A 45-minute content and growth intern assessment
A useful content and growth assessment asks a candidate to make one realistic decision, create one small artifact, and explain how they would learn from the result. It should not ask an unpaid intern applicant to build an entire campaign for your business. Give everyone the same context, time budget, permitted tools, and scoring guide; allow an accommodation path.
Here is a complete fictional exercise a recruiter can adapt. The details are deliberately invented so a candidate does not need insider knowledge. The Badal role playbooks offer related exercises for growth, lifecycle, and other roles; choose one that matches the actual job.
Candidate brief: Harbor's first-week activation
Harbor helps independent restaurant owners turn missed calls into confirmed reservations. Owners are busy during dinner service; some callers hang up before staff can answer. Harbor can answer an incoming inquiry and request a booking, but it cannot promise that every call becomes a booking. A two-week pilot is available. The team has a small test budget and no reliable customer benchmark yet.
Audience: An owner of one restaurant who takes reservations by phone.
Goal: Motivate a qualified owner to request a pilot call.
Time budget: 45 minutes.
Tools: Writing tools and AI assistance are allowed, but tell us what you used and make the final work your own.
Submit: (1) A paid social ad with primary text, headline, CTA, and visual concept; (2) a landing-page headline, subheadline, CTA, and three support points; (3) a 100–150 word note explaining the customer pain, one test audience, one primary metric, and what result would prompt a revision.
Do not: invent conversion rates, customer testimonials, guarantees, or features absent from this brief.
The constraints are part of the test. A candidate should make a clear case without pretending to possess evidence the company has not supplied.
What a response might look like
One reasonable ad angle is “Dinner rush should not send reservations to voicemail.” The visual could contrast a ringing phone behind a busy counter with a confirmed booking notification. A landing page might lead with “Take reservation inquiries while your team serves guests,” followed by a clear explanation of how the pilot works and a “See the pilot” CTA. This is not a model answer to copy. Another candidate could reasonably focus on a different pain, such as staff interruptions, if they explain it well.
The candidate's note should connect the creative to a test. For instance: “I would first target single-location restaurants that take bookings by phone. I would measure qualified pilot requests per landing-page visit, inspect call-to-action clicks and form completion, and ask the sales team whether those requests match the target. If visitors click the ad but leave before reading the offer, I would check whether the ad promises something the page does not clearly explain.”
Score what the job needs
| Criterion | 1: limited | 3: workable | 5: strong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer insight | Generic “businesses need AI” claim | Names a plausible restaurant pain | Shows a specific moment, consequence, and audience |
| Copy clarity | Vague or jargon-heavy | Understandable benefit and action | Sharp, accurate, consistent ad-to-page message |
| Product fidelity | Invents features or guarantees | Mostly stays within the brief | Makes the offer persuasive without unsupported claims |
| Experiment design | Says “run ads and see” | Names an audience and metric | Defines a useful learning signal and next decision |
| Ownership of reasoning | Little explanation | Explains major choices | Connects choices, uncertainty, and revision plan |
Set the rubric before inviting candidates. Two reviewers can independently score a sample and discuss differences using evidence from the response. Do not treat polished graphic design as a hidden requirement if the role is primarily copy and operations.
Adapt the exercise to the role
For a lifecycle marketing intern, replace the ad with two onboarding emails and ask how the candidate would segment users and QA links. For an operations-focused role, ask for a simple handoff checklist after a pilot request arrives. Keep the exercise to the stated time budget. If the actual work requires campaign analytics, supply a small fictional data table rather than assuming a candidate can access your production dashboard.
The EEOC's selection guidance describes work samples and simulations as selection methods; keep yours connected to actual duties and review local rules with qualified counsel. When using AI to score submissions, treat the output as evidence for a human decision rather than an automatic hiring verdict.
Put it into Badal
Badal can send passing Stage 1 applicants a private assessment link. A recruiter can choose a template or define an assessment_spec for a role with exercise title, instructions, and response questions. Include the context block above, the time budget, permitted tools, and a way to request accommodation in the candidate instructions. Ask for the three deliverables in separate response questions where useful. The recruiter should review the final invitation wording and candidate-facing organization and role names.
Agent recipe
Ask for the real audience, product, first-month tasks, time budget, allowed tools, and whether any company facts may be shared. Draft a fictional or approved brief, output schema, and 0–5 anchored rubric. Ask the recruiter to approve the assignment before creating or updating the campaign. Use the live API documentation and agent guide for assessment_spec; never place the recruiter API key in an assessment or candidate message.
Frequently asked questions
Can candidates use AI?
They can if the team allows it. State the rule up front and score the final reasoning and accuracy. If tool use matters to the job, ask how the candidate checked what the tool produced.
Should the exercise use our real brand?
Only if the necessary facts can be shared and the task is small enough to be fair. A fictional but realistic brief often tests the same skill while avoiding unpaid production work.
What if a candidate takes longer than 45 minutes?
Tell candidates the expected time and scope. If your team needs a longer task, reconsider whether it belongs later in the process, whether it should be compensated, and whether the additional time truly improves the decision.
Next: Use a structured interview to ask candidates about choices and tradeoffs in their submission.
Badal turns a recruiter conversation into a public form, evidence-based screening, a practical assessment, and a reviewable candidate report.
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