Looking for work with a US company? Apply to the Rolemote talent roster — free →
Rolemote
How it worksHow we screenTry the screenerSample shortlistsCompare us honestlyDone-for-you searchWhat the search costs
Free researchAgency fee tableSalary guidesJD templatesInterview kitsStatisticsBlog
PricingFor talent
Start free

Sample shortlist · candidates written by us, real screener output

Lead Generation Specialist

This is what every search delivers: finalists screened against the brief, each with a score, screening notes, structured answers, and a graded work sample. These sample candidates were written by us and run through the real screener — the scores and notes are its unedited output, not a mock-up.

The brief they were screened against

Role: Lead Generation Specialist · Band: $750–1,250/mo

Must-haves: builds B2B prospect lists to a defined ICP, verifies emails before anything is sent, Apollo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator or Clay, can say why a contact qualifies

Nice to have: first-touch sequence writing, deliverability basics (warm-up, bounce rates), CRM hygiene in HubSpot

Scored by the same rubric the production screener runs on real applicants (sales, 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.

Maricel G.

SCREEN 84/100

Philippines · asking $1,050

Screening notes

Strongest evidence is the unprompted title-pruning story (14→5 titles, 2.1%→4.6% reply rate in one quarter) — a specific, directional, internally consistent claim that the question did NOT supply and that shows strategic thinking beyond list-building mechanics; the catch-all handling protocol (separate tab, confirm pattern from a second contact at the same domain, flag for isolated send) is a genuine practitioner detail most applicants omit entirely. The 7-step work sample is unusually disciplined — 30-contact validation list before full build, verification-date field in HubSpot, explicit stop-and-recheck rule at 2% bounce — and reads as lived process rather than copied framework. Main concern: the scenario and work-sample answers are polished to a degree that slightly outpaces what a pure list-builder typically produces in written form; the English is clean and idiomatic but occasionally tips into the overly structured register that raises a ghost-writing flag, though no single sentence is disqualifying and the industrial-software context is specific enough to be credible. Verdict: advances to interview at top of the stated band; worth a live screen to confirm the oral fluency and to probe whether the title-pruning analysis was personally led or inherited from a manager.

Experience

5 years building B2B prospect lists for US companies, the last 3 at a Davao outsourcing firm on an account for a US industrial software company that sells to manufacturers and distributors. I build about 400 verified contacts a week for four SDRs and own the list from ICP to CRM; bounce rate has stayed under 1.5% for two years. The change I'm proudest of: I showed the SDR manager that 9 of our 14 target titles almost never replied. We cut to 5, and reply rate went from 2.1% to 4.6% in one quarter.

Scenario answer

Day 1, first hour: agree the buyer with the closer before building anything. At 50–150 employees the person who signs is usually the owner, the VP of Operations or the plant manager; at 150–500 it's a purchasing or procurement manager, or a director of supply chain. Buyers and expediters use the tool but don't buy it. My starting titles: Purchasing Manager, Procurement Manager, Director of Purchasing, Supply Chain Manager or Director, Materials Manager, VP Operations, Plant Manager, plus Owner or President under 150 employees. Day 1, rest of the day: accounts, not people. Apollo company search for US headquarters, manufacturing industries, 50–500 employees, exported to a sheet. In my experience headcount runs low on LinkedIn for factories, because a lot of floor staff aren't on it, so I check size against a second source and drop anything clearly outside the range. I also drop distributors and resellers; the company's own site settles most of those in 30 seconds. I aim for about 180 accounts to end with 100 contacts. Day 2: people and emails. Sales Navigator for one or two contacts per account from the agreed titles, skipping anyone who changed jobs in the last 90 days, since they don't own the process yet. Emails from Apollo first, then a Clay waterfall for the ones Apollo can't find. Then every email goes through NeverBounce, including the ones Apollo already marks as verified: - Valid: keep. - Invalid and disposable: remove. - Unknown: run again the next day; still unknown, remove. - Catch-all: separate tab. Those domains accept any address, so no checker can confirm the mailbox. I keep one only if another contact at the same company confirms the email pattern, and flag it for a small separate send. On my last manufacturing list about a quarter came back catch-all, so this matters here. Day 3: qualify and deliver. Every contact gets one line in a 'why' column, for example: 'Purchasing Manager, 140-person machine shop; careers page has a buyer opening that mentions maintaining the open-PO spreadsheet.' If I can't write that line, the contact doesn't go to the closer. My line for qualified: the company makes things and buys materials and parts on POs; 50–500 employees confirmed from two sources; the person owns or approves purchasing; and nothing suggests they already run software that does this. If only 85 clear that line by the end of day 3, I deliver 85 with a note on why, not 100 with 15 guesses.

