Hiring Writing Interns Isn’t Easy—Workello Can Help!

The idea to develop an automated hiring funnel didn’t come out of the blue—we learned the hard way that hiring skilled writers is a challenge.

Back in 2019, we were a small content agency that took on a client with a huge ambition. We helped grow that client’s organic website traffic from 0 to 1,500,000 monthly visitors in just 24 months months, executing one of the most successful SEO campaigns ever. 

As you can imagine, this was anything but easy. The biggest challenge was scaling a team from 1 to 45+ full-time writers and editors in order to consistently publish large volumes of high-quality content.

Without an automated system, we had to manually log and evaluate every application and follow up with every candidate. With dozens of applications coming in from different job boards every day, it quickly became impossible to track every candidate’s application status in our hiring funnel. 

We let brilliant writers slip through our fingers because we couldn’t follow up with them on time. By the time we identified one good writer in a sea of unqualified candidates, they would’ve already accepted another content agency’s offer. 

There was no solution on the market that would help us solve all our issues at once, so we sat down and built one. We invested over $100,000 and dedicated countless hours to creating an optimized and automated hiring system designed explicitly for content teams—Workello! 

In the next ten minutes, we will show you:

1. Where to find writing interns at any price point
2. Why hiring writing interns is so hard
3. How Workello can help you hire better writers faster

Where To Find Writing Interns—The Most Popular Job Boards

Here is our selection of top 15 job boards where you can find interns for writing projects at any price point:

Read through the article to learn where else to find interns for writing projects.

Identifying Great Candidates in the Sea of Subpar Ones Is a Major Challenge

When it comes to hiring writers, it’s not about where you look but how you evaluate and hire them. 

No matter how many different job boards you use to source writing candidates, without an optimized hiring funnel, you will run into the same problems:

• Sorting candidates according to their application status will be tricky
• Few (if any) job boards have settings that help you target writers
• Applicants’ portfolios often won’t reflect their true writing capabilities

You will come to realize that no matter where you look, most of the applicants will be subpar. That’s simply because all the best ones get hired instantly, so they don’t stay on job boards for too long.

Although you need an intern, they still have to meet some basic requirements. For instance:

• Their level of English has to be satisfactory
• Their writing has to be clear and concise
• They must have excellent attention to detail
• They must have a strong work ethic and willingness to learn

Before you identify candidates worthy of an interview, you will have to evaluate hundreds of applications and test dozens of candidates. You also have to be fast, because competition is fierce—everyone is looking for competent writers or those they can groom to become precisely the type of writer they need.

We know this from experience. We started using multiple hiring platforms to increase our chances of finding the best candidates faster. We didn’t expect it, but not only did we have the same problems we had before, but they also multiplied. 

With more applications streaming in from all sides, we needed more time to process them all, reach out to each candidate, follow up with them, test them, and interview them. Every time we lost great candidates because someone else, with a streamlined hiring system, got to them first.

We realized quickly that job boards weren’t the problem—our hiring process was. 

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 had to revamp our entire hiring system—there was no way around it. So we took a step back and examined our working process to understand what was holding us back. This is what we came up with:

1. To grow organic website traffic, we need to create a lot of great content
2. We need great writers to do that
3. Identifying a single skilled writer requires evaluating dozens
4. Hiring that one great writer requires us to efficiently filter our bad candidates
5. Weeding out bad candidates efficiently was the problem

Applications came in day after day, dozens of them. So that wasn’t an issue. The lack of a system that would help us handle so many applications fast was a major problem. 

We then noted down all the features an ideal hiring system should have to help us solve all of our issues at once:

1. A single platform to collect all the applications we receive in one place
2. An automated system to move candidates through our hiring funnel with ease
3. A unified dashboard to evaluate, test, reject, schedule interviews, and hire writers
4. An automatically sent writing test to help us spot subpar writers immediately
5. An automated communication system to eliminate the risk of human error and save time on email correspondence

Google Sheets + Google Forms + Zapier combo was our first attempt at such a system. It helped a lot, but it still wasn’t ideal. After many iterations, we finally had that perfect hiring funnel—Workello!

A Great Job Description Is the First Step Towards Hiring Great Writing Interns

Bad candidates will always send their applications, no matter what you do. Still, you can significantly thin their numbers with a super-specific, thorough job description. 

This may not be the easiest thing to do when hiring interns since you will not require any particular previous experience. You can focus on the type of education they are getting and specify fields of study that you prefer. 

You can also list a set of desirable skills, such as knowledge of the AP style, basic SEO, etc. It will demonstrate that those candidates who fulfill all your requirements will have an advantage over those who don’t.

To attract the best candidates, specify all the benefits candidates will get from working from you. They will be interested in knowing the learning outcomes of the internship. You should also add the compensation package you have planned for this role. 

If you don’t know what a good job ad should look like, take a look at some of the examples from our extensive job description template database:

•  Content Writer
• Freelance Writer
• Technical Writer Intern
• Technical Writer
• Copywriter Intern
• SEO Writing
• Course Writer
• Associate Writer
• Research Writer
• Business Writer
• Case Writer
• Video Game Writer

When you find one you are interested in, all you have to do is copy the template, customize it to suit your needs, and your job ad is ready for posting instantly. 

