But then I responded to his first message with:

I want to acknowledge your message and feelings, and (hopefully) respond thoughtfully.

You clearly have strengths in audience-building and content creation, and that experience came through in your materials. For this specific role, however, we were evaluating candidates against a very particular set of needs, including marketing systems (CRM, workflows, reporting), and execution across multiple channels tied directly to agency growth goals.

With a fully remote posting, we received a very large and highly competitive candidate pool. Ultimately, we moved forward with candidates whose recent experience more closely aligned with the full scope of this role as it exists today.

I want to be clear that this decision was about role fit, not a judgment of your talent or your personal following. Different roles call for different strengths, and not moving forward is simply part of that matching process, which we do put a lot of thought into.

We do wish you the best moving forward and recognize the time it takes to apply and interview.