Hiring Children’s Book Writers Isn’t as Easy It Sounds—We Found That Out the Hard Way!

It can be a daunting task to hire a competent Children’s Book Writer who is willing to ghost write for you or turn your idea into a well-written story. 

We’re well-acquainted with all the difficulties involved with hiring writers since we had to scale our writing team from 1 to 45+ people in just 18 months!

It all began in 2019, when we took on a VC-backed project for one of our clients. The project required us to grow their online traffic from 0 to 1,500,0000 monthly visitors in under 2 years. In the end, we persevered and went on to lead one of the most ambitious SEO campaigns of all time!

We had no idea that our hiring funnel was totally inadequate for the task we faced. As soon as we posted our first job ads, applications started coming in from all the different platforms we were using. It was both time-consuming and tedious to track them all manually, and even more difficult to respond to each applicant due to the inefficacy of our communication system.

The whole process was chaotic—some candidates sent us emails while others reached out to us via their social media accounts, and others even tried contacting team members who weren’t responsible for recruitment.

Our approach to hiring writers was all wrong, and we had to correct our mistakes fast. As there wasn’t any recruiting software that would magically remove all our problems at once, we decided to make our own.

We pooled our company’s resources, invested more than $100,000, and worked tirelessly until we got what we sought—a robust applicant tracking system designed for hiring writers, known as Workello!

In the rest of the article, we’ll show you the best 25 job boards for finding Children’s Book Writers, as well as how you can hire the best ones quickly and affordably!

Looking for Top-Quality Children’s Book Writers?—Check Out These 15 Websites!

In our search for the most qualified writers, we’ve used tons of different job boards. To help you find the right one for your business, we’ve listed all the pros and cons of our 15 favorite websites:

Continue reading the article to discover another 10 excellent job boards for hiring Children’s Book Writers!

What Makes It Challenging To Hire a Talented Children’s Book Writer

Exceptional Children’s Book Writers get hired instantly—you won’t see them sticking on any job board for long. That’s because talented writers who know their craft well get to choose what company they’ll work for, and every publishing agency specializing in children’s literature wants them!

As they go off the market in an instant, what’s left is mostly unqualified writers who have absolutely no experience writing children’s books. Because of this, you need to evaluate and test dozens of applicants quickly if you want to extend a job offer to the most successful writer before another company snaps them up!

This is easy to do by rote if you need to hire just one or two writers, but it takes enormous effort if you’re looking to scale a large team—or hire for a specific role, such as a Children’s Book Writer!

As soon as applications start coming in by the dozens, you’ll quickly feel overwhelmed. Sorting out candidates will become difficult, and you won’t be able to get back to each applicant in a timely fashion. We know this since we faced the same issues.

We started out with Upwork, though we soon included LinkedIn and other platforms. No matter the job board, we encountered these obstacles:

• We couldn’t efficiently sort out candidates by their application status in our hiring funnel
• Job boards didn’t have settings for targeting a specific kind of writer
• Candidate’s portfolios gave an inaccurate representation of their actual abilities

With each new hiring platform, our problems only multiplied instead of getting resolved. Applications were arriving in great profusion from many different networks, such as Indeed, Monster, Glassdoor, Fiverr, Facebook, etc. Whatever measures we tried implementing, we always had trouble with:

• Tracking candidates by their application status
• Keeping note of received applications and logging them properly
• Noting candidates we initially liked for future reference
• Reaching out to talented writers quickly enough
• Reducing the number of unskilled applicants
• Identifying poor writers with good resumes

There was no ATS that could help us with all these problems simultaneously. That’s why we decided to focus our efforts on creating an entirely new system—Workello!

Pre-Hire Assessments Allow You To Hire the Best Writer in Your Niche

You’ll never get an applicant that admits they have no idea how to write content for your niche. While their portfolios may include some industry-related articles, you’ll never know how good they are at it until you see their first draft. Don’t wait to hire them for that to happen—improve your hiring process with pre-employment assessments.

Coming up with a writing test is the easy part. What do you do when hundreds of writing samples start flooding your inbox? You need skill assessment software to keep the process organized and to avoid missing out on a top candidate due to an email you forgot to respond to.

Workello will entirely automate your hiring process and take care of assessment management. You only need to:

1. Create a free account and set up a pre-configured hiring funnel in under 3 minutes
2. Add a Workello link to your job listings (works with all job boards)
3. Wait for applications to start coming your way
4. Send tests to spot bad writers with impressive portfolios fast
5. Reject, interview, and hire the best candidates with a single click

Streamline Your Testing Process and Hire the Top 1% of Writers With Workello

With Workello—high-volume recruiting software—you can automate your entire hiring process and cut costs by 50%. Use our platform to test content writers for whatever writing needs you have, be it technical, SEO, or any other type of writing. You can also assess copywriters and SEO copywriters.

