Sample shortlist · candidates written by us, real screener output
Video Editor
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: Video Editor · Band: $900–1,600/mo
Must-haves: cuts long-form (podcasts, webinars, interviews) into short and mid-length edits, Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve, captions and thumbnails, holds a weekly publishing schedule
Nice to have: After Effects motion graphics, reading YouTube retention data, colour and audio clean-up
Scored by the same rubric the production screener runs on real applicants (design, 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.
Camille C.
SCREEN 88/100Screening notes
Strongest concrete evidence: the cold-open intervention is a real editorial decision with a before/after metric (3:50 → 6:40 average view duration over ten episodes), not a vague claim of 'improving engagement'; the scenario answer front-loads a clarifying question about footage reality (4 usable minutes of a 7-minute presence → recommend 6-minute film, surfaced day-of not on delivery), which is exactly the right structural judgment; the work-sample's three decisions are each reasoned against viewer behaviour (kept the 2-second pause because it signals honesty, cut slides unless they carry a number), and the retention-drop diagnosis at 3:40 shows she actually reads YouTube analytics rather than just reporting them. Biggest concern: all measurable outcomes (150 episodes, view-duration figures, 41% average view duration) are self-reported with no corroborating artefact — the work sample cites a client result but no link or screenshot is presented, so verification depends entirely on reference checks; DaVinci Resolve is self-described as 'slow' for cutting, which is acceptable given Premiere Pro fluency but worth noting for any Resolve-primary workflow. Verdict: advance to final interview — this candidate sits comfortably in the top 10% of applicants for this role; the reasoning is consistently tied to what the viewer must do rather than aesthetic preference, the reliability record is credible and specific, and the $1,300 ask sits mid-band.
Experience
6 years editing, the last 3 as the only editor on a US marketing agency's weekly video podcast. Every week one 60–90 minute recording becomes a 25–35 minute YouTube episode, six vertical clips, captions and a thumbnail, delivered by Tuesday noon Eastern — about 150 episodes, one late, during a typhoon power cut I warned them about the night before. The change I'm proudest of: replacing the host's 3-minute welcome with a 20-second cold open from the strongest answer, which took average view duration from 3:50 to 6:40 over the next ten episodes. Before that, 3 years cutting corporate event videos at a Manila post house.
Scenario answer
My reply goes out within the hour, before I touch the timeline: 'Understood — customer story as the hero, and Thursday still holds. Two questions so I cut the right thing: is the customer the clinic owner in the recording (from 22:10), or is there a longer interview with her I haven't seen? And should the demo stay as a short proof section, about 90 seconds, or go completely? You'll have a one-page outline of the new structure today and a watchable cut by the end of tomorrow, which leaves the last day for your notes.' Next I count what the footage actually gives me, because that decides what I can promise. In the 45 minutes I have, she is on camera for about 7 minutes, and roughly 4 are usable — the rest is her talking over the host. A 10-minute film carried by 4 minutes of customer would be padding, so if there is no longer interview, the outline recommends 6 minutes instead of 10. It's their call, but they hear it today, not on delivery day. What I keep, because none of it depends on the story order: - the audio clean-up, the colour and the synced camera angles - the demo selects — they stop being the spine and become cutaways under her voice, so when she says 'we stopped double-booking', the viewer sees the calendar doing it - the music bed, lower thirds and end card Captions I regenerate from the final sequence; the style is saved, so that's 20 minutes, not a decision. What I restart: - the spine: the first 60 seconds, the order of the middle, and the ending. A demo-led cut opens on the product; a customer-led cut opens on her problem, in her words. - the demo pacing. It was cut to show every click; as support it only needs the three or four moments she mentions. Tomorrow, the day I have booked: I duplicate the sequence and lock the old one as 'v1 demo-led', so if the angle flips back next week nothing is lost. Then a stringout of every usable customer line from the transcript, her strongest line as the cold open, and the story laid out as problem, turning point, result, with the demo underneath. The honest cost: notes and polish on the last day need about two hours I haven't booked. I tell whoever owns my schedule today and move a batch of Shorts that has a day of slack, rather than finding out at midnight that something has to give.
