To hire a B2B content strategist, look for someone who can turn buyer evidence into editorial decisions: which audience to help, which question to answer, what proof is required, and what the content should help a reader do next. A strong portfolio is useful, but it does not show whether the candidate made the strategy, wrote the piece, or simply inherited a polished brief.
Define the role at the decision boundary
A content strategist is not automatically the writer, SEO specialist, editor, and distribution owner in one person. Before hiring, name the decisions this role will own. Will the strategist interview customers, map questions to buying tasks, set the editorial priorities, commission subject-matter experts, review claims, or report on performance? Also specify who approves product statements and who owns publication operations.
This distinction matters because a calendar can be full while the content is still irrelevant. The Content Marketing Institute separates strategy from editorial planning: teams need a defined audience, business goal, and understanding of the audience’s questions before choosing the schedule. Its 2025 B2B research found that marketers whose strategies were only moderately effective or worse often pointed to unclear goals and weak connection to the customer journey. That suggests a hiring exercise should test how a candidate connects an audience task to a business purpose, not how many ideas they can brainstorm.
Score editorial judgment, not output volume
Build the scorecard from the work the person must do in your business. Useful evidence includes:
- Audience grounding: distinguishes recurring buyer questions from one anecdote and can say what evidence would confirm a pattern.
- Prioritization: chooses which question deserves a useful asset now and which idea should wait, be combined, or be dropped.
- Brief quality: makes the reader, task, angle, evidence needs, and next step clear enough that a writer or expert can execute it.
- Claim discipline: separates verified product facts, customer evidence, and hypotheses; flags what must be checked before publication.
- Learning loop: chooses a measure that fits the content’s purpose and uses sales, customer, or search feedback to improve the next decision.
Ask interviewers to score the same criteria with concrete anchors. For example, a low score may describe a candidate who leaps from a keyword to a headline; a strong score explains the buyer’s task, cites evidence, states a trade-off, and identifies the next proof to collect. This is more comparable than asking everyone whether the candidate “felt strategic.”
Use a brief-building exercise instead of a free article
Provide a small fictional packet: three search questions from buyers, a short sales-call note, a product statement that has not been verified, and a business goal such as helping qualified prospects evaluate implementation risk. Ask the candidate to produce a one-page brief, not a publishable article.
A useful brief states the target reader and decision, the angle, the source or expert needed, what the article can safely say, what it must not claim yet, a logical next step, and one success signal. Ask the candidate to explain which tempting idea they chose not to pursue. That last choice often reveals more strategic judgment than an extra page of headlines.
Keep the prompt, time allowance, and scoring rubric consistent across candidates. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management says writing assessments should be based on job analysis, tied to critical competencies, announced in advance, and scored with standardized procedures. For a role whose core job is strategy, assess the brief and reasoning first; use a separate short edit only if writing or editing is genuinely part of the job.
Read the portfolio as evidence, not proof
A portfolio can be selective and may contain work the candidate cannot share because of client confidentiality. Do not treat access to famous brands or large budgets as a proxy for skill. Choose one piece and ask:
- Which part of the audience or business context did you personally establish?
- What evidence changed the angle or stopped a claim from being published?
- How did you decide the format, depth, and distribution path?
- What result did you measure, and what can you not attribute to that asset?
- If you had one more week, what would you validate before producing the next piece?
These questions help separate strategic contribution from authorship, design, or distribution work done by a larger team. They also give candidates a fair way to explain projects that cannot be shown publicly.
Interview for trade-offs and collaboration
Ask candidates to describe a content decision where stakeholder requests competed. Listen for how they clarified the reader’s need, tested the request against evidence, preserved accurate product claims, and reached a decision with sales or subject-matter experts. Strong strategists can disagree without making the process adversarial; they document what is known, what remains uncertain, and who can resolve it.
Watch for calendar-first answers, promises to publish at a fixed volume regardless of evidence, traffic as the only success measure, or an SEO brief with no audience task. These are not automatic disqualifiers, but they are useful prompts for a deeper follow-up.
Connect the hire to the content system
Before interviews begin, align the scorecard with the work your team already needs. Scale Orbit’s buyer-question content brief guide and briefing guide for claims and boundaries can supply realistic inputs; the B2B editorial calendar framework shows how a good brief becomes a manageable plan.
Sources and further reading
- Content Marketing Institute: why content strategy comes before editorial planning.
- Content Marketing Institute: 2025 B2B content marketing benchmarks and trends.
- Google Search Central: creating helpful, reliable, people-first content.
- U.S. Office of Personnel Management: guidance on writing assessments.
- CIPD: selection methods.
How did this article land?
Choose one reaction. You can change it anytime.