Sign up for free and assess, test, reject, interview, and hire writers from your Workello dashboard effortlessly.

Hiring Funnel of a Top 1% Hiring Agency

To create a more efficient funnel from scratch, we first needed to break down our previous one and identify the precise nature of our problems. This was our thought process:

1. To boost our client’s online traffic, we needed large volumes of superb content
2. Creating valuable, engaging content requires building a team of experienced writers
3. To find a single superb writer, we needed to sort through dozens of applications in short order
4. To spot a top-performing writer, we had to filter out the unqualified ones as fast as possible
5. We had no means of efficiently identifying and filtering out sub-par writers

The only aspect we didn’t struggle with was receiving applications—they were more than plentiful! The problem was what to do with them once they came in.

That’s why we made a list of all the must-have features that Workello would need to possess, including:

1. A single platform that will collect all applications in one place no matter what hiring platform someone applies from
2. An automated tracking system that would let us efficiently sort out candidates and update their status in our funnel with a single click
3. A unified dashboard for reviewing portfolios, testing applicants, scheduling interviews, and extending job offers to writers of distinguished abilities
4. An automated testing system to easily spot poor writers with outstanding portfolios
5. Automated email communication that would help us save time on unnecessary correspondence and remove the risk of human error

Our first iteration used Google Sheets + Google Forms + Zapier. It was a step in the right direction, but we weren’t quite satisfied yet. After even more tweaking and countless iterations, we finally came up with Workello!

A Talented Children’s Book Writer Will Only Respond to a Highly Specific Job Ad

Your first step in the hiring process should be to compose a detailed job description outlining all the specific requirements of the role in your organization. If you’re not precise enough and use too many general terms that apply to all writers—then any writer will think they’re the right person for the job!

A well-written job description should provide your candidates with a clear-cut list of prerequisites for the role, such as prior experience writing children’s literature, the necessary level of education, as well as any complementary skills that would be an added benefit.

The more specifics you list, the better—and the less likely it becomes that underqualified writers will apply for your job ad!

You should also utilize your job description as an opportunity to entice talented writers to apply. Describe the perks they’ll enjoy working for you, such as bonuses, the number of PTO days, and the rate you’re willing to pay. 

If the benefits you’re offering outweigh those of the competition, an ambitious Children’s Book Writer will see that working for your company is the better option!

If you’re looking for a supplementary role—or if you need a starting point for your Children’s Book Writer job description—feel free to browse through our selection of pre-vetted job description templates! 

• Writer
• Senior Writer
• Blog Writer
• Content Writer
• Course Writer
• Digital Content Writer
• Website Content Writer
• Freelance Writer
• SEO Writing

View All Your Applications With a Single Unified Dashboard!

Our integrated dashboard allows you to post your job ads freely across as many websites as you want because it ensures they end up in the same place! 

When applications arrive, your recruiters can instantly view them without visiting each job board separately and logging every application manually.

In addition, you no longer need to worry about receiving applications in different formats. Every candidate who sees your job ad will open the same Workello-hosted application form! 

Another benefit is that you won’t receive unfinished applications, eliminating the need to manually contact candidates for any furtive details they left out.

Take a look at an application example here.

Watch Candidates Stream In

Our dashboard lets you complete the entire hiring process without ever having to leave your Workello account. You’ll use it to review candidates, automatically distribute tests, set up interviews, and hire the Children’s Book Writer of your choice in just a few clicks.

To change a candidate’s status in your hiring funnel, you only need to select the corresponding option in the drop-down menu. The list of status is as follows:

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

Every application status is color-coded, so you can quickly see how many applicants you have at what stage of the funnel.

Reject Unqualified Children’s Book Writers

Once an application shows up in your dashboard, you can evaluate it. Since a lot of your candidates will be underqualified for the role, you can remove them from the funnel process by choosing the Application Rejected option.

When they do this, Workello triggers an automatic polite rejection email that informs the candidate about the unsuccessful outcome of their application.

In effect, you won’t need to waste precious time on manually notifying each rejected candidate. You also won’t have to worry about needless emails from candidates who need an update on the status of their application.

Point, Click, Test

While you should certainly take your candidates’ portfolios into consideration, that doesn’t mean you should hire them without first gauging their skills with a written test.

A great portfolio doesn’t necessarily equal a great writer. Besides this, candidates will only submit samples of their finest work, which is usually heavily edited and polished to perfection by a third party.