A Unified Dashboard Ensures an Efficient Hiring Process

Tracking candidates and their application statuses in our hiring funnel were one of our most significant problems. That’s no longer an issue, since a Workello-hosted application form ensures that all applications end up in the same place—your unique Workello dashboard. 

All the applications you receive will be displayed in your Workello dashboard, and thanks to the uniform application form, you will no longer bother with incomplete submissions. 

Click here to see an example of the Workello-hosted application form. 

Watch Candidates Stream In

When candidates submit their applications, they will appear in your dashboard. From here, you can effortlessly move them through your hiring funnel with a single click.

 You can use your Workello dashboard for every step of the hiring process—assessing portfolios, testing, rejecting, scheduling interviews, and finally, extending offers to the best candidates. 

All you need to do is select one of the appropriate application status options from a drop-down menu. Here are the options:

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

To help estimate how many candidates you have in each stage of the process, we color-coded the statuses. 

Reject Unqualified Cannabis Writers

You will see that some applicants are not suitable for your company even before you test them. You can easily reject them by selecting the Application Rejected option. This action triggers an automated rejection email. 

Automation will save you a considerable amount of time you would otherwise waste informing each applicant individually. 

Point, Click, Test

The most common mistake companies make when hiring writers is making their decisions based on portfolios alone. Many candidates will submit heavily edited articles that tell you nothing about their first draft capabilities. 

The only reliable way to assess candidates’ writing skills is testing. 

We didn’t test candidates at first, and it cost us thousands of dollars and incredible amounts of time. This prompted us to include a testing feature in Workello so that we could know exactly what quality of articles we can expect from each writer before extending an offer.

To test a candidate, all you need to do is select the Test Candidate option, and they will receive an email that:

1. Congratulates the candidate for making it to the next stage
2. Provides a link to the writing test and instructions

When a candidate clicks on the link, they will open a tab that looks something like this:

How To Make a Good Test

The test you devise has to be detailed enough so you can accurately assess a candidate’s basic writing skills:

1. Language proficiency
2. Formatting skills
3. Research skills

Still, your test mustn’t be too demanding because not many candidates would be willing to invest too much of their time and effort writing an article that may not even land them the job. 

If you have done everything right up to this point, you may allow yourself to make the test a little bit more thorough. If your job ad was informative enough, and candidates quickly received updates regarding their application status, they will be more willing to complete a more in-depth test. 

Workello ensures that the communication with your candidates is efficient, and it allows you to demonstrate transparency which candidates appreciate. 

If you’re unsure what a good test should look like, check out ours. Click here to get the same test we used to test hundreds of candidates. 

Interviewing Candidates

Once candidates submit their test articles, they will lose access to it, and their status will automatically change to Test Complete. That enables your editors to access the test and review it. 

Based on their performance, your editors can update candidates’ status to:

1. Reject Candidate—A polite rejection email will inform the candidate they haven’t been successful and thank them for their time
2. Invite for Interview—Candidates will receive an email with a link and instructions to schedule a video meeting via Calendly

The Candidate Status Page

We set up a Candidate Status page so you candidates can track their application status and always know what to expect next. They can read all about your hiring process in the “What to expect next” section.

This page will reduce the number of emails you receive from unsuccessful candidates significantly, which will save you valuable time. A Candidate Status page will also ensure you don’t miss out on a fantastic candidate because you failed to follow up with them on time.

Check out what a Candidate Status page looks like here.

Our Investment Paid Off Big Time

An optimized funnel makes hiring writers look like the simplest thing in the world. But that’s not what our hiring spree looked like in the beginning. 

We received dozens of applications every single day, and they were all coming in from various platforms. It was impossible to log them all, and we failed to ever contact many of the applicants. Tracking where candidates were in our hiring funnel was unattainable. 

Our editor and content managers had their hands full posting job ads and testing candidates, and our content production suffered for it. 

While we struggled with practically every step of our hiring process, time passed, and many great candidates either lost interest in us or were snatched by another company. 

It was imperative we do something about it, so we focused all our resources and brainpower on developing a system that would make scaling our content team more efficient. 

All that effort gave us Workello—an ideal hiring system that helped us:

1. Scale our team from 1 to 45+ members in 18 months
2. Execute one of the most ambitious SEO projects ever 
3. Reduce the cost of content production by up to 75%
4. Let our editors and managers return to their primary roles—editing and managing our content production

Workello is the result of a lot of hard work and over $100,000, but it paid off big time! You get to enjoy all its benefits for the price of a single page of content! Start your Workello free trial today and discover a faster, easier, more efficient way to hire writers. 

Where Else To Find Writing Interns

You won’t have to visit each job board you use individually to see new applications and you won’t have to log all of them manually, so you can use as many websites as you like. 

Here are some more places where you can find interns for writing projects:

Additional job boards:

• Journalism Jobs
• Mediabistro
• HireMyMom
• CloudPeeps
• PeoplePerHour
• Freelancer
• Guru
• ZipRecruiter
• The Writer Finder
• Hire Writers
• BloggingPro

Facebook groups:

• The Write Life
• FinCon
• What’s Your Plan B? 
• Freelance Content Marketing Writer