The Boring Stuff, Kinda

I think “get-to-know-you, information-gathering” interview questions are a waste of time. They don’t really give me a good insight into what kind of person you are. That’s why I break up my interview into two parts: a written one and an oral one.

The written interview is fairly straightforward. I’ll even give you my questions here. These are the “get-to-know-you” questions I mentioned earlier. 

Section A: Your Content Diet

1. Name 5-10 magazines, newsletters, publications, podcasts, YouTube channels, whatever you currently subscribe to and consume on a regular basis:
2. Name a few subject matters you have at least five or more books on:
3. What was the last book/audio/video you consumed on marketing, copywriting or psychology? How did it impact your writing?
4. Same question as above, a book/audio/video that helped you grow as a copywriter but… NOT marketing, psychology, sales or copywriting-related.
5. Eugene Schwartz’s “Breakthrough Advertising”: Great book on copywriting… or greatest book on copywriting? Explain.
6. If Makepeace, Carlton, Halbert and Kennedy got into a rap battle… who would win? Explain.

Based on what I shared with you last week, you can probably guess that questions 1-2 is simply me sussing out if you’re a curious person who has a lot of interests, and goes deep into them. 

Questions 3-4 tell me if you’re still learning, and you’re not just learning from an echo chamber of marketing courses, books, and videos… that you draw insights from other sources.

Questions 5-6 are “green beard” questions. Are you one of us? If you’re a direct response copywriter (or you aspire to be one), you have probably read or consumed the work of those giants… and more importantly, have thoughts on each of them.

Section B: Typical Interview Questions

1. What got you into copywriting?
2. How long have you been actively freelancing now? (If you freelance. If not, how long have you been doing this professionally? That is, getting paid to write direct response copy.)
3. List three projects you’ve written copy for and got paid for. What results did you get?
4. For each of the projects you wrote for above, can you provide someone I can contact to talk about your work? I need their full name, email or phone number.

No comments on the above questions. This is what most interviewers waste their time on in a Zoom call.

The Oral Interview

I don’t have trick questions here. For me, an interview is about figuring out your work behaviors. The smart ones use the STAR model for answering interview questions (Situation, Task, Action, Result). Tell me what happened, what the goal was, how you dealt with it, and the outcome.

The really smart ones have a whole list of STARs ready for multiple questions prepped and ready to share. 

Here are my interview questions (it’s not a lot):

1. Do you have sales experience? It can be door-to-door, phone, or in-person. How did that experience inform your copywriting journey?
2. Tell me about a copy project that went well. What happened, and why did it succeed?
3. Conversely, tell me about a copy project that bombed. What happened, why, and how did you try to fix it (if you could)?
4. Without naming names, tell me about your favorite client/boss. What made this relationship work?
5. Conversely, tell me about your worst client/boss. Why didn’t that relationship work?
6. What questions do you have for me?

John Carlton has a great saying: “I would rather train a salesperson than an English major how to write copy”. That’s what the first question is about. Copywriting is “sales in print.” It’s OK if you don’t have any experience, but if you do, I want to know about it.

Questions 2-5 is me sussing out what you value about projects and work relationships. I don’t care if you “bad mouth” an ex-client as long as you’re “bad mouthing” the right things. (I don’t like toxic work environments either!) I also want to see if you fully appreciate the good things as well in a project or client-relationship.

Question 6 tells me if you’ve truly thought about what it’s like to work with my company. The super basic question is “what’s it like working there”, which I’m more than happy to answer… but the better questions are if you did a little research into said company and ask about specific things. That shows me you “checked out my socials” before going on this date. That you have genuine interest.

Be Ready. Do Your Homework.

I hope the questions I ask in my interviews aren’t surprising to anyone. To me, if you treat your writing like a professional craft, then you should already be consuming content, drawing inspiration from multiple sources, and know your classics and forebears.

And if you’re going after a job, client, or project… I would hope that you already know how to research them so that you have good questions to ask when given the opportunity.

Later this week, despite Jen Adams telling me I can only write four parts, I’m giving you a fifth and final part on the future of copywriters and my thoughts on A.I.