Sample shortlist · candidates written by us, real screener output
SEO 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: SEO Specialist · Band: $950–1,750/mo
Must-haves: starts from Search Console data before any keyword tool, page-level on-page fixes and internal linking, a prioritised plan rather than an audit document, Ahrefs or Semrush
Nice to have: content briefs for writers, technical audits (crawl, indexation, Core Web Vitals), GA4
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.
Janine C.
SCREEN 84/100Screening notes
Strongest evidence is the pest-control case study (64 posts, no new-content budget, 2,100→6,900 clicks in 8 months by rewriting 19 page-2 posts and fixing internal links) — this is precisely the brief's scenario and the numbers are specific enough to be checkable; the scenario answer adds unprompted detail the form did not supply, notably the position-11-to-18 targeting band, the 'average position is noisy' caveat, and the canonical-check step, all of which reflect real practitioner instinct rather than textbook recall. The work sample is the clearest differentiator: the three-change structure is prioritised not listed, each change has a stated mechanic AND a named metric (CTR for 'blowing warm air' queries, GA4 engagement rate, key events from that landing page), and the business framing — refrigerant and capacitor calls become service revenue — is the kind of thinking a client pays for, not something the question prompted. Biggest concern is a gap the submission cannot resolve: there is no evidence of content-brief production (a nice-to-have) and no mention of crawl/indexation or Core Web Vitals work beyond the URL Inspection step, so the technical audit nice-to-have is unaddressed; also, spoken English is unassessable from text alone and should be probed in screen. At $1,350 against a $900–1,600 band and with this quality of process documentation, the candidate warrants an interview.
Experience
5 years in SEO, the last 3 at a Makati agency that runs organic search for US home-services and B2B software companies; I carry 6 accounts at a time. The work closest to this brief was a pest-control company's blog: 64 existing posts and no budget for new ones. In 8 months organic clicks went from about 2,100 to 6,900 a month, almost all from rewriting 19 posts that sat on page 2 and fixing their internal links. Before the agency I spent 2 years writing SEO content, which is why I do the rewrites myself.
Scenario answer
I start where Google has already shown its hand, in Search Console, and open Ahrefs later for competitors. Ahrefs estimates where a page ranks from its own keyword database; Search Console shows the queries Google actually showed it for. Days 1–3: choose the pages. Performance report, last 3 months, one URL at a time, exporting its queries with impressions, clicks, CTR and position. I don't trust a page's average position here: it mixes the main query with dozens of long-tail ones, so I look at the two or three queries carrying most of the impressions. One row per URL: main query, its position, monthly impressions, and whether the article actually answers what that query asks. I shortlist 8, not 5, because not every page will move. The test: main query between 11 and 18, the most impressions, intent that matches. Pages in the 20s mostly wait. Getting from 24 to page 1 in a month on on-page work alone is not something I'd promise. The same data shows when two of the client's articles take impressions for one query: filter by the query, open the Pages tab. I merge the weaker into the stronger and 301 it. That's editing, not new content, and it's often why neither gets past page 2. Days 4–5: check nothing is blocking them. URL Inspection on the 8: indexed, and Google's chosen canonical is ours. Not a full audit. If something is broken, it shows here. Days 6–15: on-page, one page a day, most impressions first. Title and H1 rewritten around the query the page already gets impressions for. First paragraph answers it. A section for secondary queries it already shows for at positions 20–40. Dated prices, years and screenshots fixed. I read the top five results to see what they cover that we don't, and request indexing as each page is finished. Days 16–20: internal links. Ahrefs Site Audit's internal link opportunities, plus a site: search per topic. Each of the 8 gets 3–5 links from related articles that already get clicks, with anchor text that describes the page. Days 21–30: log the change dates and leave the pages alone. I check the main queries weekly, not daily. On day 30 I report which of the 8 moved and by how much. I won't promise five by then — most pages I've edited took three to six weeks to settle — but I will promise the order and a straight report.
