Hiring Content Writers Isn’t Easy—Learn From Our Mistakes!

Before we created Workello, we were a content agency known as Content Distribution.com—a team dedicated solely to producing top-notch online content. As Content Distribution.com, we launched one of the biggest SEO campaigns ever. How big, you ask? We succeeded in growing our client from 0 to 1,000,000 organic visitors a month in under 18 months!

As we grew, the demand for content increased exponentially, so our company had to double up on hiring content writers and editors alike—in a year and a half, we recruited more than 45 people.

It soon became apparent that our hiring system wasn’t optimized to handle the rapid influx of new candidates. Our editors and content managers had to waste countless hours reviewing dozens of resumes to discern whether or not an applicant was qualified.

To hire content writers more efficiently, we needed an automated system that would streamline our hiring process. By investing $100,000+ and thousands of hours into research and development, we finally found a solution to our problems—Workello!

In the following 15 minutes, we’ll show you where you can find content writers for your team and how you can optimize your hiring funnel to avoid the trouble we had to go through!

Best Quality Content Writers for Hire—Top Job Boards for Finding Candidates

Check out our list of the best 15 job boards for hiring content writers:

Read the rest of the article, and you’ll find more than 30 other job boards where you can hire a freelance content writer.

Why It Can Be Challenging To Hire Content Writers Online

You want to find the most professional freelance writer for hire, right? So does every other company, and it’s a never-ending race to see who’ll snatch up the most qualified candidates before the competition finds them.

The best applicants always get hired faster than any platform can source them—that’s why many companies settle for less qualified ones.

Every job board is crowded with unskilled candidates, and there’s no easy way to filter them out. The only way to find top talent is by reviewing hundreds of portfolios and resumes and carefully evaluating the abilities of each applicant. It’s a time-consuming process, but you’ll have to be swift—or else a competitor might extend them a job offer before you can get to them.

When Content Distribution.com first launched, we tried searching for content writers on sites such as Upwork and Craigslist, though we always encountered the same issues:

• It was difficult to track our applicants through each stage of the hiring process
• The hiring platforms we used didn’t efficiently categorize candidates by status
• Submitted portfolios don’t accurately reflect the candidates’ real writing capabilities

The Problems We Struggled With

Regardless of the job board we used to post ads, the same problems arose. As our company expanded, we started posting job ads across several websites, including LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor, Facebook, and also via email. Applications were coming in daily from various platforms, and dealing with all these different sources had become a major problem.

No matter what we tried, it was difficult to:

• Keep track of qualified content writers
• Respond to every applicant in a timely manner
• Categorize candidates by application status
• Filter out bad content writers and reach out to good ones

There was no solution that could solve all our issues at once, so we decided to make our own.

With the same passion we had for content, we started brainstorming ideas about how the ideal hiring funnel would look like. Our company pooled all its resources, and we invested countless hours and $100,000+ into devising an automated system that would solve our hiring problems. The finished product was—Workello!

Use Pre-Hire Testing To Find the Best Writer

Regardless of what job boards you advertise on, you’ll always end up with more unqualified candidates than top ones. No applicant will admit they don’t know what they’re doing, and their portfolios will inevitably paint a positive story.

If you don’t want to hire someone and discover they’re underqualified the hard way, you need to enhance your hiring process and introduce pre-hire testing.

Tests will let you gauge the candidates’ writing quality first-hand. The issue is—with hundreds of applicants to deal with, you’ll quickly lose control and won’t know where in the funnel each candidate is. You need skill assessment software to sort that out for you. 

Workello automates the entire hiring process and provides support for hassle-free testing. You only need to create a free account and:

1. Set up your hiring funnel in under 3 minutes with the pre-configured settings
2. Add a Workello link to all your job ads (existing or new)
3. Wait for applications to arrive
4. Send tests to filter out poor candidates with impressive portfolios
5. Interview, reject, and hire candidates from your dashboard

Streamline Your Candidate Assessment Process With Workello

Workello is high-volume recruiting software that will help you set up your job post, assess candidates, send and log tests, and review them. You’ll be able to reject candidates, invite them for an interview, and extend offers without ever leaving your dashboard.

Workello can help you test content writers, regardless of your specific needs. With our pre-hire assessment software, you can test copywriters, SEO copywriters, SEO writers, and technical writers. Need to fill other roles on your content team? Test content marketers and related roles in Workello effortlessly.

Sign up for Workello for free and streamline your hiring process effortlessly.

Hiring Funnel of a Top 1% Hiring Agency 

Our previous system just wasn’t working, and we had to do something about it. That’s why we broke down the process to understand what we were doing wrong.

