Hiring Web Content Writers Is Hard—We Know From Experience

Before we developed Workello, we were a successful and ambitious content agency. As Content Distribution, we ran one of the biggest content marketing campaigns of all time—within two years, we grew our client from 0 to 1,000,000 per month.

This ambitious project required a team of skilled writers, so we started hiring. We invested a lot of effort in looking for qualified web content writers but had little success. 

We realized that our hiring process was a complete mess. We didn’t have any meaningful system in place, and we did everything manually. 

We posted ads on numerous hiring platforms and received hundreds of applications in various formats. Many of them were incomplete, and most of them were from unqualified candidates. Many portfolios were Word documents, and most didn’t reflect candidates’ real writing capabilities. 

The applications streamed incessantly from various channels. They were scattered across different platforms. We had no way of keeping track of all the candidates. It was hard to know where they were in our hiring funnel. 

We failed to contact some candidates entirely, and we reached out to some too late—they were already snatched by another company. 

There was nothing on the market that could resolve all of our issues at once. So, we decided to create something ourselves. 

We invested countless hours and over $100,000 in developing an optimized and automated hiring process. It helped us scale our team of web content writers and editors from 1 to 45 full-time employees and find qualified and more affordable writers faster.

In the next 10 minutes, you will learn:

1. How to copy our hiring process
2. Where to find great writers at every price point
3. Why hiring web content writers is hard and how to overcome the difficulties
4. How automation can help you evaluate more candidates and find excellent ones fast

Top 15 Job Boards for Hiring Web Content Writers

The table below presents our picks of the top 15 job boards for hiring web content writers. Check out their fees, as well as the pros and cons of using each one:

Read the rest of the article to find more job boards where you can find web content writers at any price point.

Why Is Hiring Web Content Writers So Challenging

Regardless of what job board you’re using to hire web content writers, you’ll quickly come to the same conclusion—the best ones get hired in a blink of an eye. You will receive hundreds of applications, and you will have to fend off countless bad candidates. 

Without a proper system, you will have to review, test, and contact all of the applicants manually. 

And while you are struggling to handle the never-ending stream of new applications, companies like ours swipe all the best candidates. Why? Because we now have that reliable and efficient system in place. 

You may use multiple platforms to source candidates, but you will quickly realize that all of them suffer from the same inherent problems:

1. They can’t source qualified candidates as quickly as they get hired
2. Most candidates are unqualified
3. There is no reliable way to determine which applicant is qualified

Since this is the situation with all job boards, it was clear that the problem was in our hiring system. For that reason, we developed a system that would automate our processes and let us get to great web content writers faster!

The Biggest Issue With Hiring Web Content Writers

Since the best writers get hired in a blink of an eye, most of the candidates on job boards will be unqualified. To find one good writer, you must review dozens of applications—that’s a given. 

When we tried to increase our chances of finding skilled writers and started posting job ads on multiple platforms, our existing problems multiplied:

• We couldn’t track candidates as they moved through our hiring funnel
• There was no way to see and respond to every single application
• We were often too late to reach out to great candidates
• Filtering out bad candidates was a time-consuming nightmare 

What we need is something that will allow us to do everything faster. If we want to get to great writers first, we have to stop wasting time. 

After months of troubles, we finally realized that we needed to invest as much effort, time, and money in developing a better hiring system as we did in creating content.  

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 hiring system was broken and we had to do something about it. We looked at our entire process to try to understand what we needed to change. We concluded that:

1. To drive a ton of organic traffic to a website, we need a lot of top-quality content
2. Only top-performing writers are capable of producing such content
3. Identifying great writers means reviewing hundreds of applications
4. Our problem was the inability to reliably and quickly filter out bad candidates

We never had a problem getting applications. In fact, we had way more than we could handle. What we lacked was a system to help us keep track of candidates as we move them through our hiring funnel, filter out unqualified writers quickly, and identify and reach out to great ones before others. There was no ATS that could solve all these problems at once, s we decided to create one. 

