Hiring Content Writers Is Tough—We Know How To Make It Easy!

In 2019, we were a one-man content team that took on an ambitious SEO project. The project became one of the most successful SEO campaigns ever. By 2021, we scaled the project from 0 to 1,500,000 organic monthly visitors. To make this possible, we had to produce high volumes of top-notch content, which in turn meant growing our one-man team into an agency of 45+ Content Writers and Editors—and doing it fast.

Scaling your business from 1 to 45+ employees in 18 months is a tough task—not having an efficient hiring process turned it into a nightmare.

Now, with countless hours and $100,000+ invested into an automated hiring funnel, we can find top-quality Content Writers effortlessly. In the next few minutes, we’ll show you how you can do the same.

The Best Websites To Find Content Writers

Here’s everything you need to know about the top 15 job boards for finding Content Writers:

Continue reading the article to find 35 extra websites where you can hire a Content Writer.

Why Finding Content Writers Is Such a Struggle

The biggest problem with hiring a Content Writer is that you’re not the only one doing it. Like Developers, the best Content Writers get off the market quickly, and no job board can source new ones at the same pace.

As a result, over 90% of writing candidates on any hiring platform are underqualified. To get to the best ones before they accept someone else’s offer, you have to evaluate and test each candidate fast.

That’s easy to do with a couple of applicants, but when 100+ apply from various boards, it’ll become impossible—that’s what happened to us.

Our initial platform of choice was Upwork, but we soon realized we had to incorporate others as well. Regardless of which job platform we used, or how many, we always struggled with the same problems:

• We couldn’t sort candidates by status
• There were no specific settings for looking up Content Writers
• Portfolios often didn’t match the candidates’ actual first draft capabilities
• We couldn’t track candidates by status
• It was difficult to log and respond to all candidates
• We struggled with following up with promising candidates
• We couldn’t keep track of candidates we liked initially
• The number of poor candidates was still too high

We figured out that it was us investing time, money, and effort into our work that made our SEO project successful, and there was none of that going into our hiring process. We decided to change that.

Investing time, money, and brainpower into an automated hiring funnel tailored to a content team’s needs resulted in Workello.

Pre-Employment Testing Is Difficult—You Can Make It Easy

With every job listing, you get a bundle of applications from unqualified candidates—with writing positions, the number of such candidates grows exponentially.

It’s difficult to understand how good someone is at writing from their portfolio alone—nobody shares their worst examples and unedited work. You need to introduce pre-hire testing to gauge your candidates’ skill set. If they can’t write a stellar test, how can they create high-quality content?

If you go down this route, you’ll need assistance. Keeping track of hundreds of candidates, sending and collecting tests, taking care of correspondence—it quickly turns into a disaster if you do it manually. Reliable skill assessment software will keep you organized and allow you to focus on other tasks. 

Workello is a high-volume recruiting solution that will help you automate assessments and the hiring process in general. Here’s how it works:

1. Sign up for free and set up your hiring funnel in under 3 minutes
2. Post job ads on your favorite job platforms and add a Workello link
3. Review applications from your dashboard
4. Send tests to filter high-quality writers from bad ones quickly
5. Reject, interview, and hire the best applicants

Hire the Top 1% Fast With Workello’s Pre-Hire Assessments

With Workello, you can assess, test, reject, interview, and hire candidates with a single click—all actions are available on your single-page dashboard. Move candidates through the funnel by changing their application status, and Workello will do the rest.

You can use our platform to send out copywriting, content writing, and technical writing tests automatically. If you’re looking for someone in the SEO department, make sure to test your SEO writers and SEO copywriters. Workello also supports content marketer testing.

Use our free trial and cut your hiring costs in half with an automated hiring funnel.

Hiring Funnel of a Top 1% Hiring Agency

We went back to the drawing board and decided to break down our entire business process to see where the problem was. Here’s what we came up with:

1. Generating millions of organic visitors per month required top-quality content 
2. Producing relevant, valuable content that ranks required top-quality Content Writers
3. Hiring the best Content Writers meant going through hundreds of applications
4. Identifying the best Content Writers among hundreds of applications meant filtering out unqualified candidates quickly
5. Identifying and removing bad Writers from our hiring funnel—we didn’t have an answer to that

With so many job boards and Writers available, we never struggled with receiving applications—we struggled with handling them.

We wanted to come up with a system that would let us handle hundreds of applications without any difficulties. We identified the following features that had to be included:

1. A uniform platform that would collect all applications in one place, regardless of the job board
2. An optimized system that would let us sort candidates and change their status with a single click
3. A single access point to evaluate, test, interview, and hire Content Writers
4. A writing test sent automatically to spot poor Writers with great portfolios
5. Automated communication that would remove the chance of human error and save time on email correspondence

We started with Google Sheets + Google Forms + Zapier. It was an improvement, but we wanted to create something that would meet our needs fully.

Write Your Job Description Copy for Content Writers

The first step toward getting the best candidate is writing a good job description. 

Unqualified candidates will get dissuaded by an in-depth description that has a detailed list of qualifications and responsibilities. The fewer bad applications you have, the easier it will be to get to the good ones and hire the best candidate.

When writing your job description, try to be as specific as possible. Mention all the responsibilities the role will entail and list out the criteria applicants need to meet will lower the number of unwanted candidates.

The description should also include the expected word count, the industry/topics they’ll cover, and any industry-specific knowledge, if necessary. This is important because someone can be a phenomenal fashion blogger, but they would be of little use to you if you needed a B2B Writer.

You should also include any benefits and perks you offer in your job description to attract top talent and make them want to work for you over someone else.

If you don’t know how to write a job ad or if you need a more specific role, you can turn to our comprehensive job description template database. When you click on the title of a role, you can copy our template and adapt it slightly to fit your company before you can post it online!

