notes

Strongest concrete evidence: the trial-to-paid lift (9.8%→13.1%) is self-supplied with methodology detail (two monthly cohorts, single-action per email), the price-increase scenario names a real legal constraint (California auto-renewal law, 7–30 day window) and supplies her own benchmarks (3.4% vs 2.9% churn, 7% annual uplift) that the question did NOT provide — these are the most credible signals; the cold-email sample demonstrates backwards-from-action discipline with two distinct hypotheses and a rationale for using replies over opens that names a specific confound (Apple MPP), which is tool-aware and not generic. Biggest concern: paid-social ad copy is the brief's nice-to-have and she self-declares it as the skill she's done least, with no sample or number to offset that gap; the role is also a Content Marketer brief (SEO, newsletters, repurposing) while her entire profile is conversion copywriting for subscription flows and landing pages — strong fit for the 'Copywriter — sample search' brief shown, but the stated role title is a partial mismatch that warrants a direct conversation about scope. Salary at $1,900 sits 19–18% above the band ceiling of $1,600, which is a real negotiation risk. Verdict: advance to interview on the copywriter brief — the specificity, legal awareness, and test-thinking put her clearly in the top 10–15% of this candidate pool, but confirm scope alignment and whether salary can be resolved before investing further.

Experience

7 years writing for subscription businesses: 3 in-house at a Cape Town language-learning app with mostly US and UK subscribers, then 4 freelance for US subscription brands — a coffee subscription, a meal-kit company and two B2B software tools. I write the email flows (welcome, trial-to-paid, win-back) and the landing pages they point to; paid-social ads are the part I've done least. The result I'd put first: I rewrote a 7-email trial sequence for one of the software tools so every email asked for exactly one action, and trial-to-paid went from 9.8% to 13.1% over the next two monthly cohorts.

Scenario answer

I'd push back on both, and argue from what happens next rather than from taste. The subject line promises good news and delivers a higher bill. Some readers will feel tricked, and those are exactly the people who cancel, reply angrily or mark it as spam. The ones who never open it meet the new price on their card statement, which is worse — that's where chargebacks and 'I never agreed to this' tickets come from. The P.S. doesn't make the increase smaller; it makes the company look like it knew the news was bad. I'd also ask whether their lawyer has seen it. I'm not a lawyer, but California's auto-renewal law, for one, now requires a clear and conspicuous notice of a price change, with how to cancel, between 7 and 30 days before it takes effect. A P.S. is a hard place to call conspicuous. What I'd ask before writing: 1. Old price, new price, and when it applies — one date for everyone, or each customer's next renewal? 2. Who's affected? Annual subscribers usually keep their price until renewal and need a different email. 3. Why, honestly. 'Costs went up' is weak on its own; 'we've added X and Y since your price was set' is stronger, if it's true. 4. What can we offer? The old price locked for anyone who switches to annual before the date, or a smaller plan. 5. What should the reader do? I write backwards from that. If the goal is 'stay, ideally on annual', the one button says 'Keep $29 a month — switch to annual', not 'Learn more'. The structure: - Subject: 'Your plan goes from $29 to $34 on April 1' — plain, and it survives a skim. - Preview text: 'What's changing, why, and how to keep your current price.' - First sentence: the change, the amount, the date. - Two or three sentences on why. - The options: annual lock-in as the main button, 'manage or cancel your plan' as a plain link. Hiding the cancel link only moves the problem to support. - P.S.: the deadline for keeping the old price — the one job a P.S. should have here. It goes out about three weeks before the new price, inside that window, with a reminder a week before. I'd judge it on the next month's cancellations against the usual rate, not on opens. On the last price-increase email I wrote, a $5 monthly rise on a coffee subscription, cancellations were 3.4% that month against a usual 2.9%, and 7% of monthly subscribers moved to annual to keep the old price.

