It’s Difficult To Hire Content Creators—We Know That First-Hand 

Before we had an automated hiring funnel, we were a one-man content team called ContentDistribution.com. In 2019, despite being understaffed, we took on a client who matched our courage and started working on one of the most ambitious SEO campaigns ever.

The result? Our client’s website grew from 0 to 1,500,000 organic monthly visitors in less than 2 years.

Achieving such a number in record time required top-quality content delivered in high volumes. It couldn’t have been done single-handedly.

We had to expand our team hastily, and our agency grew from 1 to 45+ Content Creators and Editors in under 2 years.

When we started hiring, we soon realized our hiring process was nowhere near good enough. We wasted hours and days doing tasks manually and regularly missed out on top-performing candidates.

We looked for a quick solution that would solve all of our problems, but there wasn’t one. We had no other choice but to roll up our sleeves and build one!

After investing $100,000+ and countless hours, we now have an automated hiring funnel dedicated to hiring content team members. In the next few minutes, we’ll show you:

1. How to find Content Creators
2. Why it’s so difficult to hire them
3. How our funnel can help you evaluate and test more candidates quickly

Recruiting a Team of Content Creators—The Best 15 Job Boards

The following 15 websites are the best for hiring Content Creators. Check out their pros and cons:

Why Content Creators Are Easy To Find but Hard To Hire

Virtually all companies hire Content Creators to create content for their websites.

Content Creators are coveted, and the best ones find jobs in an instant. Job boards can’t keep up with the demand and fail to source new Creators fast enough.

This means that you’re working against the clock when looking to hire Content Creators. You need to go over hundreds of applications to find the best possible candidate before someone else gets to them.

Being able to spot the perfect candidate requires evaluating and testing each one.

When we were on the hunt for new team members, we posted an ad on Upwork and soon posted listings on other websites as well.

Every time we added a new job board to our portfolio, we noticed that some problems were common for each one:

• They didn’t have any settings specific for hiring Content Creators
• Portfolios weren’t an accurate portrayal of candidates’ skills
• We didn’t have the ability to sort candidates by status

Same Problems With Every Job Board

We had to pick up the hiring pace, so we spread out and soon started receiving applications from multiple sources—Craigslist, Indeed, Upwork, LinkedIn, Facebook, and so on.

With every new job board, we couldn’t shake off any of the issues but only multiply them.

Regardless of what we did, we always had trouble with:

• Tracking candidates by their status
• Logging all applications
• Keeping note of applications we liked initially
• Following up with the best candidates on time
• Lowering the number of bad candidates

We realized getting rid of these problems wasn’t a matter of using different job boards—we had to refine our hiring process. We looked for solutions, but none satisfied us entirely.

This led to us creating our own automated hiring funnel that would get rid of all the issues we had single-handedly.

We invested tons of money and time into creating the new hiring process. The result of that 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

The first step during our remodeling of the hiring process was to describe the system and break it down into smaller elements. This is what we got:

1. Getting millions of visits per month was the product of high-volume, high-quality content
2. Being able to make high-quality content required top-quality Content Creators
3. Hiring Content Creators meant we had to evaluate hundreds of applications
4. Finding the best people required us to spot and remove the bad ones quickly from the hiring funnel
5. Spotting bad Content Creators is what we didn’t have an answer for

Job boards always do their part—they bring in applications. We didn’t do ours as we didn’t know how to evaluate candidates properly.

We realized we needed a system that would do that for us—an automated system that:

1. Funneled all applications to a single platform, regardless of their source
2. Let us organize candidates by status and move them through the funnel
3. Allowed us to use a single dashboard to let us evaluate, test, interview, and hire new Content Creators effortlessly
4. Automated handing out writing tests that we could use to separate good Creators from bad ones
5. Automated communication between applicants and us so that we could remove unnecessary email correspondence and the possibility of human error

Our first iteration was Google Sheets + Google Forms + Zapier, which was better but not without any flaws. Still, it gave us a platform to build on and eventually paved the way to Workello—a fully automated hiring funnel that answers all our prayers.

Creating Your Content Creator Job Description

Your job description is your first channel of communication with your candidates. You should use it to make it clear what profile you’re looking for.

No matter what you do, you’ll always receive underqualified candidates, but a good job description can see their number plummet.

Write about the role in detail. Mention every requirement that a candidate must meet and talk thoroughly about the responsibilities that the role entails. You could never be too specific in this segment, and unqualified candidates will feel discouraged by the many details.

Since the description is there to attract the right candidates, you should use it to also sell your company as a brand.

Why should a top Creator choose you over someone else? Try to get their attention by listing out all benefits you offer, such as health plans, salary increases, career advancement opportunities, and so on.

Don’t know how to write a description? Unsure what specific role would suit your organization’s needs best? We can help you with that. Delve into our comprehensive database of job description templates, and you’ll find a template for every content team role.

All you need to do is copy the template, adjust it according to the specific responsibilities someone in the role will have in your organization, and post it online! Just click on the role title that interests you:

• Content Creator
• Technical Writer
• Content Writer in Affiliate Marketing
• Digital Content Writer
• Website Content Writer
• Writer
• Copywriter
• Blog Writer
• Freelance Writer
• E-Commerce Content Writer
• Content Writer
• Social Media Content Creator
• Senior Writer
• Law Firm Content Writer
• Digital and Multiplatform Content Writer

Distribute Your Job Ad Across the Internet

Back in the day, we didn’t have a Recruitment Manager to handle job listings. Our Content Managers and Editors had to do the manual work and take their time and energy away from content production.

We did it this way because we couldn’t hire someone from outside the company without having our hiring process documented and being able to educate them on how we did it.

