Hiring · BOFU
What to Look for When Hiring Your First Content Strategist
Devansh Trivedi — 9 June 2026 · 4 min read
Hiring a first content strategist is a different decision than hiring a fifth one. A fifth hire slots into an existing system. A first hire has to build the system, and that requires a different set of skills than most job descriptions for this role actually screen for.
Ask what they’ve built, not just what they’ve written
Strong writing samples are common. Evidence of building a content function from nothing, choosing the first keywords, setting up the first process, getting the first backlinks, is much rarer, and it’s the actual job of a founding hire.
Look for someone who can make strategic tradeoffs, not just execute a brief
A founding content hire needs to decide what not to do as much as what to do: which topics to skip, which channels to ignore early, which metrics actually matter yet.
Candidates who ask you what the strategy should be, rather than proposing one, usually haven’t done this before.
Check for comfort with ambiguity and constraints
Early-stage companies rarely have clean data, a defined brand voice, or a settled audience. In regulated industries, there’s also a compliance process to work inside from day one. A candidate who has only worked with an existing playbook may struggle here, regardless of how strong their writing is.
Case study
If you want to see what this looks like in practice, here’s the function I built most recently, under compliance constraints.
Read the Planet Wealth buildWeigh proof over polish
A candidate who can point to a specific, measurable result, a Domain Rating built from zero, an AI Overview citation earned without existing brand trust, a content system that scaled past a single company, is showing you something a portfolio of writing samples alone can’t.
I’ve built this exact function from scratch, most recently tripling Planet Wealth’s Domain Rating in three months and earning an AI Overview citation for a core industry term with no existing backlink profile. If you’re hiring for this role right now, I’d like to talk with you about it.
Work with me
Hiring for this role right now?
I’ve built this function from scratch, most recently tripling Domain Rating in three months and earning an AI Overview citation with no existing brand trust. Tell me what you’re building and I’ll tell you honestly whether I’m the right fit.
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