How would you go about hiring a great SEO freelancer?

I have in the past used services like upwork, but I get these people that run my site through ahrefs or something - and give me the same recommendations as an online tool.

I'm looking for someone who:

- I would do long term planning with

- Have discussions and brainstorming sessions with

- Someone who sees that there is more to SEO than a list of titles that exceed the character limit: someone who is not looking for small immediate results but big, long-term editorial directions, trying to dissect intent, etc

It honestly just seems impossible to find someone like this without having prior connections. I feel like most upwork freelancers are only good at formulaic solutions that would apply to me (a film site) the same they would apply to a shoe company or something.

So yeah, how would you go about finding a good SEO advisor?

Also if you are this person - please drop me a message!

For background, I run a film publication that does about 500k users/month called agoodmovietowatch