Here is how we envisioned an ideal ATS. A system that would be able to do all that needed the following features:

• A single dashboard that displays all applications, regardless of the hiring platform they come from
• A possibility to keep track of where candidates are in our funnel
• An option to assess, test, reject, and invite candidates for an interview
• An automated communication system that informs candidates when their application status changes

The first solution we came up with was a Google Sheets+Google Forms+Zapier mashup. It was a significant improvement, but it still needed work. Several months and numerous iterations later, this solution evolved into a fully-automated system for hiring content teams that is Workello. 

A Good Job Description Copy Eliminates a Part of Problems

To attract qualified web content writers, you have to write a detailed and specific job description tailored to your needs. 

Specify the experience, skills, and qualifications required for the position, as well as the responsibilities it entails. This will discourage unqualified candidates from applying. 

It is also helpful to include something that will incentivize great writers. Mention the bonuses, career advancement opportunities, PTO, and other perks you are offering.  Say something about your company values to ensure you and the candidates are a good fit.

If you’re unsure how to go about writing a web content writer job description, or you need to hire more people for different roles in your company, check out some of our job description templates. You can quickly modify them and post them to any job boards you want:

1. Content Writer
2. Senior Writer
3. Freelance Writer
4. Blog Writer
5. Business Writer
6. Technical Writer
7. Financial Writer
8. Fashion Writer
9. Travel Writer
10. Political Writer
11. SEO Writer
12. Digital and Multiplatform Content Writer
13. Marketing Communications Writer
14. E-commerce Content Writer
15. Lifestyle Writer

Distribute Your Job Ad Across the Internet

When we were starting out, we didn’t have a dedicated recruiter. Our editors and content managers had to do most of the leg work. Posting job ads is not brain surgery, but it requires a lot of time. 

As our company grew, we needed to hire more writers, and the set of responsibilities our editors and managers took on only grew. They kept designating more and more hours of their day to job ads and other hiring duties. It was unmanageable—editors and managers couldn’t physically accomplish everything.  

In such a situation, you can hire a Recruitment Specialist. But that means you have to document your hiring process and train them.  

Don’t worry; that’s exactly what we did. We documented the entire hiring process, so you don’t have to waste hundreds of hours on R&D and documentation.  

Register for Workello today for free to get access to our playbooks and learn how to delegate job ad posting.

A Single Dashboards for All Applications

You can post your ad on as many job boards as you like; when you include the Workello-hosted application form in your ad, all the applications will be uniform and consistent. And they will all end up in the same place—your Workello dashboard. 

You can forget about the time when you had to track applications manually and contact candidates due to incomplete submissions. 

Here is what our application form looks like.

Watch Candidates Stream In

With Workello, you can move candidates through your hiring funnel with a single click. When applications start coming in, you can change candidate application status by selecting one of the options from the drop-down menu:

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

Each status change triggers a corresponding, automated email.. For example, if you decide to reject a candidate, they will receive a polite rejection email telling them they have not been chosen to continue onto the next step of your hiring process. 

Similarly, if you decide to offer a candidate a job, they will receive a pre-configured message congratulating them on making it to the end of the process and containing all the important information regarding the offer. 

Each status is color-coded, so you’ll always know exactly how many candidates you have in each stage of your hiring process. 

Reject Unqualified Writers

Once applicants start sending their applications, you can grant your editors access to your Workello account so they can review them. If they decide that a candidate doesn’t meet your requirements, they can quickly reject them by selecting “Application Rejected” from the drop-down menu. This action triggers a polite rejection email.

Point, Click, Test

Portfolios will shed some light on a candidate’s previous experience, but they will hardly paint an accurate picture of their actual writing capabilities. Candidates typically send polished and proofread final drafts, so you won’t know what their first drafts are like. 

