Why We Hired a Human Copywriter (and What It Took to Find Her)
We could have skipped this entire process. Instead of hiring a new writer, we could have easily plugged a brand voice guide into an AI tool, generated content, and shipped it. Faster, cheaper, done.
We didn’t do that. Here’s why Correnti Marketing chose a human copywriter over AI — and what it actually took to find and hire Kelly Anderson.
The Problem with a “Good Writer”
Most professional service firms don’t have the time or bandwidth to create content, let alone a brand voice guide. Even the firms that do publish content and have a style guide? Their website often looks like a dusty collection of content that still doesn’t sound like them.
That's because being a "good writer" and a "good brand voice writer" requires different skills. A good writer can construct a clean sentence. A good brand voice writer can hold someone else's voice: their tone, rhythm, and even sentence length or word choice, without letting their own instincts creep in. That's a harder thing to screen for, and most hiring processes don't try. We built ours to try.
What We Actually Tested During the Hiring Process
We didn't just ask applicants for a portfolio and a cover letter. We built a real evaluation:
Writing Scenarios: Candidates had to write in a specific client’s voice, not their own default style, and we scored how closely they matched it.
Voice-Matching Tests: We gave the same brief to multiple candidates, so we could see who actually adapted and who just wrote a good generic version.
Real-World Voice Examples: We wanted to hear concrete examples of writers’ experience switching between different voices. Anyone can write well in their own voice. Writing well in someone else’s (while still making it good) is the actual job.
Where AI Fits In (And Where It Doesn’t)
Hiring
We’ll be direct: we used an AI-powered tool to help us manage the hiring process. It helped us move faster through resumes, organize writing scenario responses, and keep a structured comparison across candidates instead of relying on gut feel and memory.
What it didn’t do was make the call.
We built that tool. We refined it based on what we actually needed. We reviewed its output, disagreed with it when our own judgment said otherwise, and made every final decision ourselves. The tool narrowed the field. It didn’t pick Kelly. We did.
Onboarding
Once Kelly started, we didn’t ask her to have Claude write all content for her. Instead, she writes with her own creativity, bringing a tangible humanity and unpredictability to our clients’ copy.
That’s not to say we’re ignoring the real benefits of AI. Kelly uses AI tools like Perplexity to help with research, client context, and accountability. She’s learning about our clients’ industries to onboard faster than she would without AI. Kelly also runs content through customized Brand Voice Guides that we’ve created, ensuring each piece’s writing style is on track.
The feedback provided works like training in itself — so much so that, after using the brand voice tool a few times, she needs it less and less.
We use AI the same way we tell our clients to: as a tool that removes friction, not a replacement for the judgment that actually produces good work. If we're going to make that case to our clients, we should be able to point to our own hiring and creative processes as proof we practice it.
Meet Kelly Anderson
Our new copywriter, Kelly, came to us with years of agency experience. Kelly was drawn to Correnti first because “it was a Seacoast-based business that looked like it really cared about its people and creating great work.”
As she went further through the interview process, it became even more apparent how much the Correnti team values quality. “That’s the kind of place I want to work at. I want to have pride in the work we’re creating, and I want our clients to love it, too, and see it working for them,” she says. “Plus, the team was wicked nice, and it just felt like a good fit.”
What stood out to us? When asked about writing for different brand voices, Kelly was confident in her abilities. She described writing for clients that varied from deeply technical and professional to wry and lifestyle-oriented.
She went through the same process every candidate did. She’s the one who came out the other side, able to sound like six different clients without losing the thread of what makes each of them distinct.
Why This Matters for Clients + Future Hires
If you’re a firm evaluating us, this is what goes into the content with your name on it. Not a copy-paste of generic AI copy. It’s a person who was tested specifically on whether they could sound like you, evaluated by people who know the difference between competent writing and voice-accurate writing.
If you’re a writer evaluating us, this is what the bar looks like here. We’re not hiring people to prompt a tool and quickly pass along the output. We’re hiring people who can do the harder thing: hold someone else's voice with enough precision that the client barely notices anyone touched it.
Kelly cleared that bar. We’re glad she’s here.
