Questions to Ask Copywriters
Interview questions for copywriter candidates, whether you are filling a staff role or shortlisting freelancers. They cover research habits, drafting, testing, feedback, workload, and how the writer judges their own work.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What kind of writing do you do best, and what do you avoid taking on?
Why ask it
The avoidance list separates writers who know their range from writers who have never tested it. Someone who says they do everything equally well usually has one strong format and several imitations of it.
What is your process for learning a brand's voice?
Why ask it
Look for concrete inputs: reading past campaigns, interviewing the founder, collecting phrases customers use. Answers built on adjectives, friendly and bold and authentic, mean they will guess and hope you like it.
Walk me through how you start on a product you know nothing about.
Why ask it
The order matters. Writers who go to the product and its users before the competitor set tend to write specifics; writers who start with competitor sites tend to write category filler that any rival could publish.
Which piece in your portfolio are you least happy with, and why?
Why ask it
This is the fastest way to see their standards. A useful answer names a specific flaw, a buried lead, a claim they could not support, rather than blaming the client or the timeline.
How do you know whether a piece of copy worked?
Why ask it
Listen for whether they ever saw a result at all. Naming the metric they asked for, and admitting when nobody sent it, beats a confident percentage that cannot be traced to anything.
Tell me about a campaign that underperformed and what you did next.
Why ask it
Every writer with real volume has one. The signal is in the diagnosis: wrong audience, wrong offer, wrong stage of the funnel, or copy that was simply dull, and what they changed in their process afterward.
What has an A/B test taught you that you did not expect?
Why ask it
A specific surprise proves they have watched tests rather than read about them. Watch for whether they understand that a winning variant on a small sample often means nothing.
Which copywriting frameworks do you use, and when do you ignore them?
Why ask it
Naming a framework is easy. The useful half is when they abandon it, since formulas built for cold traffic tend to insult readers who already know and trust the company.
How do you write for a reader who does not believe the claim?
Why ask it
The answer shows whether they think in evidence, demonstrations, numbers, specifics, screenshots, or in intensifiers. Skeptical audiences are where weak copy fails most visibly.
How do you decide how long a page should be?
Why ask it
There is no correct length, so what you are testing is the reasoning: price, risk, how much the reader already knows. Anyone who answers with a fixed word count is following a habit rather than the reader.
How many headlines do you write before you pick one?
Why ask it
Volume here is a decent proxy for work ethic on the highest-leverage line on the page. Ask how they choose between finalists, because 'it felt strongest' and 'it was the only one the claim could support' are different answers.
What do you do when the brief and the performance data disagree?
Why ask it
This surfaces how they behave when a stakeholder is attached to something the numbers do not support. Watch for whether they propose a test rather than either capitulating or overruling.
How do you handle SEO requirements inside a draft?
Why ask it
Ask what they do with a required phrase that reads badly. Structural answers about headings, intent, and what the searcher wanted are the working kind; answers about density and repetition are a decade out of date.
How do you carry one message across email, social, web, and print?
Why ask it
The trap is a writer who reuses the same sentences everywhere. Good answers describe what changes per channel: how much context the reader has, how much they will read, and what the next step can realistically be.
How do you work with designers?
Why ask it
Copy that is written before the layout exists usually breaks the layout. Writers who ask for the wireframe, or who write to character counts, have worked in real production; writers who deliver a document and leave have not.
How would you keep voice consistent across a site several people write for?
Why ask it
Look for mechanisms rather than intentions: a short style guide, a word list, examples of right and wrong, a single editing pass before publication. Nobody maintains consistency by trying harder.
How do you approach plain language and accessibility?
Why ask it
Practical answers mention link text that makes sense out of context, headings that describe the section, alt text, and cutting the reading level of important instructions. Vague answers about inclusive writing usually mean the work has never come up.
How do you take feedback from someone who rewrites your sentences?
Why ask it
It is a normal part of the job, and the response predicts how the first month will go. The workable answer is translating a rewrite back into the problem behind it and offering a fix, rather than defending the original line by line.
How do you handle a week with three deadlines?
Why ask it
You want the specific triage: what they flag early, what they hand back, what they deliver rough on purpose. Anyone who says they simply work late is describing a plan that fails on week two.
What would make you turn down a brief?
Why ask it
This is the closing question because it reveals judgment and self-respect at once. Answers about claims they cannot substantiate, or timelines that guarantee bad work, come from experience rather than from principle.
Interviewing copywriters
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Structuring the interview
Start from their work, not your questions
Pick two pieces from their portfolio before the call and ask what the brief was, who signed off, and what they would change now. Most of the interview can grow out of those answers.
Give the same brief to everyone
Comparing candidates is only possible if they were answering the same question. Write one short scenario from your actual work and use it with the whole shortlist.
Include whoever will edit them
The person who gives daily feedback will notice things a hiring manager misses, and the candidate gets to see what working here would feel like.
What to look for in a portfolio
- One specific, checkable claim per piece. Copy made entirely of adjectives is a warning sign whatever the design looks like.
- Evidence they understood the buyer: objections answered, jargon used correctly, an offer that matches the reader's stage.
- How the piece opens. Weak writers spend the first paragraph warming up.
- Range across constraints, not just across industries. A tight banner and a long sales page test different skills.
- Whether they can tell you which parts were theirs when the piece was a team effort.
Running a written exercise
- 1Pay for anything longer than an hour, and say up front whether you will use the work.
- 2Use a real brief with real constraints, including the awkward legal or compliance line.
- 3Ask for the outline and the questions they would have asked you, alongside the draft.
- 4Score it against criteria you wrote down before reading, so voice preference does not swamp judgment.
- 5Discuss the draft live. How they explain a choice, and how they take a challenge to it, matters more than the draft.
Common interview mistakes
- Quizzing on framework acronyms. It rewards reading rather than writing.
- Judging a sample without knowing the brief or the approval chain behind it.
- Hiring for the portfolio when the job is mostly editing other people's drafts. Say so if that is the actual work.
- Skipping the question of how they take feedback, which is the most common reason these hires fail.
- Treating claimed conversion lifts as verified. Ask what was measured, over how long, against what baseline.