Marketing contractor hiring kit

Copy this into your preferred editor. Define evaluation criteria before meeting candidates. Use a small paid project to evaluate useful work; a short trial does not establish long-term revenue impact.

Role brief

Product, audience and buying process:
Company stage and existing evidence:
Problem to solve:
Scope and deliverables:
Out-of-scope work:
Research/discovery required:
Materials and evidence we can supply:
Required skills and relevant constraints:
Contractor budget:
Separate execution/media/tool budget:
Dependencies and access:
Founder decision-maker and review cadence:
Implementation owner:
Success criteria appropriate to the deliverable:
Open questions:

Interview questions

What do you need to learn before recommending an approach?
What would you challenge in this brief?
What similar work have you personally owned, and with what resources?
What will the first deliverable contain?
What do you need from us?
How will we evaluate the work?
What would cause you to change direction?
How do you use AI and verify its output?

Paid trial scope

Task and supplied inputs:
Deliverables and acceptance criteria:
Payment and agreed terms:
Timing and review checkpoints:
Access and data boundaries:
Ownership/usage rights addressed in engagement agreement:
Who implements or uses the output:
Feedback and revision process:
Decision after trial:

Evaluation scorecard

Score 1 = does not meet the agreed requirement; 2 = partially meets; 3 = meets; 4 = exceeds with useful supporting evidence. “Unknown” is not zero: record the missing evidence. Choose weights for this specific role before scoring; resolve critical inaccuracies separately from the total.

Criterion	Weight	Evidence observed	Score or unknown	Follow-up required
Product/audience understanding
Evidence and accuracy
Judgment and tradeoffs
Usable execution
Communication
Collaboration

Decision: proceed / revise scope / request missing evidence / decline. Reasons:

Completed fictional example

Brief: API monitoring homepage messaging. Founder supplies six fictional interview summaries and a product demo. Contractor synthesizes evidence, proposes a messaging hierarchy, and writes a hero plus workflow section. Founder owns positioning; engineer owns implementation. Design and campaigns are outside scope.

Trial: Paid scoped project, with timing/payment agreed before starting. Deliverable must reference interview evidence, explain the workflow correctly, and label missing proof.

Criterion	Evidence observed	Illustrative score	Follow-up
Understanding	Clearly explains failed-delivery investigation	3	Confirm buyer approval route
Accuracy	Claims trace to supplied excerpts; one unsupported claim removed during review	3	Verify remaining technical phrasing
Judgment	Shows two headline options and explains their audience tradeoffs	3	Decide primary audience
Execution	Hero and workflow copy ready for product review	3	Engineering implementation estimate
Communication	Raises dependency before the review deadline	4	None
Collaboration	Incorporates feedback and records changed assumptions	3	None

Decision: Continue with a defined next scope after product review. This example illustrates evaluation, not an actual candidate or result.

Acceptance and scope decisions

Required accuracy checks and reviewer:
Required evidence references:
Reader questions the deliverable must answer:
Included review rounds:
What counts as a correction:
What requires a new scope/payment agreement:
Trial-end decision: proceed, request an agreed correction, or decline further work:
Decision owner and date:

Fictional acceptance example: the messaging draft references the supplied evidence, describes the product workflow accurately, and contains the agreed hero plus workflow section. An inaccurate product description needs correction; adding a pricing page requires a new scope.