To accurately assess their raw writing prowess, you need to see their first drafts—and to do that, you need to test them!

When we began hiring, we didn’t have any tests in place. We hired candidates based solely on the contents of their resume, and it cost us thousands of dollars.

What we got was low-grade content that we couldn’t possibly deliver to our clients. To make it fit for publication, our editors had to revise more than 70% of the text or rewrite entire articles—and this tripled their workload.

To prevent such a disaster in the future, having an automated testing system became one of our top priorities.

With Workello, testing writers has never been easier—you only need to select the Test Candidate option, and Workello will send them an automatic message:

1. Congratulating them on reaching the testing stage
2. Providing them with a link to the test 

Opening the link will lead them to a page that resembles this one:

How To Make a Good Test

When creating your test, be sure that it can provide you with necessary information about the key abilities you’re looking for in Children’s Book Writer, such as:

1. Language mastery
2. Writing style and the ability to write for children
3. Creativity
4. Formatting skills

The ideal test should be thorough enough for you to correctly assess all of these elements. Still, this doesn’t mean you should make it unreasonably long or needlessly complicated. 

The key is balance—make it elaborate enough to be challenging while not jeopardizing the candidate’s willingness to complete it. A 300-word test should give you a pretty good idea regarding the candidates’ writing skills.

That said, Workello allows you to be even more thorough with your test. After all, your candidates will have a transparent view into your hiring process since they’ll receive regular updates on the status of their application.

As top-performing writers value punctuality and professionalism when dealing with potential employers, they might put a little bit more effort into completing your assignment!

If you’re not sure what the written test should include, you can use the test we used to hire hundreds of writers. Slightly adapt it according to your own requirements and you can start recruiting right away.

Click here to see how you can set up an automated writing test in Workello in 3 minutes!

Interviewing Candidates

When a candidate finishes the test and submits it, Workello will automatically update their status to Test Complete and move them further along the hiring funnel.

You can then notify your recruiters that they can view the completed test and evaluate the candidate’s abilities. Once they have assessed the test, you can change the candidate’s application status based on how well they performed:

1. Reject Candidate—Triggers an automated response politely notifying the candidate that they have failed the test
2. Invite for Interview—Triggers an automated congratulatory email that includes a link to Calendly, which they can use to set up an interview

The Candidate Status Page

Workello offers substantial benefits to your candidates too. To help keep them informed during the hiring process, we’ve designed a special Candidate Status page.

This page contains updates on the status of their applications and an additional What to expect next section that will help them prepare for each stage of your hiring funnel.

Since your candidates will have this page to address their questions at all times, you won’t have to worry about losing a brilliant writer due to miscommunication or a belated reply to their email!

Check out the Candidate Status page here.

Our Investment Paid Off Big Time

Hiring a competent Children’s Book Writer sounds like a piece of cake when you’ve got a fine-tuned system that automates every repetitive aspect of your hiring funnel! While we were hiring, there was no such system to rely on, and we struggled through each stage of the hiring process.

Hundreds of applications were coming in each day and they quickly overwhelmed us. There was no way to keep track of them efficiently, so we couldn’t respond to each applicant as quickly as we would have liked. Sadly, we lost many promising writers who would have been the right fit for our business.

Our editors and content managers were up to their necks in activities other than editing articles and managing content, i.e. reviewing resumes and hastily drawing up tests. This greatly reduced our content output, and the overall situation became dire.

We realized we had to implement drastic changes if we wanted to turn this around. That’s why we invested $100,000+, hundreds of hours of work, and all our brain power into devising a well-optimized, fully automated hiring system. 

The end result of our efforts was Workello!

Thanks to Workello, we were able to:

1. Scale our company from 1 to 45+ writers in under 2 years
2. Reduce the cost of producing content by 75%
3. Successfully lead one of the most ambitious SEO projects ever
4. Let our content managers and editors get back to their primary tasks—editing and managing content

It took us countless hours of dedicated work and a lot of costly investments to create Workello. Now, you can have all the perks of our new system— without any of the trouble— for the price of a single article!

Try out Workello for free! Every feature is pre-configured, so you can start accepting candidates as soon as you create an account!

Where To Find Writers of Children’s Books—An Additional 10 Job Boards

Due to the compactness of Workello’s dashboard, you’re free to post your job ads on as many platforms as you please—there’s no need to worry about overreaching! To cast a wider net, check out some of the following websites:

• Skyword
• Muck Rack
• Writers Work
• Pure Content
• Certified Writers
• ContentGrow
• Mediabistro
• Pod Reacher
• WriterAccess
• Freelancer