Top 8 Copywriter Interview Questions

What's the most difficult thing in content marketing? Content creation, of course. Hiring skilled writers is a major challenge that companies face today. Finding a good copywriter who will create high-quality content inspiring your target audience to take action can be even more challenging. You need to ensure that you select a professional who can help you sell your products and services as efficiently as possible – with quality content that grabs the attention of your potential customers and is SEO optimized.

Any job interview is a challenge, but an interview for creative vacancies such as a copywriter position presents additional difficulties – particularly when it comes to the interview questions. Standard interview questions like “Why do you want to work here?” and “What are your strengths?” are a good way to get to know the candidate, their experience, and goals. However, a successful interview must include other copywriting-related questions so that you can be sure of the likelihood of a candidate's success in this position.

Be sure to mention these top 8 questions during the copywriter interview to find the ideal candidate for the position.

1. What do you know about our company?

While this may seem like a trivial question, it’s important for copywriter job seekers. This will not only help you to assess their interest in work, but also tells you what kind of specialist they are. Most likely, you want to find an inquisitive copywriter who does the preliminary preparation and research before starting a job (or interview). This question will let you know how thorough the candidates are.

At the same time, you can try to assess their copywriting skill level. Ask job seekers to define your company’s tone of voice, your potential customers, etc and see what they say.

2. How well do you understand our products and services?

Your copywriters must be well versed in the subject matter, namely your products and services they will write about. Find out if your job seeker is familiar with the specifics of your product, with the industry in general, with specific vocabulary by asking a few guiding questions.

The main task of a copywriter is to convey your ideas to potential clients and to interest even those who are not related to your industry and don’t know the features of your product. Sure, copywriters don't need to understand all the technical details of your products, but they do need to have a general idea of what they're going to talk about.

3. What are the ways to optimize content for SEO purposes?

A skilled writer knows the difference between simply interesting content and content that is both interesting and SEO-friendly. Of course, the text can be well-written and useful, but will it be able to grab the attention of your website visitors? You need a copywriter who understands the importance of keywords, attention-grabbing headlines, meta descriptions, authority links, etc. Understanding these basics and SEO experience will be a big plus for any job seeker. In addition, experience with SEO tools and content optimization platforms will be an advantage too.

4. What style do you write in?

When you want to make your texts “fresh”, “selling” and “interesting”, you’re pouring money down the drain. You need a copywriter whose writing style will interact with your target audience as effectively as possible. Someone creates content in an aggressive selling style, someone is good at storytelling. Look for a copywriter who writes in a style that matches your business goals and objectives.

5. What type of content do you usually work with?

To make sure that a copywriter will be able to create exactly the type of content you need (for example, blog posts, landing pages, etc.), ask them about their experience with such tasks. You can also ask for a portfolio to check out examples of their work and rate their quality. If a copywriter doesn’t have examples (just a few) of the text you are interested in, you take the risk.

6. Are you good with deadlines?

Sometimes copywriters need to work on a tight deadline to complete a project on time. You need to know for sure that your specialist will complete the task within the given timeframe. Find out if the job seeker has had working experience in such situations with tight time constraints and how they deal with work under deadline pressure.

Along with this, you can also ask about the possible reason why the candidate could fail the deadline and whether they had such cases. This is a test question. If your job seeker tends to procrastinate or regularly fails to meet deadlines, this can negatively impact your business. The right candidate will demonstrate an understanding of the importance of deadlines, a responsible approach to meeting deadlines, and respect for your business.

7. What does the project cost depend on?

If a copywriter takes price for their services out of the air, justifying it only with great experience and a portfolio, then you are offered to overpay for the brand, in some way.

Before agreeing on a price, ask the candidate to draw up a project concept in which they will write down all their ideas, the proposed structure and further actions. Ideally, a copywriter will measure their work in person-hours, which will give you a complete understanding of the labor costs for your project.

8. Why are you the best candidate for this position?

Job seekers often perceive this question as a call to aggressively sell themselves to the employer. However, the purpose of the question is different: first of all, to understand the motivation of the candidate and the level of their self-confidence.

Self-assurance is an important feature of the professional. A copywriter who cannot sell their services is unlikely to be able to effectively promote your product. The answer to this question will give you an idea of the candidate's copywriting skills. The right candidate will demonstrate honesty about their skills and a deep understanding of how to handle their responsibilities.

9. Are you ready to complete a testing assignment?

A resume, portfolio, and interview questions are sometimes not enough to get a job. The test assignment is often the most important indicator when applying for a job, because the candidate must complete an assignment that is directly related to the project they will be working on.

Be prepared for the writer to take some time to complete the assignment – usually, a couple of days is enough. Set a deadline to give the candidate the opportunity to study the topic thoroughly. The test assignment will allow you to see how well a copywriter understands their task and evaluate their copywriting skills and writing style. Very often, a test assignment can tell you more than a candidate’s portfolio with completed works.

If you’re looking for a good copywriter or want to get a job in this position, you need to know the most common copywriter interview questions. As an employer, it allows you to define the goals, abilities, and potential of the candidate. On the other hand, job seekers can prepare responses ahead of time to make a splash during the interview.

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