Here are a few helpful tips to write a successful call for writers for your magazine, website, or what have you. This will ensure that your applicants know what they’re getting into, what you want from them, and what they are getting out of it. Targetting your ads with a few of these tips will help weed out the applications that you aren’t interested in, as well as getting the level of writers that you require for your project.

Do

• Provide a comprehensive overview of what your writing needs are
• Ask for reasonable qualifications
• Discuss your compensation. If you aren’t sure what to charge, give a general figure based on your budget. Here’s a good resource for guidelines on what writers charge (although the numbers do vary wildly from writer to writer).
• Discuss subject matter - it’s easier to get an expert writer if they know what topic you are looking for.
• Post an informative headline for your job posting that provides details on subject matter and the type of writing you are looking for (web content, newsletter, copywriting, etc etc).

Don’t

• Ask for a huge skillset unless the job requires it. Trust me, you don’t need dreamweaver, python, and XML experience to write a simple web content article.
• Promise ‘eventual’ compensation or a commission based on getting someone to publish your life story. The first is indictivate of no funding, probably because you never wrote up a business plan, the second is just unrealistic. Either way, it makes you look unprofessional. Actually, here’s a better tip - keep non paying jobs (this includes your hopeful eventual compensation) to the approriate boards. Approriate boards do not include something labeled paying or jobs.
• Require a four year degree without at least looking at resumes with equivalent work experience. Nine times out of ten, the person that has at least some real life experience in the field is more competent than the fresh out of college graduate.
• Use a misleading job title. We’re happy that you want to offer a “Look now make money from home!!!111one” job listing, but at least include what kind of writing you want. Possibly in place of all the exclamation points.
• Pay an incredibly low amount for far too much work. An example I saw the other day would be, say, $2.00 (or so, it was some amount under $5) an article for an 800 word article. Um….yeah. That’s just a bit too much, and someone would have to write over 6 of these articles an hour to even try to approach minimum wage. On top of that, the posting asked for them to be done within hours. Tight deadline, degrading pay - it’s bad. Here’s a tip - that price is so far below normal for professional writers that it’s not even funny.
• Make applicants email you for basic information about the job (word count, scope, compensation). This just makes more work for you, as you have to either set up an autoresponder with job information and then look through applications, or you have to reply to each writer yourself. Either way it makes more work for you and the writer.

Examples

Because I won’t rant and point out faults without giving you examples of what I am talking about, let’s go to some job boards writers frequent.

The Good

http://boston.craigslist.org/wri/171950155.html - Simple but effective. This covers the main parts of the job, what is required, and general compensation.

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35248 - Covers all the important bits that the writers need to know.
The Bad<

http://austin.craigslist.org/wrg/172043381.html - I have NO idea.

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35206 - Ambigious title, wants contacted for additional information.
The Ugly

http://www.freelancewriting.com/jobbank/article4806.htm - Rush job, low pay, ask for experience, and don’t bother communicating word count requirements.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 16th, 2006 at 12:30 am and is filed under Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.