Mod Cooperative

Okay I need some help from my fellow mods.

I and another woman run an RPG together. She advertised for a character and someone brought them in. Now we went over the app, the samples were fine, not perfect, but definitely acceptable. Once she started playing with them, it became obvious that the samples were of a higher quality than her actual roleplaying.

Now my co-mod feels like she's in a difficult situation, since she asked someone to bring in this character for one of hers, and this player did.

But how do we handle this? Should she talk to the player first? Should we handle it as a mod situation from the very beginning? I know that sometimes we have to be mean as mods and set our foot down, but in this case, I'd prefer to take a compassionate route first.

Any help would be appreciated.