This is was our thought-pattern:

1. The number of monthly visitors is in direct correlation with the amount of quality content we publish
2. Only top-performing content writers can create superb content
3. To find the best content writers for hire, we need to review dozens of applications
4. Hiring good candidates means filtering out bad ones quickly
5. Sorting out unqualified content writers fast was immensely difficult

At the end of the day, content writers will apply for your job ads—the hard part consisted in efficiently sorting out those applications to spot talented candidates and disqualify unskilled ones.

What Workello Offers

As we wanted to create a well-rounded system that would encompass all features necessary for our new hiring funnel to work, we jotted down a list of those features:

1. A single platform that would gather applications from all your different hiring channels in one place
2. A system that would enable us to sort candidates by status and track how many candidates we have in each stage of our hiring funnel
3. A uniform dashboard that can be used for assessing, testing, rejecting, inviting to interview, and finally hiring content writers
4. An option to automatically send content writing tests that would allow us to spot bad applicants with outstanding resumes
5. An well-tuned communications system that would automatically inform candidates of any status change and help move them further down the hiring funnel with far less effort

Before we conceived Workello, we used Google Sheets + Google Forms + Zapier. It was better than what we had before, but it could still be improved.

A Good Content Writer Job Description Goes a Long Way

Bad applicants will always apply for your job ads—you can’t avoid it entirely, but you can considerably lower their number by putting together a highly detailed and specific job description.

To increase your chances of attracting a capable freelance writer, it is necessary to state the precise requirements and demands of the position you’re offering. Say what amount of prior job experience is preferred, and what additional technical skills a candidate needs to perform in their role successfully.

Great freelance writers get hired in the blink of an eye—state the salary you’re offering, the possibilities for getting a raise, as well as any other incentives that would make a qualified candidate work for you instead of another company!

If you’re not sure what your job description should look like or don’t know the exact nature of the role you’re seeking, Workello’s knowledge base offers a thorough selection of pre-made job description templates that you can use with minor modifications. Here are some examples:

• Writer
• Content Writer
• Technical Writer
• Copywriter
• Research Writer
• Fashion Writer
• Freelance Writer
• Catalog Writer
• Instructional Writer
• Senior Writer
• Staff Writer
• Business Writer
• Course Writer
• SEO Writer
• Senior Copywriter

Distribute Your Job Ad Across the Internet

When our company started hiring writers for content, we didn’t have a role dedicated to searching for qualified candidates. Our content managers had their hands full with posting ads on numerous job boards. This wasn’t tough, but it was tedious and time-consuming.

Our company continued to grow, and the additional hiring responsibilities began to take a toll on our content managers and editors. The whole process became unmanageable, as they took more and more time off their primary duties in our search for high-quality writers.

You can delegate this responsibility to a specialized Recruitment Manager, but you’ll first have to document the hiring process and provide them proper training.

Don’t worry—we’ve already documented the entire process, so you won’t need to research it on your own!

When you register for Workello for free, you’ll be able to access our playbooks and use our example to delegate posting job ads to someone else!

A Well-Integrated Dashboard Will Make Your Hiring Process Easier!

Regardless of the hiring platform where a candidate sees your job ad, their application will end up in the same place—your Workello dashboard! Using our Workello-hosted application form ensures that all submittals arrive in the same format. It also eliminates the possibility of incomplete applications!

With this simple method, you can disseminate your job ads across as many hiring platforms as you’d like—all applications will arrive in the same format, and your content managers can easily review and assess a candidate’s resume!

You can see what the application form looks like here.

Watch Candidates Stream In

Workello lets you move candidates through your hiring funnel from a single dashboard. It can be used to evaluate, test, set up interviews, and hire candidates by selecting the appropriate option from the drop-down toolbar.

As they go through the hiring funnel, your applicants can have the following statuses:

1. Application Received
2. Application Rejected
3. Test Candidate
4. Test Complete
5. Reject Candidate
6. Interview Candidate
7. Send Offer

The fact that it’s color-coded allows you to see how many people are in each stage of your hiring funnel.

Reject Unqualified Content Writers

Once a candidate sends their application and it appears in your Workello dashboard, you can grant your content managers access to the Workello account so they may assess it.

If it isn’t up to your company’s hiring standard, your managers can easily reject the applicant by changing their hiring status to “Application Rejected”. Workello will automatically send them a pre-generated message informing them that your company won’t be hiring them.

The automated process eliminates the possibility of human error, and it also simplifies the repetitive task of manually informing each rejected candidate.