• Content Writer
• Technical Writer
• Copywriter
• Writer
• Digital Content Writer
• Freelance Writer
• E-Commerce Content Writer
• Staff Writer
• Law Firm Content Writer
• Senior Writer
• Course Writer
• Website Content Writer
• SEO Writing
• Catalog Writer
• Business Writer

Distribute Your Job Ad Across the Internet

When we started expanding our team, our Content Managers and Editors were in charge of posting job ads on various websites. It’s not a difficult task, but they had to spend up to two hours on this, which they could have otherwise dedicated to creating content.

It was difficult to hire someone new to handle the recruitment because they weren’t familiar with our hiring process and we had to document everything first. We spent hundreds of hours putting together enablement documentation. The good news is—you don’t need to do the same!

When you sign up for Workello for free, you’ll be able to access our playbooks and delegate recruitment to someone else in an instant!

What Workello Dashboard Can Do for You

Your unique Workello dashboard acts as a single point of access for all your applications. Regardless of how many job boards you use, they will all show up in your dashboard, so you won’t have to waste time checking all the different job boards daily and logging all new applications manually.

Using a Workello-hosted application form ensures that all applications are submitted in the same format, meaning that candidates are no longer able to submit incomplete applications and that you will no longer have to reach out for further information.

Take a look at our application example.

Watch Candidates Stream In

The single-page dashboard acts as your access point to your entire hiring process. Without leaving the dashboard, you will be able to complete the entire selection process by evaluating candidates, testing them, inviting them for an interview, and extending an offer to the best ones.

You’ll be able to do that by changing their candidate status from the drop-down menu. The available options are:

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

Once you move them around, you’ll notice that candidate statuses are color-coded so that you see how many applicants you have in each stage of the funnel at a glance.

Reject Unqualified Content Writers

Some candidates are underqualified to the point of there being no need to test them. Your Editors and Content Managers can remove such candidates from the picture by changing their status to “Application Rejected.”

This will trigger a polite, automated email that notifies the candidate about the unsuccessful application. With a notification being emailed automatically, candidates won’t reach out asking about their application statuses, and you won’t have to spend time informing them manually.

Point, Click, Test

If a candidate passes the initial evaluation, that doesn’t mean you should extend an offer instantly. Many poor candidates can boast seemingly perfect portfolios. That’s because they include only their best work that’s been edited at least once.

The portfolio doesn’t show you their 1st draft quality, which you can see only through testing.

When we first started hiring, we didn’t have a testing phase. We were gullible enough to believe candidates’ portfolios, and we had to pay a heavy price. We wasted thousands of dollars on unusable content that our Editors had to rewrite from scratch. This was on our minds when we created Workello.

When you change a candidate’s status to “Test Candidate,” Workello will send them an automated email that will:

1. Congratulate them on reaching the next stage
2. Include a link to the test

Once they open the test page, they’ll see something like this:

How To Make a Good Test

When creating a test, you should focus on the following skills of a Content Writer:

1. Language proficiency
2. Research skills
3. Article formatting

A good test needs to be a balance between the thoroughness of testing and a candidate’s willingness to complete the test.

It’s no use creating a detailed, 2,500-word test that nobody will complete. Most people will decide against spending 8+ hours working on a test assignment for a job they might not get.

When you use Workello, though, you can tilt the balance in favor of thoroughness.

Once they apply, candidates will receive emails about their application status and everything else that’s relevant. This will show your professionalism and transparency, which candidates appreciate. Many Writers will be willing to put in a bit of extra effort for a serious company.

If you’re struggling with creating a test by yourself, you can use ours! We used this test to evaluate hundreds of candidates.

Interviewing Candidates

When candidates press the Submit Test button, they no longer have access to it, and their status changes to “Test Complete.” When this happens, your Editors and Managers can see and review the test. After the review, they can change the status to:

1. Reject Candidate—Triggers an automated email informing the candidate about the unsuccessful outcome
2. Invite for Interview—Triggers an automated email with a Calendly link they can use to schedule a video interview

The Candidate Status Page

Your candidates will also have their neck of the Workello woods. The Candidate Status page lets them find out about their application status so they don’t have to bombard you with emails like:

• Have you received my application?
• Have you checked my test?
• When will I get an answer?
• What are the next steps?

The page has the “What to expect next” section that includes information about your selection process.

With this page, you no longer have to worry about a top candidate losing interest due to an unanswered email, and your employees don’t have to waste time on needless email correspondence.

You can see the Candidate Status page here.

Our Investment Paid Off Big Time

Hiring Content Writers is a walk in the park when there’s a system that automates everything for you. When we started hiring, there was no such system, and we struggled with every element of it.

Hundreds of applications would flood us from various job boards, and we couldn’t keep track of them. Due to this, we missed out on a great number of top Content Writers—when we got to their application, they would either be no longer interested or already employed.

Our Content Managers and Editors had to focus on posting job ads and creating manual tests instead of publishing great content. We did all this because we had no other option. You do!

With Workello, we succeeded in:

1. Scaling our business from 1 to 45+ Writers in less than 2 years
2. Reducing our cost of content by 75%
3. Producing one of the most successful SEO campaigns of all time
4. Letting our Editors and Content Managers focus on what they do best

Our automated hiring funnel is the result of $100,000+ and years of work. You can have it all for the price of a single page of content!

Try out Workello for free! You can start accepting new candidates in less than 3 minutes.

The Best Places To Find Website Content Writers—Additional Job Boards

With Workello by your side, there’s no reason to limit yourself to only a dozen or so job boards. You can increase your odds of finding that perfect Content Writer by placing your job ad wherever you can.

Take a look at the following Content Writer job boards:

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