Work sample
PAGE: a how-to article on a regional US heating-and-cooling company's blog, 'Why is my AC blowing warm air?' About 1,400 words, published in 2023. Ahrefs puts it around position 14 for 'ac blowing warm air'; for a client I would confirm that in Search Console first. As it stands: the title tag is the company name plus 'Blog', and Google already shows its own rewrite of it in results. The H1 is 'Common AC Problems'. The first 250 words are company history. All six causes are there, but in no useful order, and the only internal link in or out is the blog index. 1. TITLE AND H1 — first, because it's the cheapest change and the other two depend on the page clearly being about this question. Change: title 'AC Blowing Warm Air? 6 Causes to Check Before You Call' (54 characters); H1 'Why Is My AC Blowing Warm Air?'. Why: the search is a question and neither the title nor the H1 contains it. People scanning results look for their own words. Metric: CTR in Search Console for queries containing 'blowing warm air', then clicks. Position may move a little; CTR shows it first. 2. ANSWER FIRST, CAUSES IN THE ORDER A HOMEOWNER CAN CHECK THEM Change: company history cut to one line at the end. Open with a two-sentence answer and a short list, then one H2 per cause: thermostat setting, dirty filter, tripped breaker for the outdoor unit, frozen coil, low refrigerant, failed capacitor. The last two end with 'this one needs a technician'. Why: someone searching this is standing in a warm house, and the page makes them scroll past the company story. The order also matters to the business: the causes that need a technician are the ones that become service calls. Metric: position for the main query and for the secondary ones already showing, like 'ac running but not cooling'; engagement rate in GA4 for sessions that land here. 3. INTERNAL LINKS Change: from the two technician sections, a link to the AC repair service page with the anchor 'AC repair in [city]'. Into the article, links from three related posts (the filter guide, the thermostat guide and 'AC making noise'), with anchors that describe this page. Why: the page gets traffic with no path to the part of the site that makes money, and a single link from the blog index tells Google little about it. Metric: GA4 key events, meaning calls and form fills, from sessions that start on this article. Today that is close to zero.
Camilo F.
SCREEN 84/100Screening notes
Strongest evidence is the work sample: the candidate diagnosed a real canonical/filter-URL problem (740 indexable versions), sequenced the fix correctly (canonicals before robots.txt block), and explicitly rejected the generic 'add 800 words' advice — all detail the question did not supply and that reflects genuine hands-on judgment. The scenario answer is disciplined: using the three untouched URLs as a quasi-control group, distinguishing a page that slid from 9 to 16 versus one that sat at 16 since publication, and the BigQuery/bulk-export call on larger sites are specific practitioner choices not prompted by the form. The one material gap against this search brief is Ahrefs/Semrush currency — the candidate is transparent about three years of disuse and proposes manual SERP comparison as a bridge, which is honest but does leave a real competency hole flagged as a nice-to-have. Salary at $1,650 sits $50 above band ceiling and the role is Content Marketer not SEO Specialist, making this candidate overqualified and misaligned in role scope; strong hire for an SEO-focused opening but requires a deliberate conversation about fit and rate before advancing.
Experience
7 years in SEO. The last 3 in-house at a US outdoor-gear retailer (about 2,300 product and category pages plus a 90-article blog), working US Eastern hours from Bogotá. I own technical SEO and the category pages. Two pieces of work I'd point to: taking 1,100 thin filter URLs out of the index, after which organic revenue on the category pages went from about $41K to $58K a month over two quarters; and merging 14 overlapping blog posts into 5. Before that, 4 years at a Bogotá agency doing audits and site migrations.
Scenario answer
My order: find out what Google already thinks each page is about, remove anything splitting the signal, fix the pages, then the links. Rankings come last in the report, not first in the plan. Week 1: data. Sixteen months of Search Console data for the 15 URLs, query by query. On a 40-article site the export from the interface is enough; on bigger sites I use the BigQuery export. For each URL: the queries behind most of its impressions, their positions, and whether each has been rising, flat or sliding over the year. A page that slid from 9 to 16 has a different problem from one that has sat at 16 since it was published. Same week, overlap. For each main query I check which of the client's URLs got impressions. On blogs this size I usually find two or three pairs written a year apart on the same topic. Merging a pair into the stronger URL and redirecting the other is the fastest way I know to move a page-2 article without writing anything new. Week 2: pick and check. I choose 8: main query at positions 11–20, flat or rising, intent that matches. Three of the other seven I leave untouched on purpose. If everything moves in week 4, including those three, it was Google, not us. Then a Screaming Frog crawl: indexable, one canonical, and how many internal links point at each of the 8. On small blogs the articles that should rank often have two internal links while a 2019 announcement has forty. Week 3: the pages. Title and H1 on the query each page already earns; the opening answers it; sections for the secondary queries it already shows for; outdated facts fixed. This is where I'd ask the client for an Ahrefs or Semrush login. I used Semrush daily at the agency but not in the last three years, so this month I'd compare against the top five results by hand, and be slower at it than someone who lives in those tools. Week 4: links and measurement. Each of the 8 gets links from the 3–5 related articles with the most clicks, plus one from its category page. Request indexing, note the dates, and compare the main queries against the three untouched pages. Five of fifteen in 30 days is possible if the 8 are chosen well. I'd still tell the client day 45 is the fairer date to judge it.