Work sample

PRODUCT: a shift-scheduling app for independent restaurants, $49 a month per location — one of the software tools whose emails I write. READER: an owner or general manager who has never heard of it. THE ACTION I'm writing back from: a reply, not a demo booking, because a stranger will answer a question long before they give a vendor 30 minutes. VERSION A Subject: your Sunday-night schedule Preview: and the week of shift-swap texts that follows it Opening: If you build next week's schedule on Sunday night and spend the rest of the week fixing it by text, that second part is the job we take off your hands. Staff swap shifts in the app, you approve each swap with one tap, and the schedule everyone sees is always the current one — is Sunday night still how you do it? VERSION B, to test against A Subject: who's actually working Saturday? Opening: It's 4pm on a Saturday, and the name on the schedule isn't the person who just walked in. WHY, IN TWO SENTENCES: The original talks about the sender ('I wanted to reach out', 'our revolutionary platform', 'companies like yours'), so both versions open on a job the reader already does and dislikes, in their own words — 'swap shifts', not 'workforce management' — because recognising their Sunday night is what earns the second sentence, and 'revolutionary' earns nothing. 'Checking in' pretends to a relationship that doesn't exist and 'our solution' says nothing, so each subject line names one moment the reader knows, and I'd pick the winner on replies rather than opens, since Apple's Mail Privacy Protection inflates opens.

Emmanuel O.

SCREEN 84/100

Philippines · asking $1,500

Screening notes

Strongest concrete evidence: the dog-food landing-page test (3.2%→4.1% subscribe rate, 38,000 visits, two-week split, VWO) is a credible, specific result the question did not supply; the 400 Meta ad variants per year with a self-maintained test log is verifiable detail; the work sample shows genuine conversion logic — replacing company-centric copy with the reader's own quiz answers, naming a control variant, and citing two prior name-in-subject tests at +18% and +6% — none of which the question prompted. Scenario judgment is unusually strong: the spam-complaint threshold (0.3%), the Apple MPP caveat on open rates, the chargeback consequence of burying price in a P.S., and the 20/80 send-time test design all appear without prompting and reflect real direct-response discipline. Biggest concern: email depth is genuinely thin — one client, two flow types (welcome and win-back), no broadcast or price-communication campaigns — and this is a must-have for the search brief's subscription focus; the candidate is transparent about this gap but it is real. Verdict: advances to interview as an unusually evidence-dense direct-response copywriter who exceeds the search brief's paid-social and landing-page requirements; email breadth must be probed live before offer, and the $1,500 ask sits at the top of band but is defensible given the test-log discipline and US-subscription-brand specificity.

Experience

5 years as a direct-response copywriter at a Manila performance agency whose clients are US subscription brands — supplements, fresh dog food and a skincare box. Most of my work is paid-social ads and the landing pages behind them, around 400 Meta ad variants a year, and I keep a log of every headline test I've run. Best landing-page result: a new headline and first screen for the dog-food subscription moved the subscribe rate from 3.2% to 4.1% across about 38,000 visits in a two-week split test. Email is my thinner side — I've written one client's welcome and win-back flows in Klaviyo.

Scenario answer

I'd push back before writing anything, because this brief will lose them customers they would otherwise keep. 'Exciting news about your subscription!' sets up a promise the email breaks. In ads I've seen what a misleading headline does — it wins the click and loses the sale on the next screen. In email the equivalent is an open followed by a cancellation or a spam complaint, and complaints hurt more than this one send: Gmail's sender rules expect complaint rates under 0.3%, and a price rise behind a cheerful subject line is exactly what people report. That damages delivery for every email the brand sends afterwards, including the ones that make money. Price in the P.S.: the people who miss it find out from their card statement. That's where refunds, chargebacks and angry reviews come from, and they cost more than the cancellations an honest email triggers. What I'd ask first: - The numbers: old price, new price, the date, and which customers. - What churn they expect and what they'd accept. If they can live with an extra 1–2% cancelling this month, the honest version is an easy decision. - Is there a real way to soften it — the current price locked for anyone who switches to annual, or grandfathering customers who've been with them over two years? - Their best-performing past emails, so the voice matches. The structure: 1. Subject: 'A price change to your plan on May 1' — dull on purpose. A clear subject gets fewer complaints. 2. First line: what's changing, by how much, from when. 3. Why, in two sentences — what they've added, or what it now costs them. 4. The choice we want them to make, as the only button: lock the current price by going annual. 5. How to change or cancel, as a plain link. 6. A P.S. with the deadline for the lock-in. I'd send two plain subject lines to 20% of the list, then send the winner to the rest two days later, judged on spam complaints and clicks on the lock-in button — not on opens, which Apple's Mail Privacy Protection has made unreliable. To be straight about my experience: I haven't written a price-increase email before. The closest was the landing page and FAQ for a shipping-cost change on the dog-food subscription, and the same rule held there: say the number early and people argue less.

