You get a job as a copywriter — an in-house role at one company or a position at an agency serving multiple clients — largely the same way you’d land most writing or marketing jobs: build a portfolio that proves you can write to a brief, target the kind of role you actually want, and apply directly rather than waiting for the right posting to find you. A resume and cover letter get you past an initial screen. The portfolio is usually what gets you hired, because it’s the only part of the application that demonstrates you can do the work instead of just describing that you can.
That’s worth separating out before anything else: this page is about getting hired as an employee, not about freelancing. Freelance copywriting runs on a different set of skills — finding your own clients, pricing projects, managing several relationships at once — covered in What Is Freelance Copywriting?. If you haven’t decided which path you want yet, read that first, because everything below assumes you’re after a salaried role, not a client pipeline.
In-House vs. Agency: What Each One Expects From You
Both are employee roles. The full three-way comparison against freelance work lives on What Is Freelance Copywriting? — here’s what changes about your pitch depending on which of the two you’re targeting.
In-house means one employer, one voice. You write for a single company’s products, campaigns, and channels across a wide range of formats over time. Hiring managers here look for real, specific interest in their industry or product, not just general writing ability, since you’ll be writing in that one brand voice long-term.
Agency means one employer, many voices. You write for multiple client businesses, often across different industries at once. What a copywriting agency actually does varies by shop, but agencies typically hire for a different core skill than in-house teams: switching brand voice convincingly from one account to the next, sometimes within the same week.
Neither is a stepping stone to the other — plenty of copywriters build an entire career in one or the other. Aim your portfolio and pitch accordingly: depth and industry fluency for in-house, range and adaptability for agency.
What Employers Actually Screen For
Job postings vary in wording, but most hiring managers are checking for the same handful of things:
- A portfolio that matches the role. Not proof you can write in general — samples close to what the job requires: web copy for a web copy role, email sequences for a lifecycle role.
- Evidence you can write to a brief, not just write well. Taking a set of constraints — audience, goal, format, brand voice — and producing something that fits all of them is a different discipline from writing polished sentences on your own terms.
- Editing and self-editing. Cutting your own weak lines before someone else has to is a different skill from drafting, and it shows in how tight your samples are.
- Basic collaboration signals. Copywriters rarely work alone, so comfort taking feedback and working from a brief someone else wrote matters more than a job posting usually lets on.
- Some structural and SEO literacy, especially for roles tied to a company’s website — not specialist-level, but enough to know how headlines, subheads, and affect whether copy gets read.
What skills copywriting actually requires breaks this list down in more depth if you want the fuller picture before you start applying.
Make Your Portfolio Do the Work of Getting You Hired
A portfolio built to land freelance clients and one built to land a job aren’t identical, though the underlying advice is the same: a small number of strong, relevant samples, presented clearly. How to build a copywriting portfolio covers that foundation in full. A few things matter specifically when the portfolio’s job is to get you hired rather than get you booked:
Lead with samples close to the job, not your favorite work. If you’re applying for an email marketing role, three solid email sequences do more for you than one email, one ad, and one , even if the landing page is your strongest piece.
Don’t let “no client work yet” stop you from applying. Spec pieces — copy you wrote for a real business without being hired to do it — are a standard, accepted way to fill a thin portfolio, as long as they’re clearly labeled as speculative. If you’re starting from genuinely nothing, how to become a copywriter with no experience walks through building that first set of samples.
Match the format to how it’ll get reviewed. A hiring manager skimming dozens of applications needs to find your best work in seconds — a simple, well-organized page or PDF usually beats something elaborate that takes longer to load.
Where to Actually Find Copywriting Jobs
Copywriting jobs surface through more channels than a single job board search, and relying on just one narrows your options more than you’d expect:
- Company and agency career pages, especially for employers you already know — going direct sometimes surfaces roles before they’re posted more broadly, and agencies don’t always list openings on general boards.
- General and marketing-specific job boards, searched under a range of terms — “copywriter,” “content writer,” “brand writer,” and similar titles get used inconsistently for what’s functionally the same role.
- LinkedIn, both for postings and the network effect — a referral or direct message to someone on a team you’re interested in often surfaces roles that never get formally posted.
- Marketing and writing communities, where leads frequently circulate before they reach public job boards.
- Recruiters who specialize in marketing or creative roles, who often know about openings that aren’t listed publicly, particularly for agency positions.
Casting a wide net matters more here than in some fields, since the same role gets described under enough different titles that a narrow search misses real openings.
Tailoring Your Application and What the Interview Process Usually Involves
A generic cover letter is one of the fastest ways to get filtered out, because it’s also one of the easiest things for a hiring manager to spot. What works is a version that engages with the specific company or agency — something specific about their brand voice, product, or existing copy, not a paragraph that could be sent to any company hiring any copywriter.
The interview process commonly includes a portfolio walkthrough — explaining your choices, not just showing finished pieces — a conversation about how you approach a brief or handle feedback, and, increasingly, some kind of live or timed writing exercise. That last piece exists to test what a take-home sample can’t: how you think and write under real constraints, without unlimited time to revise.
How AI Is Changing Copywriter Hiring
One shift worth knowing about if you’re job hunting right now: AI has changed parts of the hiring process itself, not just the writing process. Some employers now screen applications with AI-assisted tools before a human ever reviews them, which makes a specific, tailored application more valuable than ever — a generic cover letter is exactly what those tools are built to deprioritize. It’s also increasingly common for hiring managers to ask directly how you use AI in your own workflow, since many copywriting jobs now assume at least some familiarity with AI drafting tools.
The live or timed writing exercises above are partly a response to this: a polished take-home sample is easier to produce with AI assistance than it used to be, so some employers weight live writing more heavily to see unassisted judgment directly. None of this changes what gets you hired — a portfolio that fits the role and evidence you can write to a brief — but expect AI to come up somewhere in the process. For the broader question of what AI does and doesn’t replace, see will AI replace copywriters.
Common Questions
Do I need a portfolio to get an in-house or agency copywriting job?
Yes, practically speaking. Even for entry-level roles, most hiring managers want to see writing samples before extending an interview, not just a resume describing your writing ability. How to build a copywriting portfolio covers what belongs in it, including how to fill it with spec work if you don’t have client or employer samples yet.
Is it harder to get a copywriting job with no experience?
It’s harder than applying with a track record, but it isn’t unusual — every working copywriter started with an empty portfolio at some point. The main adjustment is leaning more heavily on spec work and being upfront that it’s speculative rather than paid. How to become a copywriter with no experience covers that path specifically.
Should I apply to in-house roles or agencies first?
There’s no universally correct order — it depends on what you want out of the role. In-house roles generally reward depth in one brand or industry; agency roles generally reward range across several. If you’re not sure, apply to both and notice which process feels like a better fit.
Do I need a degree to get hired as a copywriter?
No specific degree is required, and copywriters come from a wide range of academic backgrounds. What most hiring managers weigh far more heavily is the portfolio — concrete evidence you can write persuasively for a real audience — over where or whether you went to school.
Is it better to freelance first and get a job later, or the other way around?
Both are common paths, and neither is inherently better — it depends on what you’re optimizing for. Freelancing first builds a portfolio and client-facing experience but comes with less predictable income early on. Applying for jobs first gets you standard employment structure sooner, usually inside someone else’s brand voice rather than your own client mix. Is copywriting a good career covers that broader trade-off if you’re still weighing it.