We have that documentation now, and you can use our playbooks for free!

When you register for Workello for free, we’ll give you access to our documentation, and you can use it to delegate job ad distribution to someone else!

Dashboard Changes the Way We Hire Content Creators Entirely

Once you post ads on various websites and applications start flying your way, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. You have to keep track of each one manually, and you have to look for them in different places.

Not anymore!

We use a Workello-hosted application form that you can link to in your job ads. This way, you ensure that all applications are uniform, contain all the relevant information, and can be viewed from a single dashboard.

In other words, you can view all applications in the same place, regardless of which job board they came in from, and can evaluate candidates with ease.

The dashboard is a unified platform where you can log all applications.

With the same form used on every job board, every candidate will submit their application in the same format, so you don’t have to reach out to them for information they might leave out.

Check out an application example here.

Watch Candidates Stream In

Once applications are there, you won’t have to leave the dashboard at any point in the selection process. The same page contains options for you to evaluate, test, review, invite for interviews, and extend offers to the best Content Creator candidates.

To do any of the above, you only need to change the status by selecting an appropriate option from the drop-down menu. The options are:

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

Each status is color-coded so that you can tell how many candidates you have in each stage of the funnel at a glance.

Reject Unqualified Content Creators

When a candidate submits their application, your Editors and Content Managers will be able to take a look and evaluate it. If they decide the candidate is not qualified for the role, they can change their status to “Application Rejected.”

The change in status will remove the candidate from the funnel and trigger an automated email informing them you won’t consider them for the role.

This allows you to focus on better candidates instead of sending emails manually and replying to applicants’ messages asking about their application status.

Point, Click, Test

If a candidate passes the initial stage, they’re ready for the testing phase. The testing part of your hiring process is the crucial step to finding out who is as good as their portfolio says they are.

Content Creators use only their best work for their portfolios. Remember that that’s the final edition of their work—it probably went through QA and a couple of editing phases.

The only way to know how good their 1st draft is is to test them. 

When we started hiring, there was no testing phase in place, and we had to base our judgment on portfolios alone. It soon showed why this was a flawed system.

We hired bad Creators who would turn in unusable content. Our Editors had to spend twice as much time on editing or rewriting bad employees’ articles. We wasted thousands of dollars on people who had great portfolios. We didn’t want to do that anymore, so we introduced testing.

Workello allows you to automate the testing process. When your Managers are satisfied with an application, they can change the status to “Test Candidate.”

When this happens, the candidate will receive an automated email congratulating them on reaching the next step and providing them with a link to the test.

When they click on the link, they’ll open a page similar to this one:

How To Make a Good Test

A good test needs to fulfill its purpose and let you assess a candidate’s skill set. At the same time, an overly complex test can do more harm than good because not many people would be willing to complete it.

That’s why it’s important to create a balance between thoroughness and candidates’ willingness to carry out the test.

If the test requires them to invest 8+ hours and write 2,500 words, most candidates won’t go through with it. Don’t forget that you’re asking them to do their job for free for someone that might not hire them in the end.

While your test should be shorter than 2,500 words, it still has to be complex enough so that you get an insight into the following:

1. Command of language
2. Research skills
3. Article formatting

Workello is great in this department also—it lets you be more thorough with your testing.

From the moment they apply, candidates will receive swift emails with information about their application. They won’t have to wait around for a generic HR response.

This oozes professionalism and transparency, which is something candidates respect and are willing to fight for.

If you don’t know how to create a test, you can take a look at the one we used to hire Content Writers and adapt it to your needs.

Interviewing Candidates

Once the candidate clicks the Submit Test button, their status automatically changes to “Test Complete.”

Then, your Editors and Managers can check out the work the candidate submitted and see how good they are. Depending on the outcome, the next candidate status can be:

1. Reject Candidate—Triggers an automated email telling the candidate that they failed the test
2. Interview Candidate—Triggers an automated email allowing the candidate to schedule a Zoom meeting via a Calendly link

The Candidate Status Page

Candidates can use Workello as well through the Candidate Status page. This page contains all the necessary information about their application status and guides them through your entire selection process via the “What to expect next” section.

Thanks to this page, your candidates won’t have to request information via email, and your Managers won’t have to waste their time replying to each candidate separately.

The worst that can happen to a company is to miss out on a top candidate because they were slow to reply to an email. The Candidate Status page eradicates that problem.

You can check out the page here.

Our Investment Paid Off Big Time

Getting a Content Creator to apply is easy—all you need to do is post an ad. Picking the right one from a sea of unqualified candidates is the difficult part.

It may sound straightforward with an automated hiring funnel in place, but we didn’t have that luxury when we started out. In the early days, hiring a Content Creator was a nightmare for us.

We had no means of tracking applications effectively. By the time we got to a promising application, the candidate would already find a different job or lose interest in our company. We missed out on many great candidates that applied.

Our Content Managers and Editors had to take time to create tests manually and post job ads across the internet. This had an impact on our content production, but we had no other choice. You do!

We went back to the drawing board and invested $100,000+, brainpower, and countless hours into creating the perfect hiring funnel.

When we introduced Workello to our company, we succeeded in:

1. Scaling our team from 1 to 45+ employees in 18 months
2. Reducing our cost of content by 75%
3. Creating one of the most ambitious SEO campaigns ever
4. Allowing our Content Managers and Editors to focus on content and not on hiring new team members

With our fully automated hiring funnel, you can achieve the same success for the price of a single page of content!

Try out Workello for free! When you sign up, it’s configured so that it takes less than 3 minutes to start accepting new candidates.