Work sample

MY PROCESS FROM A COLD BRIEF 1. Rewrite the brief as a one-page ICP and get the closer to sign it off. Company: industry, size, location, and the two or three things that must be true. Person: the titles that decide, the titles that influence, the titles we skip. Disqualifiers written down. An hour here saves days of rework. 2. A test list of 30 before the real one. I send the closer 30 contacts with a 'why' line each and ask which they'd actually call. The rejections teach me more than the brief did, usually a title or a company type I'd never have guessed. 3. Accounts first. Apollo company search for the firmographics, then the company websites for what filters can't tell me: what they actually make, and whether they're really a distributor. I cut the account list before looking for a single person. 4. People second. Sales Navigator for one or two contacts per account from the approved titles, in the role long enough to own the process. 5. Emails. Apollo first, then a Clay waterfall for the misses. Then NeverBounce or ZeroBounce on every address, including the ones a database calls verified. Verified in a database means verified at some point, not today. - Valid: keep. - Invalid, disposable: remove. - Unknown: re-run once, then remove. - Catch-all: separate tab, kept only when another contact at the company confirms the email pattern, and flagged for a small separate send. 6. Into HubSpot with the source, the verification result and date, and the 'why' line in its own property. Nothing is imported without a verification date. 7. Watch the first sends. If bounces go over 2% on any batch, that batch stops and gets re-checked before anything else goes out. I'd rather slow the SDRs down for a day than burn a sending domain. THE ONE THING Evidence of the problem. A near-match has the right title at the right size of company. A qualified prospect has that and a reason to believe they have the problem now — for a PO-tracking tool, a buyer or expediter job post that mentions spreadsheets, or 40 suppliers and no purchasing software anywhere I can see. If I can't point to it, the contact goes in the near-match tab, not to the closer.

Julián P.

SCREEN 84/100

Argentina · asking $1,250

Screening notes

Strongest evidence: the scenario answer is operationally specific in ways the question did not supply — the two-contact-per-account logic (Purchasing Manager + Controller as a second pain owner), the catch-all domain isolation with a hard 2% stop, the 1-in-5 spot-check rule with a 2-in-20 correction threshold, and the explicit pre-send signal summary ('how many of the 300 had a spreadsheet-PO job post') that validates ICP fit before a single email lands; these details are characteristic of someone who has actually debugged a campaign rather than described one in the abstract. The work-sample naming of Google Postmaster Tools and the day-before verification timing (not week-before) are small but genuine differentiators. Biggest concern: the scenario and work sample are heavily list-build and deliverability focused — the brief's SDR role requires outbound writing and booking meetings, and there is almost no evidence here of first-touch copy quality, reply handling, or booking discipline; the candidate mentions handing a 'reason' to the closer but never demonstrates they can write the cold email that earns the reply in the first place, which is explicitly scored under this search's nice-to-haves and is central to the SDR role. Verdict: clearly in the top 10% for list-build and outbound infrastructure work, comfortably worth advancing for the Lead Gen Specialist search brief; for a pure SDR booking-meetings role the writing and prospecting-to-conversation gap would need to be…

Experience

6 years in outbound: 2 as an SDR at a Buenos Aires software company selling to US mid-market, then 4 building lists and outbound systems for US B2B agencies and their clients. Most of my list work runs in Clay. A typical build pulls accounts, finds contacts, runs a three-provider email waterfall, verifies, and writes a qualification note on every row. I also set up the sending side: separate domains, warm-up, SPF/DKIM/DMARC and bounce limits. Across 11 client campaigns last year, hard bounces stayed under 1%.

Scenario answer

I'd build it from the problem backwards: find the companies that show signs of tracking POs by hand, then the person who owns that process. A list of every purchasing manager at a 50–500-person manufacturer is quick to build and mostly wasted on the closer. Day 1: about 300 accounts. Apollo company search for US manufacturers with 50–500 employees, pulled into Clay and deduped on domain. A Claygent step reads each homepage and drops the ones that describe themselves first as a distributor or wholesaler. Then two signals: - Job posts from the last 90 days for buyers, purchasing coordinators or expediters. Claygent reads each posting and flags the ones that mention spreadsheets, Excel, or following up on open POs. - What they already run. If their job posts ask for experience with a full procurement platform, they've probably solved this, so they go to the bottom. Day 2: people. Two contacts per account. First, whoever owns purchasing: Purchasing or Procurement Manager, Director of Supply Chain, VP Operations, or the owner at the small end. Second, the Controller, because the pain also shows up when invoices don't match POs. Sales Navigator on the client's seat to confirm each is still in the role. Emails through a waterfall (Apollo, then two more providers), then ZeroBounce on everything. Only 'valid' goes into the main send. Catch-alls get their own list, sent in a small batch from a separate domain, and the whole segment stops if bounces pass 2%. Unknowns I drop. Day 3: qualify and hand over. A contact reaches the closer only if three columns are filled: company fit (makes things, 50–500 confirmed from two sources, US), role fit (owns or approves purchasing), and a reason, such as the job post, a comment they made or a line on their site. The reason is written in plain English so the closer can use it in the first sentence of a call. A trade-off I'd flag to the client: because most of this runs in Clay, I check about one row in five by hand, not every row. I pick them at random, and if more than 2 in 20 are wrong I stop and fix the rule rather than hand-correct rows. With the list, the client also gets a short note on what the signals found, like how many of the 300 accounts had a spreadsheet-PO job post. That tells us whether the ICP is right before a single email goes out.

