SelfMade is hiring
Creative Strategist, paid social
The bar is high. Nobody clears it on their own.
We do it as a team.
Our portfolio hit rate is 25%. The industry sits around 10 to 15, and our top strategists run over 40. We hold that standard because we have a system built to support it.
You get a 30 minute training call every week, a team that answers in Slack the same day, and one or two brands to start instead of five.
- Start
- Contract, 1 to 2 brands
- Then
- W2, more brands
- Calls
- Two a week, that is it
- Hours
- Reachable 10 to 5 EST
The work
Every brief goes through three steps.
Most people arrive strong on step one. Step three is where briefs come back. That is normal, and it is what the training is for.
Step 01
Research and data mine the account.
Reddit, reviews, Amazon one-stars, and what the account's own numbers are telling you. Hook rate, thumbstop, spend, what actually scaled.
You need to arrive able to read an ad account. We will show you our dashboards. We will not teach you what a hook rate is.
Step 02
Map the brief to what the account needs.
Connect what you found to a persona, an angle, and an emotion. That mapping is the brief.
The index tells you what is tired and what we have never tried. You make the call.
Step 03
Tell a story.
Write it like one person talking to another, not a brand talking to a category. This is the step we are really hiring for.
Nearly everyone is 90% there. The gap is usually one sentence, not the concept.
Taking a note is its own skill.
It takes critical thinking and a real grasp of strategy. Anyone can fix the line we flagged. Understanding why we flagged it, and applying that to the next twelve, is the hard part and the fastest way up here.
The copy standard
Bad copy and good copy, same product.
Real lines from real briefs on this team. Everyone writes lines like the ones on the left, including us. If you are landing on the left, we can help you close that gap, that is what the training is for. If you cannot see why the right side is right, this probably is not the place for you.
Glassware · the aspiring hostess · growing your set to host more people
Bad copy
“More glasses, more reasons to gather.”
Vague and top level. What reason? Any glassware brand could run it, so it gives the buyer nothing to hold onto.
Good copy
“Be the reason the plans make it out of the group chat.”
Everyone has a group chat where plans go to die. That is a shared experience, so now the glasses have a reason to exist.
Prenup attorneys · the asked-to-sign lower earner · both partners get their own lawyer
Bad copy
he brought up a prenup last night. i said ok. i've been up since 2 googling “do i need my own lawyer”
you do. is he paying for yours or is that going to be a whole thing
found Neptune. you each get your own and one fee covers both of us. so it's not this huge thing
The research is all here and the 2am detail is real. But she has to read a three message exchange before she gets to the part that calms her down, and the fear about asking him to pay is buried in the middle of it. The format is carrying the line instead of the other way around.
Good copy
search: do i need my own lawyer for a prenup?
You do. And no, you're not going to have to ask him to pay for it.
One fee covers both attorneys with Neptune, so it's not this huge thing.
Opens on the exact thing she typed into Google at 2am, then answers her in the next breath. The real fear was never the legal fee, it was having to go ask him for it, and that gets named and resolved in one line.
The core of every concept is why do they care.
If your brief does not answer that, go back to research. This is the check you run on your own work before anyone else sees it, and it is the one question that gets a concept from fine to shipped.
The team
Small, loud, and kind.
We are wary of companies that claim great culture, so here are the two things we actually do.
Nobody works siloed.
Monday standup is wins, blockers, and what you are excited to brief. Say you are stuck on a concept and three people pile on. New people get named people to go to, not a general channel, and nobody makes it weird when you ask.
Everyone has a path if they want one.
Our head of people started as a strategist. One of our seniors came in as a copywriter and runs a 40% hit rate now. If you want the next level and you put the work in, it is there.
You will leave here better at this than you came in.
That is the part people tell us they valued most. Every week, someone who actually writes in this system sits down with your work and pushes on it. If getting sharper is what you are looking for right now, this is a good place to be.
The actual week
Two calls. Two deadlines. The rest is yours.
- Mon
- Team standup at 10:30am EST. Wins, blockers, what you are excited to brief. Bring ad references you liked, we all steal from each other.
- Tue
- Your research and your writing. Nobody is watching you or asking for a status update.
- Wed
- Briefs due for copy review. Revisions turn around within 24 hours.
- Thu
- Your 30 minute training call, going through the work together. Built around whatever you are stuck on that week.
- Fri
- Locked and ready for clients Monday.
Nobody clocks in. We just need you reachable during office hours so a question does not sit for six hours.
Your first month
You will be slow at first. That is the plan.
We slow-roll your first brief on purpose so you can build your confidence in the system. We want to set you up for success, and nobody needs to apologize for a normal ramp.
- Day 1
- Onboarding with our head of people. Tools, brands, where everything lives, and your first brief walked through with you rather than handed to you.
- Day 7
- Your first brief is due. It will take you longer than it will in month three, and that is expected.
- Week 2
- Most people are doing the creative strategy themselves by now. We move faster than most places, and the ramp is short because the support is heavy.
- Day 30
- A full week of briefs without hand-holding, and notes from week one showing up in your work without being repeated.
If you are behind this, someone will tell you directly and work on it with you. You will never have to guess where you stand here.
Scope
What this role is and is not.
- Not a designer. You are not in Figma building the asset.
- Not an editor. You direct the cut and pull the reference.
- Not a media buyer. You read the data, you do not own the budget.
- Not client facing. You work with our PM, not the client inbox.
- You own the thinking. Persona, angle, emotion, format.
- You own the words. Hooks and body copy, start to finish.
- You own the reference. Ad format matters here as much as the line does.
- You own your brands. One or two of them, properly.
The thing most people do not expect: how heavy the copywriting is. Nearly every strategist tells us that in their first month. The messaging is the whole job.
Levels
Everyone starts as a creative strategist.
Junior Creative Strategist, Creative Strategist, Senior Creative Strategist. This role is the middle one. Senior carries six to seven brands, writes without review, and mentors two juniors.
Everyone starts here regardless of their last title, so we can build the skills with you. If you learn fast you move fast. There is no six month waiting period.
The hit rate is not a firing metric.
We want to be extremely clear about this, because it is the thing people worry about. Nobody here has ever lost a job over it. It tells us where the skill gap is so the team can help you close it, and that is the entire point of the training calls.
The deal
Contract on one or two brands first.
We have tried dropping people into a full workload and they burn out, because the system is deeper than it looks from outside. One or two brands means you have room to ask the questions you need to ask. Then we scale you up.
- Pay is per brand, by scope of work, not hourly. You should not be penalized for being fast.
- Process: application, paid two-round work sample on a real brand, then a call with us.
About the work sample
Round one, real brand, real brief, five hooks with your reasoning. Round two, we send you one note and you resubmit inside 48 hours.
Round two is what we are looking at. Plenty of people write a decent first draft. We want to see what the work does after a note, because that is the only thing that has ever predicted how this goes. It is also a fair preview of what working together feels like.
Both rounds are paid. We are asking you to do the real work, so we pay for it.
How to apply
Send three things.
No portfolio site, no cover letter. Three things, and we read all of them ourselves.
- Three ads you wrote that spent real money. Two sentences each on who it was talking to and why it worked.
- One that flopped, and what you actually think went wrong. This is the one we care most about, and a good answer here matters more than a perfect portfolio.
- Rewrite a line. Take any line from the left column on this page and make it clear the bar. One line, no explanation.
That opens an email with the format already in it, going to Janet, our Chief of Growth and Strategy, and Mariah, our Head of People. Leave the subject line alone so it routes right. If you are close but not sure you are there yet, send it anyway and tell us what you want to learn.