The only reliable way to gain such insights is to test candidates. 

Before we started testing, portfolios were the only thing we based our decisions on. It was a costly mistake because we often ended up with bad content, and we had to start the hiring process all over again.

With Workello, you get a built-in testing feature. If your editors like a candidate’s application, they can select the “Test Candidate” option, which will trigger an email containing a link to the test and detailed instructions.  

The link will take candidates to this tab:

How to Make a Good Test

Creating a good test involves finding a perfect balance between candidate willingness to complete the test and test thoroughness necessary to accurately gauge an applicant’s skill levels. 

This means that your test should be comprehensive enough to test a candidate’s:

1. Command of the English language
2. Research skills
3. Formatting skills

At the same time, the test mustn’t be too demanding because candidates may not be motivated to complete it. 

An additional motivator for candidates to stay invested in completing the writing test is the impression you have made on them thus far. If you have kept them informed about their application status regularly and been transparent the entire time, candidates will want to work for you. 

Luckily, Workello helps you keep applicants in the loop at all times without you practically having to lift a finger.

If you need help creating a test, you can take a look at the same one we used to scale our content team. Be sure to modify it so it suits your company’s needs. 

Interviewing Candidates

As soon as candidates submit their tests, their application status will change to “Test Complete.” You editors can then review test articles and decide what to do next. 

If the test article is up to your company’s standards, you can change the candidate’s status to “Invite for Interview.” Workello will send them an automated email inviting them to schedule a video interview via Calendly.

Alternatively, if the test article is not good enough, editors can reject candidates by choosing the “Reject Candidate” option. 

The Candidate Status Page

Inefficient communication was one of our greatest challenges. We continually improved our hiring process, but we kept receiving dozens of emails every day from candidates who wanted to know:

1. Have we reviewed their application?
2. When can they expect to hear from us?
3. What is the next step?

Even when we only had to copy-paste replies, we still wasted a lot of time responding to these emails. 

We solved this by implementing a Candidate Status page where applicants can track their application status. They can also find all the information about our hiring process here.  

Here is what a Candidate Status page looks like.  

Our Investment Paid Off Big Time

When our company was just starting out, our hiring process was complete and utter chaos: 

• Our job ads were on multiple platforms, and applications were scattered all over the place
• Keeping track of applicants in our hiring funnel was almost impossible
• Incomplete applications were a common occurrence, and we had to contact applicants to request additional information
• Weeding out unqualified candidates was a nightmare
• Everything was done manually
• Great writers kept slipping through our fingers
• Our editors were overwhelmed, and their primary responsibilities suffered

Automating our hiring system was a single most important investment we have ever made. The only thing above it is our investment in content production—the core of our business. Continuing to produce top-quality content is only possible with good writers, and a streamlined hiring process ensured we find them.

Now, we have an optimized hiring funnel that has allowed us to:

1. Scale a team of 45 writers and editors in under two years
2. Execute one of the most successful SEO campaigns of all time
3. Cut our content production costs by 75%
4. Let editors and content managers focus on content production

We went through all that hardship, but you don’t have to. You get a fully-automated and optimized hiring funnel we spent months and over $100,000 building for the price of a single page of content. 

Register with Workello for free now and start receiving applications and automating your hiring funnel in less than 3 minutes! 

More Job Boards for Hiring Web Content Writers

If you ever had to limit yourself to one or two hiring platforms because you didn’t know how to keep track of all applicants, you can kiss your worries goodbye now. With Workello-hosted application forms, all the applications will be in the same format and go to the same place.

Here are more places for hiring web content writers:

• FreeUp
• Guru
• Freelance Writing
• Freelancer
• PeoplePerHour
• oDeskWork
• Content Grow
• Certified Writers
• Editorial Freelancers Association
• Jora
• WorkingInContent
• Writer Access
• The Writer Finder
• YunoJuno
• Envato Studio
• Constant Content
• Hire Content Writers