Work sample
PAGE: women's trail running shoes, a category page from my current job (store name left out). 58 products in a grid, filters for brand, size, width and waterproofing, nothing above the grid and 120 words of generic copy below it. 1. H1 AND TITLE Now: the H1 is 'Trail', taken from the breadcrumb label, and the title is 'Trail | Women | [Store]'. Change: H1 'Women's Trail Running Shoes'; title 'Women's Trail Running Shoes | Waterproof & Wide | [Store]'. Why: the page gets impressions for 'women's trail running shoes' and 'waterproof trail running shoes women', and neither the H1 nor the title says either. On category pages the H1 is often a template label nobody chose. Metric: CTR and position for the main query in Search Console. 2. LINKS TO THE FOUR SUB-CATEGORIES PEOPLE SEARCH FOR Change: a row of four links above the grid (Waterproof, Wide width, Zero drop, Under $100), each to a filtered page with its own title, H1 and two lines of copy, and allowed in the index. Why: there are impressions for 'wide trail running shoes women' at position 30-something, and the only page that could rank for it is a filter URL with no title of its own. Four chosen filter pages are useful; hundreds of accidental ones are not. Metric: impressions and clicks for those four query groups, and purchases in GA4 from sessions landing on the four pages. 3. CANONICALS ON EVERY OTHER FILTER COMBINATION Change: size, colour, brand and sort combinations get a canonical pointing at the main category page. Why: my crawl finds 740 indexable versions of this one page. Google treats a canonical as a hint, so this is the first step, not the last: once those URLs drop out I'd block the filter parameters in robots.txt, which is what Google's own guidance prefers. The other way round leaves them indexed, because Google can't see a canonical on a page it isn't allowed to crawl. Metric: the number of filter URLs Search Console reports as indexed, falling over several weeks. The main query's position moves more slowly. What I would not do first: add 800 words of copy below the grid. It's the usual advice, and in my experience it rarely moves a category page.
Florencia R.
SCREEN 62/100Screening notes
Strongest evidence: 3 years agency-side with named verticals (law, dental, e-commerce, B2B) across three markets, Semrush and GA4 confirmed in both tools list and scenario, and the work-sample shows real on-page instincts (title-tag gap, H2 restructure, internal link to service page with a stated traffic metric). Biggest concern: the scenario answer is the single most disqualifying signal against the brief — it opens with a Semrush site audit rather than Search Console data, which is the must-have the brief weights first; Search Console appears only as an indexation check, not as the starting point for identifying which pages are already ranking and need a push. The work-sample is competent but generic (no CTR figures, no current ranking position, no impression data, no reference to Search Console performance for this specific page), and experience claims carry no numbers (no client traffic lifts, no ranking improvements, no site sizes). Written English is clear and professional with no fluency flags. Verdict: solid mid-level practitioner with real tool exposure, but the failure to lead from Search Console in the scenario is a direct miss on the role's stated must-have; advance only if the brief allows coaching on workflow prioritisation.
Experience
3 years as an SEO specialist at a digital marketing agency in Córdoba, working with clients in Argentina, Spain and the US — a law firm, a dental clinic, an online store and several B2B companies. I handle keyword research, on-page optimisation, meta titles and descriptions, monthly site audits and ranking reports, and I write and optimise blog content in English and Spanish. I am very detail-oriented and I really enjoy seeing a page climb the rankings.
Scenario answer
To move these articles to page 1 without new content, I would focus on optimising the 15 existing articles. First, I would run a full site audit in Semrush to find technical problems like broken links, missing meta descriptions, duplicate titles or slow pages, and fix the most important ones. Next I would do keyword research in Semrush for each of the 15 articles to find the best main keyword and related keywords with good volume and lower difficulty. Then I would optimise each article: the main keyword in the title, H1 and first paragraph, related keywords in the subheadings, a better meta description to get more clicks, and updated information so the content is fresh. I would also check in Search Console that all the articles are indexed. After that I would work on internal linking, adding links from other articles on the site to these 15, and I would improve readability with shorter paragraphs and images with alt text. Finally I would track the rankings weekly in Semrush and send the client a report. SEO takes time, so it is hard to say exactly how many articles will reach page 1 in 30 days, but these improvements give them the best chance.
Work sample
PAGE: a blog article on a US dental clinic's website, 'Is Teeth Whitening Safe?'. 1. Optimise the title tag and H1. The title is only 'Teeth Whitening', which does not include the full keyword. I would change it to 'Is Teeth Whitening Safe? What You Need to Know' to match what people search for. Metric: rankings and CTR. 2. Improve the structure. The article is one long block of text with only two subheadings. I would break it into sections with H2s such as 'Side effects', 'Professional vs at-home whitening' and 'Who should avoid whitening', and add a short FAQ at the end. This makes it easier to read and helps Google understand the content. Metric: engagement time. 3. Add internal links. The article does not link to the clinic's whitening service page, so I would add a link to it and to two related blog posts. This helps users and passes authority to the service page. Metric: traffic to the service page. These changes are quick to make and should improve the page's rankings and traffic.
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