Why is it so hard to hire a decent marketer?

I’m bootstrapping a startup, and I need to get an honest take from other founders because my second hiring round on Contra just completely burned 3 days.

My first experience with Contra was actually brilliant. I posted a project to revamp our pitch deck, and the response was fantastic. I ended up with a shortlist of almost 25 exceptionally talented people. It was honestly hard to pick just one because everyone I spoke to was so sharp and good at what they did. It felt collaborative, easy, and worthwhile.

Because of that success, I had high expectations for this second project. Instead, it turned out to be a complete waste of time.

We are building CRITER.AI to help international students deal with the stress of Australian student visa applications. We’re in our beta phase and trying to hit a simple target: recruit 400 prospective students to complete an intake form, after which we give each student $500 in credits to test out during the beta. Because of where international students come from, our marketing needed to be properly targeted on TikTok, Facebook, and LinkedIn across five specific countries: India, China, Nepal, Brazil, and Colombia.

A few things really caught me off guard:

First, the endless copy-pasted AI proposals. I work in AI every day and I’ve spent over a year training models myself, so I spot LLM text straight away. I’m not AI-Phobic by any stretch, but the irony of getting so many identical, robotic pitches for a human-focused marketing role was frustrating.

Second, the expectation of being paid upfront to test ideas. Coming from a legal background where I worked "no win, no fee" for years, I don't get paid unless I deliver tangible results. I’m not looking for free labour, (what's that mantra, you get what you pay for?). But almost every marketer bidding on this wanted to be paid upfront just to experiment or try out a few ideas. Anyone can generate 20 campaign ideas in a chatbot for free in 30 seconds.

We are handing out genuine value ($500 in credits per student), so the offer for students is already strong upon signing up: https://forms.gle/dLZq2xMqbwxrXWtUA

I don't want to pay someone to play around with my budget; I need execution, regional context, and performance tied to actual results like getting students to complete the form.

To top it off, Contra's team emailed me offering to send "handpicked personnel" to help. I thought that would save me time. They sent over a list, and literally every single one of those handpicked freelancers replied saying they were either too busy or the project wasn't for them. What's the point of curated matching if the talent isn't even available?

The final stats on my dashboard were 200+ applicants, 104 marked "not a fit", 77 messaged, 3 shortlisted, and zero hires made.

I did chat with a couple of people I genuinely liked, but I can already tell it’s going to end the same way, where everyone wants to get paid for ideation instead of proof and results. At this point, I'm just going to close the job post without hiring anyone and rethink how to do this myself.

For other bootstrapped founders out there

How on earth are you hiring growth talent who are actually willing to tie compensation to real deliverables, without wading through a sea of lazy copy-paste applications?

Also, shout out to those who completed the form, even though they had no interest in beta testing the product. Like that was so funny!😂

Currently working on structuring and optimizing recruitment databases using PCRecruiter. This project involves organizing advanced candidate rollups, managing targeted outreach lists for business development and candidate solicitations, and streamlining pipeline segmentation to ensure seamless day-to-day recruitment operations.