Work sample
WORK SAMPLE — a webinar recut for a US accounting-software company SOURCE: a 94-minute webinar — two presenters, slides and 30 minutes of Q&A — recorded in Zoom, with the shared screen and the speaker view as separate files. BRIEF: a 12-minute YouTube version for people who missed it, plus five Shorts to promote it. The client's goal in one line: 'watch to the end and book a demo'. THREE DECISIONS 1. A COLD OPEN FROM MINUTE 71. The first 9 minutes were housekeeping and an agenda slide. The best moment was in the Q&A: asked how long month-end close should take, the presenter said 'if it's more than five days, you're doing data entry, not accounting'. I opened on that line — 12 seconds — and put the title card after it. 2. SLIDES ONLY WHEN THEY CARRY A NUMBER. The middle was 22 minutes of a presenter reading slides. A slide stayed full-screen only if it had a figure the viewer needed to see; for the rest I cut to the presenter, with the slide's one key line as a text overlay. That section went from 22 minutes to 4:30. 3. J-CUTS TO HIDE THE Q&A LAG. Every question had a 3–5 second gap while the presenter read it. I put each question on screen as a text card and started the answer's audio under the card, then removed every pause over half a second — except one. Before admitting the product doesn't handle multi-currency yet, the presenter pauses for 2 seconds. I kept it, because it's where he sounds most honest. ALSO DELIVERED: five Shorts, each a question card plus a one-sentence answer from the Q&A; captions burned into the Shorts and an SRT file on the long version so viewers can switch them off; a thumbnail of the presenter mid-answer with 'MORE THAN 5 DAYS?' as the only text. RESULT: a 12:40 final. Average view duration 5:10, about 41%; the client's earlier uploads, full uncut recordings, averaged around 2:30. WHAT I WOULD CHANGE: the retention graph's steepest drop was at 3:40, from 61% to 52% of viewers in about 20 seconds — a pricing explanation the presenter needed and the viewer didn't. I'd cut it to one on-screen line and put the pricing link in the description. And before the next webinar I'd ask the presenters to answer each question in one sentence first, then explain; it would have saved me most of the J-cut work.
Mariana L.
SCREEN 88/100Screening notes
Strongest concrete evidence: 96 consecutive on-time episodes of a weekly interview show (plus three Shorts per episode) is a rare, falsifiable track record of exactly what this role demands; the work sample demonstrates genuine structural thinking — delaying the subject introduction to 1:40, the four-second pause decision, and the honest disclosure about two unusable kitchen shots — none of which were supplied by the question. The scenario answer shows process maturity beyond what most candidates articulate: the third question about who approved the original is a hard-won insight that explains a real failure mode, and the keep/demote/restart taxonomy for the footage is exactly the judgment the role needs. Biggest concern: thumbnail production is self-declared weak ('not a thumbnail designer', built from a template), and After Effects is limited to titles and simple lower thirds — both nice-to-haves for this brief, not blockers, but retention-data reading is described only as a tool used (YouTube Studio) without a single example of acting on data to change an edit decision, which is the gap. At $1,550 against a $800–1,700 band with this depth of verifiable output, the candidate is worth advancing to interview; the retention-data and thumbnail gaps should be probed directly.
Experience
8 years editing, starting as an assistant editor on documentaries in Bogotá. Then 4 years at a Medellín production company cutting customer-story films for US software companies — 8 to 15 minutes each, from 3 to 6 hours of interviews and B-roll. For the last 2 years, freelance on US Eastern hours: a weekly 20-minute interview show for a US fintech's YouTube channel plus three Shorts per episode, 96 episodes and none late. The film I'm proudest of was cut from 5 hours 20 minutes of footage; it passed 40,000 views in its first year and is the one the client's sales team sends after every first call.
Scenario answer
My reply, within the hour: 'Happy to — customer-led films are most of what I cut. Before I change anything, can we take ten minutes on a call today? I want to confirm three things: which customer, whether you have her full interview or only what's in this recording, and whether everyone who approved the demo-led version has seen this change. I'm keeping Thursday as the deadline; if the answers make that unrealistic, you'll hear it on the call, not later.' The third question is the one I learned to ask. A change of angle mid-project usually comes from someone new joining the conversation, and the expensive outcome isn't re-cutting once — it's re-cutting twice because the original approver pulls it back after seeing the new version. I'd rather find that out before I spend the day. After the call I send a four-line summary: the new hero, what happens to the demo, the running time, the deadline. That's what I cut to, and what we both point to if it changes again. Then I check what the footage really supports. A customer story needs three things from the customer herself: the problem in her words, the moment it changed, and a result she can put a number on. Recordings like this one usually have the first two and not the third, because nobody asked her. If it's missing, I say so and ask whether someone can record her answering one question on her phone. Thirty seconds of a real number is worth more than two minutes of her saying the product is great. Keep versus restart: - Keep: the grade, the audio work, the synced angles, the lower-third design and the caption styling. None of it depends on the order. - Keep, but demote: the product demo. It becomes proof inside her story — it appears when she describes what changed, and never for longer than she's talking about it. - Restart: the structure. I don't rearrange the demo-led timeline; I build a new one from her selects and leave the old one untouched. A customer film and a product film have different spines, and patching one into the other shows. Timing: tomorrow, my one booked day, goes on the new structure and a rough cut by 4pm Eastern. I work the same hours as the client, so notes come back that afternoon, and the polish fits into the morning of the deadline day — the day I have, plus a few hours of buffer I keep on every project for exactly this.
