Technical abilities

• Programme auditing and performance diagnostics [8.5/10]: Abhilasha's audit instincts are solid and follow a logical order that comes from real practice. When she walked through her process for inheriting an existing program, she went straight to attribution setup, reversal tracking, and commission structure before touching publisher performance, which is the right sequence. She also thinks in terms of categorisation, segmenting publishers by revenue tier and funnel position, so she has a usable starting point for any activation or pruning decisions. The 120-affiliate scenario gave us a clearer view of how she operates under ambiguity. She mapped the active 15 by revenue contribution, factored in onboarding recency before deciding what to remove, and set clear thresholds (14 days for clicks, a month for revenue) before drawing conclusions. When asked about traffic being down across the board, she zoomed out first to consider macro factors using the post-COVID market shift as a reference point, then narrowed in to ad copy, landing pages, creative rotation, and A/B testing. We think her diagnostic instincts are well-calibrated for this level of experience, and she can hold the bigger picture alongside the detail without getting lost in either.

• Publisher recruitment and relationship management [8/10]: Abhilasha has a practical and well-considered framework for recruitment that adjusts depending on where a program sits in its lifecycle. For a new program, she leans toward top and mid-funnel publishers to build visibility; for a scaling one, she tilts toward bottom-funnel partners like cashback, coupon, and comparison sites where purchase intent is already present. She also factors in audience demographics, geographic traffic sources, content category alignment, and whether competitors are already active on a given publisher, which gives her selection decisions a commercial logic that goes beyond pattern matching. On the outreach side, she described sending a comprehensive first email covering commission rates, available offers, seasonality calendars, logos, and creatives, with an open invitation to jump on a call. For a disengaged publisher, she tried email, then phone, then CPA reduction as a last escalation before removing them from the program. We feel her instinct to exhaust relationship channels before making structural changes is the right one, and her understanding that strong relationships can absorb short-term commission gaps reflects how affiliate partnerships actually work in practice.

• Client communication and account ownership [9/10]: This is probably where Abhilasha feels most natural and most confident. She has a structured communication rhythm in place, including weekly reports on Mondays, monthly performance summaries, campaign period-over-period reviews, and QBRs where she pushes for budget conversations. The advice she carried from a former CMO, that no update is also an update, comes through in how she manages client expectations, and it's the kind of mindset that prevents small silences from turning into account friction. When handling the commission pushback scenario, she built her case using sale amount, conversion rate, average order value, and clicks to argue for situational commissioning on high-performing publishers, and she was willing to take that back to the publisher too, giving them a performance-linked path to a higher CPA rather than just delivering bad news. We believe what comes through most here is that she genuinely sees herself as a liaison between advertiser and publisher, and she keeps both sides in mind without losing sight of who she's ultimately accountable to. She's commercially grounded and comfortable having difficult conversations when the data supports her position.

• Programme strategy and prioritisation [8/10]: When presented with the live scenario involving a sustainable lifestyle brand mid-migration, Abhilasha's thinking was organised and she understood the risks that come with a platform move. Her first instinct was to audit before the migration happened, and she correctly flagged content and editorial partners as the most vulnerable relationships to protect during the transition. She planned a structured communication rollout to keep publishers informed, flagged sub-network compliance as something to address early, and identified niche sustainability-aligned influencers as the right activation route for a brand with that kind of positioning. We feel her ability to read the brand's context and adapt her approach to its specific needs comes through well in this scenario. She also capped her first 30-day scope to understanding and audit rather than action, which is exactly the right call before making any structural changes to a program you've just inherited. Beyond the live scenario, her background in building a machine learning model for publisher recruitment and a Tableau dashboard for competitor offer tracking suggests she can operate above the day-to-day execution layer when given the space and tools to do so.

Areas of growth