Work sample

The original reads like a cold B2B email. I've rewritten it for the product I know best, where the equivalent message is the first email after someone takes the feeding quiz and leaves without ordering. PRODUCT: a fresh dog-food subscription — meals portioned by the dog's weight, delivered every two weeks. READER: someone who finished the quiz, gave their email and didn't buy. THE ONE ACTION: start the first box at the quiz price. VERSION A Subject: Biscuit's plan is still saved Preview: 14 days of fresh food, portioned for 31 lb, first box half price Opening: You told us Biscuit is a 31 lb beagle mix who leaves half his kibble in the bowl, so we've already worked out his portions: 14 days of fresh food, measured for his weight, with the first box at half price. VERSION B, the control Subject: Half off Biscuit's first box Opening: Your quiz results are ready — 14 days of fresh food portioned for Biscuit's weight, and the first box is half price. WHY, IN TWO SENTENCES: I replaced every word about the company ('our revolutionary platform', 'companies like yours') with the reader's own quiz answers, because the dog's name and weight prove the email was written for them, and 'revolutionary' proves nothing. I'd run A against B because in my test log the dog's name in the subject beat the discount in the subject on first-box orders in two earlier tests on this brand, by 18% and 6% — close enough that I'd rather measure it again than trust my notes.

Renata B.

SCREEN 62/100

Mexico · asking $1,350

Screening notes

Strongest concrete evidence is the scenario answer, which correctly identifies the trust-damage risk of burying the price increase, proposes asking for the new price/date/rationale before writing, and offers a specific subject-line alternative with a stated reason — that shows a real copywriting instinct rather than pure people-pleasing. The work sample is competent but shallow: the subject-line swap to a question is defensible and the removal of 'revolutionary' is explained, but there is no conversion rationale, no CTA analysis, no mention of what action the reader should take — exactly what the brief weights most heavily. Experience is entirely adjective-driven ('creative and persuasive,' 'adapt my tone') with zero numbers — no open rates, no list sizes, no revenue attribution, no A/B results — and the gym/dental/software clients are named only as industries, not as named brands or campaigns with outcomes. The candidate fits the Content Marketer role more naturally than this Copywriter brief: email sequences, landing-page CRO, and conversion-first thinking are either absent or underdeveloped, and at $1,350 she sits mid-band for content work but is under-evidenced for the subscription-copywriter scope described here.

Experience

3 years as a copywriter at a marketing agency in Monterrey, writing for local and US clients in English and Spanish. I write website copy, social media posts, blog articles and email newsletters for clients in different industries, including a gym chain with monthly memberships, a dental clinic and a software company. I am a creative and persuasive writer and I adapt my tone to each brand's voice. I am always looking to improve my skills, and I recently completed an online course in email marketing.

Scenario answer

When a client wants to announce a price increase with the subject line 'Exciting news about your subscription!' and put the price details in the P.S., I would first make sure I understand why they want to do it this way. Most likely they are worried that customers will cancel if the price increase is too visible. I would explain to the client that it is better to be transparent with customers, because if they feel the company is hiding something, it can damage their trust in the brand. However, I also understand the client's concern, so I would suggest a balanced approach. Before writing, I would ask what the new price is, when it starts, and what the reasons for the increase are. For the structure, I would start with a friendly introduction thanking the customer for being part of the community. Then I would highlight the new features and improvements they have received, so they can see the value. After that I would mention the new price clearly in the body of the email, not in the P.S. I would end with a positive message and a link to contact support if they have any questions. For the subject line, I would suggest something like 'An update about your subscription' — it is more honest than 'Exciting news' but still friendly and positive.

Work sample

PRODUCT: a project management app for small teams (monthly subscription) SUBJECT LINE: 'Is your team still managing projects in spreadsheets?' OPENING SENTENCE: 'Hi [Name], I noticed your team has been growing, and I wanted to share a simple tool that helps small teams stay organized and finish projects on time.' ALTERNATIVE SUBJECT LINE: 'A simpler way to manage your team's projects' EXPLANATION: I changed the subject line into a question so it is more engaging and makes the reader curious to open the email. I also removed 'revolutionary' because it sounds too salesy, and I focused the opening on the benefits for the reader instead of on our company.

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The brief they were screened against

Zanele K.

Screening notes

Experience

Scenario answer

Work sample

Emmanuel O.

Screening notes

Experience

Scenario answer

Work sample

Renata B.

Screening notes

Experience

Scenario answer

Work sample

This is the artifact every search delivers

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