Work sample
WORK SAMPLE — a customer-story film for a US payroll software company SOURCE: 5 hours 20 minutes — a 2-hour interview with the customer (a bakery owner in Ohio with 14 employees), a 1-hour interview with her operations manager, and 2 hours 20 minutes of B-roll shot in one day. Two cameras on the interviews; the B-roll camera had a different white balance and was underexposed in the kitchen. BRIEF: a 10-minute film for the website and YouTube, plus a 60-second cut for paid social. The one instruction: 'make people feel what a payroll mistake costs a small business'. THREE DECISIONS 1. SHE INTRODUCES HERSELF AT 1:40, NOT AT 0:00. The interview opened with her name, the bakery and how long she'd had it. I opened instead on her worst day: two bakers found their pay short on a Friday, and one of them quit. Her introduction comes once the viewer already cares, as a lower third over her unlocking the shop at 4am. 2. NO INTERVIEWER IN THE FILM. I removed every question and built the story only from answers where she restated the question herself — 'the reason we switched was…'. That took most of a day in the transcript, but it plays as her story rather than an interview about software, which is what the brief was really asking for. 3. ONE LONG PAUSE, EVERYTHING ELSE TIGHT. I trimmed breaths and restarts hard all the way through, except once: asked about the baker who quit, she looks away for four seconds before answering. I held all four. Cut, the answer sounds rehearsed; held, it's the moment the client's sales team says prospects bring up on calls. FOOTAGE, HONESTLY: two of the kitchen shots were too dark to save even after matching them in Resolve, so I used two photos from the bakery's own Instagram, with permission and a slow push-in, and told the client why before they asked. RESULT: a 10:30 film, the 60-second cut, and chapters in the YouTube description so the sales team can link to a specific moment. WHAT I WOULD CHANGE: the product first appears at 6:10. That's right for the film, but the sales team skips straight to it on calls, so I'd put a 10-second glimpse of it in the first minute. I'd also get help with the thumbnail — I built it from the client's template, and it was the weakest part of the job.
Jericho T.
SCREEN 58/100Screening notes
Strongest concrete evidence is the 8-month weekly podcast edit workflow — that is real, role-adjacent experience with a recurring schedule, and the work-sample decisions show functional awareness of hook mechanics and caption accessibility. However, the primary tool is CapCut, not Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve as required; Premiere is listed as 'intermediate' and used only for 'longer videos,' which is a direct gap against the must-haves. The scenario answer is boilerplate service-attitude language — 'stay positive,' 'keep the client happy,' 'work extra hours' — with no reasoning about what the brief is trying to achieve, why certain footage serves the argument, or how to triage what survives a structural pivot; the decision to 'keep the intro, music and ending' with no justification is the opposite of brief-first thinking. Work sample decisions name the right outputs (value clips, jump cuts, captions) but remain entirely style-descriptive and trending-referenced rather than explaining what viewer behavior each choice was designed to produce, and no numbers — clip lengths, retention rates, follower growth — are provided to substantiate claims of engagement or deadline discipline. Verdict: passes the baseline threshold for a screen call specifically to probe Premiere Pro depth and whether long-form to short-form structural judgment is stronger in practice than on paper, but significant tool and reasoning gaps make this a borderline hold.
Experience
3 years as a freelance video editor. I edit short-form videos for Reels and TikTok for small businesses and content creators, and for the last 8 months I have also edited a weekly podcast for a Filipino business coach, cutting each episode into short clips. I am fast and creative, and I always meet my deadlines. I am comfortable with trending editing styles and I know how to make videos engaging for social media.
Scenario answer
When the client changes the main angle halfway through the project, I would reply right away to confirm that I got the message and that I will rework the video so the customer story is the main focus. I would stay positive, because changes are normal in video editing and it is important to keep the client happy. Then I would watch the footage again, find all the parts where the customer is talking, and choose the best moments. I would keep the intro, the music and the ending from my current cut, and restart the middle part so it follows the customer's story from beginning to end. Some of the product demo can still be used as B-roll while the customer is talking. Since I only have one day left in my schedule, I would work extra hours to make sure the new version is finished on time, and send it to the client for feedback before the deadline. If they have revisions, I will do them quickly. I believe good communication and flexibility are very important when a client changes direction, and I always make sure the client is satisfied with the final video.
Work sample
WORK SAMPLE — short clips from a business podcast SOURCE FOOTAGE: one podcast episode, about 1 hour, recorded with two cameras. BRIEF: the client wanted 4 short clips for TikTok and Instagram Reels to promote the full episode on YouTube. THREE DECISIONS 1. I chose the most interesting parts of the episode, where the guest shares practical tips, because those moments give value to the viewer and make them want to watch the full episode. 2. I used fast pacing with jump cuts to remove the pauses and filler words, so the clips feel energetic and keep the viewer watching until the end. 3. I added bold captions in yellow and white with some emojis, and zoom-ins on important words, because captions help people follow along without sound and it matches the trending style. WHAT I WOULD CHANGE: I would make the hook in the first 3 seconds stronger, because some of the clips started a bit slow. I would also try adding sound effects to make them more engaging.
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