Work sample

FROM A COLD BRIEF: HOW I BUILD A LIST 1. Turn the brief into rules a person and a machine would apply the same way. 'Mid-size manufacturers' becomes 'US headquarters, 50–500 employees from two sources, makes and sells its own products'. 'Decision-makers' becomes a title list in priority order. If the client can't agree the rules, I don't start the build. I send 20 sample rows and let their reactions write the rules. 2. Tools, in the order I use them. Apollo for the company search, because it exports cleanly. Clay to hold everything: dedupe, enrichment, Claygent checks of company websites and job posts, the email waterfall. Sales Navigator on the client's seat for the people Apollo is unsure about. Google Sheets only for the client review. 3. Verification, in three layers. - Find: a waterfall of three providers, stopping at the first result. - Verify: ZeroBounce on every address the day before it's loaded, not the week before. Only 'valid' goes into the main campaign. - Catch-all: separate campaign, small volume, stopped automatically at 2% bounces. After the first 200 sends I compare the actual bounce rate with what the verifier predicted. If they disagree, the provider or the verifier is wrong for this industry, and I change it. 4. Protect the domain. Never the client's main domain; warmed inboxes; SPF, DKIM and DMARC checked; about 30 emails a day per inbox. A list is only worth what the domain sending it can still deliver. 5. Feedback every Friday. Replies and bounces by segment: title, company size, signal. A segment with 150 sends and no positive replies is out the next week. That's how the ICP gets narrower in a way you can defend. THE ONE THING A reason, not a match. A near-match passes every filter. A qualified prospect has something I can point to that says they have the problem now — a job post, a new plant, a comment about chasing suppliers. If the only reason a contact is on the list is that the filters let them through, they're a near-match and they stay out.

Rochelle B.

SCREEN 62/100

Philippines · asking $800

Screening notes

Strongest concrete evidence is the consistent, specific toolchain (Sales Navigator, Apollo, Hunter, Google Sheets) and the structured list-building process with a sensible column schema and a two-day-plus-QA timeline — these feel lived-in rather than invented. The scenario answer correctly identifies ICP-relevant titles for a PO-tracking tool and describes a real verification step, though it defaults to 'find the email format and create it' rather than naming a validation tool like NeverBounce or ZeroBounce, which is a deliverability gap. Biggest concern is that every answer stays at the list-building layer: there is nothing on sequence writing, first-touch copy, CRM hygiene in HubSpot, or what happens when a contact bounces or goes silent — all of which are in the role brief and the nice-to-haves — suggesting the candidate is a researcher/VA, not yet an SDR who owns outbound outcomes. At $800 she is below band and the list-building fundamentals are solid, but the gap between list-building and qualified-conversation-booking has not been bridged; advance to a short interview only if the role can start her in a pure prospecting lane with coaching toward outreach.

Experience

3 years as a lead generation specialist and virtual assistant for US clients. I have built lead lists for real estate investors, a marketing agency and a software company, using LinkedIn and Apollo to find contacts and Google Sheets to organise them. I usually deliver 100 to 200 leads a week depending on the client's requirements. I am hardworking and detail-oriented, and I always make sure my leads are accurate.

Scenario answer

To build a list of 100 decision-makers at US manufacturing companies with 50–500 employees, I would start with LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Apollo. I would filter for manufacturing companies in the United States with 51–500 employees, then look for decision-makers with titles like CEO, President, COO, Operations Manager, Purchasing Manager and Procurement Manager, because these are the people with the authority to buy a purchase-order tracking tool. I would put the contacts in a Google Sheet with columns for name, title, company, company size, LinkedIn URL, email and phone number. For the emails I would use Apollo and only include the ones Apollo marks as verified. If Apollo does not have the email, I would find the company's email format, for example firstname.lastname@company.com, and create the email from that. To make sure each contact is qualified, I would check that the company really is a manufacturer and in the right size range, and that the person still works there by looking at their LinkedIn profile. With three days, I would aim to finish the list by the end of day two so I have day three to double-check everything and remove duplicates. That way I can deliver the full 100 contacts on time, organised and ready for the closer.

Work sample

MY LIST-BUILDING PROCESS 1. Understand the client's target market: industry, location, company size and job titles. 2. Search LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Apollo with those filters. 3. Check each company's website and LinkedIn page to confirm it matches the criteria. 4. Find the decision-maker at each company and add their details to a Google Sheet: name, title, company, website, LinkedIn URL, email and phone. 5. Get the email from Apollo. If it's not there, I use Hunter to find it. 6. Check the email status in Apollo and only keep the ones marked verified. 7. Remove duplicates and check the sheet for errors before sending it to the client. The one thing that separates a qualified prospect from a near-match is the job title. A qualified prospect has the authority to make the buying decision, like a director or manager in the right department. Someone with a junior title or in a different department is a near-match, and I would leave them out.

This is the artifact every search delivers

Post the role and the same screener runs on your real applicants — the questions arrive already written, and you read every finalist in full before any fee is due.

Post a role free Or have us run the search

The same screener, other roles

Sample shortlist: Lead Generation Specialist | Rolemote