Point, Click, Test

A portfolio may provide you with insight into a candidate’s prior experience, but it usually doesn’t paint the full picture of their content writing capabilities. Bear in mind that your applicant’s portfolios will probably be edited heavily, so they only show their best work—they don’t won’t show you their first drafts, which usually display their abilities more accurately.

As we started hiring content writers, we didn’t test them at first. This was a big mistake—we hired with only their portfolios to go on, and ended up hiring subpar candidates who weren’t the right fit for the job. Editors had to heavily revise their work, and we lost a lot of money on unusable content.

That’s why we introduced an automated testing system. When you change your candidate’s status to Test Candidate, Workello will send them an automated email that will:

1. Congratulate them on making it to the next phase in the hiring funnel
2. Send them a link to the content writing test

Using our test as a starting point, you can tweak and adjust it according to your hiring needs. For example, you could add specific formatting guidelines and instructions for the topic they’ll write about. Our test looked like this:

How To Make a Good Test

A competent content writer is probably used to writing tests and will be more than glad to show you an example of their work. To gauge their abilities, you should test their:

1. Language expertise (spelling, grammar, etc.)
2. Research abilities
3. Formatting skills

A good test should be comprehensive enough to test every ability that the content writing role demands. It should be exhaustive, but not exhausting—after all, even a seasoned content writer will be discouraged knowing that they’re putting too much effort into a test for a job they may not get.

Fortunately, Workello allows you to be thorough with your test while also maintaining balance with the candidates’ willingness to complete it. Applicants value transparency, openness, and effectiveness—which are all qualities of Workello’s hiring process! If candidates know they’re dealing with a professional company, they will have greater incentive to complete a more detailed test.

If you’re unsure of what a good test looks like, just swipe the one we employ in our hiring process.

Interviewing Candidates

When an applicant turns in the finished test, Workello will change their status to Test Complete, and your managers can then evaluate the quality of their work.

Depending on how good or bad they did the test, you can immediately reject the candidate by updating their status to Reject Candidate or proceed to invite them to an interview by using the Interview Candidate option. If you choose to interview them, Workello will send the candidate a message with a link to Calendly, where they can schedule a Zoom meeting

The Candidate Status Page

One of the usual problems that come up when hiring candidates is the inefficacy of many platforms’ communications systems.

With Workello, your applicants have access to a well-integrated Candidate Status page that contains all information they need to track their progress through the hiring funnel.

Since they have access to the Candidate Status page, you won’t be receiving dozens of emails from candidates wondering about their status. You also won’t need to worry about a quality content writer slipping past you due to inefficient communication!

The Candidate Status page looks like this.

Our Investment Paid Off Big Time

When our company started hiring content writers, there wasn’t any system in place that could help us employ quality candidates with ease.

Our company was growing rapidly, and we had to hire new writers. We started posting job listings on multiple platforms, but problems arose as soon we began receiving applications. We couldn’t track the ever-increasing stream of new applicants, which caused us to miss out on many skilled content writers.

Our content managers were overtasked with manually posting job ads and devising writing tests, drastically reducing the performance of their main duties.

We often received incomplete application forms, and there seemed to be no end to our troubles. That’s why we decided to create our own solution—Workello!

After investing limitless hours and more than $100,000 into R&D, we finally succeeded in creating a fully automated system that helped us:

1. Grow our content team from 1 to 45 people in just 2 years
2. Lower the cost of our content output by up to 75%
3. Execute one of the greatest SEO campaigns of all time
4. Enabled our content managers and editors to focus on their primary duties

We went through hell and back devising the optimal hiring channel—now, for the price of a single content page, you won’t have to!

Log in to Workello for free! You can start receiving new candidates in less than 3 minutes pronto!

Best Content Writers To Hire—Other Hiring Websites

Using Workello, you can distribute your job ads across various different networks—after all, they’ll end up in your Workello dashboard regardless of their source! Here is a copious list of other hiring platforms that might interest you:

• Copify
• Journalism Jobs
• Storyhackers
• Writers Work
• HireMyMom
• Clarity
• NASW
• The Writer Finder
• Mediabistro
• Editorial Freelancers Association
• Staffing agencies
• WriterAccess
• Pitchwhiz
• Freelance Content Marketing Writer group
• Society of Professional Journalists
• Certified Writers
• Freelancer
• Masthead Media
• Alexis Grant Media
• ContentGrow
• Zerys
• NAHJ
• NABJ
• Pod Reacher
• Scripted
• Virtual Assistant Finder
• FinCon Community
• CloudPeeps
• Craigslist
• WriteLife Facebook group
• Muck Rack
• Skyword
• Scribewise
• ASJA
• PeoplePerHour