In case you’ve ever tried to rent freelance writers, you most likely ended up with 1000’s of functions.
This often results in you asking your self two questions:
- How do I select the very best ones?
- How will I even have time to filter via that many functions?
On this put up, you’ll find out how we arrange a course of to reply these questions.
Most job listings inform candidates to electronic mail the hiring supervisor their cowl letter and resume. That works nicely when on the lookout for full-time hires however not for freelance positions as a result of they usually appeal to a whole lot or 1000’s of candidates.
There’s simply no means you possibly can evaluate that many resumes with out dropping it. In consequence, appropriate candidates usually slip via the web and also you miss out on nice writers.
One method to clear up this drawback is to have all candidates apply via a Google Kind.
Listed below are two explanation why this makes sense:
- It helps you vet candidates quick and effectively – Google Varieties funnels candidates right into a Google Sheet, so you possibly can evaluate all candidates there as an alternative of sifting via emails.
- It permits you to check writers’ expertise and information at scale – You may simply ask questions designed to guage candidates’ information, expertise, and expertise with the subject at hand.
By way of what it is best to ask candidates, I like to recommend a mixture of multiple-choice questions and ones with brief solutions. A number of-choice questions assist gauge information and expertise, whereas “brief reply” questions permit you to decide writing potential.
Right here’s certainly one of our multiple-choice questions:
The reply to this query is one thing that we count on most skilled SEOs to know. However it might journey up these with much less expertise.
Sidenote.
There’s nonetheless a little bit of “it relies upon” with this query. However typically talking, there’s a transparent and proper reply that I believe most educated SEOs will select.
Right here’s an instance of a “brief reply” query:
We designed this query to assist us decide the applicant’s potential to elucidate issues succinctly and precisely.
In case you’re interested by our software kind, right here it’s.
Solely a handful of those questions are for vetting functions; the remaining are to get primary particulars like their names, electronic mail addresses, Twitter handles, and so on. It’s important to ask for these particulars, because it’s the one method to get them when candidates aren’t making use of by electronic mail.
You now want to draw candidates to your software kind, which you are able to do by making a job itemizing and posting in all places you can.
Listed below are the 4 issues you could clarify:
- What you’re on the lookout for – Hold it brief. Inform candidates what the place entails.
- What expertise you require – Record every little thing you count on in candidates.
- Who you’re – Give some particulars about your organization. (Hold it brief; don’t bore individuals.)
- The best way to apply – Ship individuals to your software kind.
There are many job boards the place you possibly can submit your itemizing. We posted to ProBlogger, Swipe Information Job Board (prev. Hey Entrepreneurs), our careers web page, and some others.
We additionally posted in just a few Slack and Fb teams.
Given that each applicant goes via the identical course of, the extra locations you possibly can put up your job itemizing, the higher.
Each side of the vetting course of takes place within the Google Sheet. This makes life tremendous simple, as every little thing is in a single place. I like to recommend splitting the method into automated and guide vetting to make issues as fast and environment friendly as potential.
Automated vetting
Right here, the thought is to disqualify candidates who don’t match the invoice, give a preliminary rating to the remaining ones, and clear up the sheet to make guide vetting as fast as potential. Right here’s the way to do it in three steps.
A. Disqualify
There’s no level losing time reviewing functions from of us who can’t observe primary guidelines or don’t meet primary standards. So it pays to disqualify them mechanically. The fantastic thing about Google Sheets is that you are able to do this simply with filters and formulation.
You’ll recall that we requested all candidates to outline two phrases in underneath 50 phrases. As we needed to disqualify those that exceeded the allowed phrase rely, we added two extra columns with formulation to rely the variety of phrases in every definition.
Then we filtered to exclude rows the place the definitions have been above 50 phrases.
We then filtered for just a few extra standards:
- Fee per 1,000 phrases – We excluded anybody who didn’t put 10–1,000. (This was primarily to exclude candidates who couldn’t observe directions and gave a worth per phrase.)
- Years of expertise in search engine optimisation – We excluded anybody with “<1” yr of expertise.
- Have you ever ever used Ahrefs earlier than? – We excluded those that answered “no.”
B. Rating
Subsequent, you wish to give every applicant a preliminary rating to get a greater sense of their information and expertise at a look.
To do that, we created a components that checked their solutions to our multiple-choice questions, their Ahrefs expertise, and whether or not they nonetheless had an energetic Ahrefs subscription. The outcome was a rating between 0 and 5.
C. Simplify
Even with the filters and scores in place, your sheet will probably be overwhelming as a result of it accommodates a lot information. So it’s value hiding columns you don’t want for the vetting course of, corresponding to candidates’ names and electronic mail addresses. This additionally helps to get rid of potential biases.
For us, we added conditional formatting to our preliminary rating to make eyeballing the standard of every applicant simpler.
Right here’s what we ended up with:
Guide vetting
We skimmed candidates’ preliminary scores and definitions to determine whether or not they need to progress to the subsequent stage of the method. Every applicant took no various seconds, permitting us to vet over 100 candidates per hour.
For instance, it solely took a second to determine to not proceed with this applicant as a result of they outlined SEM slightly than search engine optimisation.
For the applicant under, then again, we might inform fairly rapidly that it’d be value giving them a shot. Each of their definitions have been correct and nicely written, and so they scored nicely on our multiple-choice questions:
To trace our resolution for every applicant, we added one last column:
Most individuals check writers by having them write a check article from a content material temporary. We do the identical however don’t ship distinctive briefs to every applicant. We ship all of them the identical temporary.
Listed below are three explanation why we suggest this:
- It’s simpler to grade their work – You may create a guidelines to attain writers on the identical standards.
- It’s faster – You don’t must create a brand new content material temporary for every author.
- It may be automated – You may arrange methods to ship the temporary to writers once they hit this stage.
Let’s take a look at how to make sure checks run easily and effectively.
A. Clarify the deal and get their particulars
For candidates who move our preliminary vetting course of, we have to clarify the deal for the check article and get their particulars. We created a template in Gmail for this.
It explains that we:
- Wish to supply them a paid check article.
- Pay a flat charge per check article (and the way a lot).
- Ship the identical temporary to each applicant and that their article gained’t be revealed.
- Personal all of the work they produce for us.
- Pay invoices on the finish of the month.
Which will look like info overload, however it’s finest to ensure everybody’s on the identical web page from the start.
Our electronic mail ends with a hyperlink to a Google Kind asking for his or her bill electronic mail handle (that is usually totally different from the one they use every day) and the way they wish to be paid.
B. Ship the content material temporary for the check
We present a affirmation message when an applicant submits the Google Kind within the earlier step. It hyperlinks them to a Google Doc with the content material temporary for the check article.
Right here’s what that appears like:
The doc additionally accommodates directions that inform the applicant to:
- Make a duplicate of the doc.
- Write as a lot or as little as they like (no phrase rely quotas).
- Electronic mail us the check article and bill us once they’re accomplished.
- Learn our content material pointers earlier than they begin writing.
I like to recommend everybody create content material pointers when working with freelance writers. We hyperlink to ours within the doc. It explains what we count on relating to model and content material.
Listed below are a few excerpts:
C. Overview their content material
Given that you simply’ll be testing just a few writers, you want a good and constant method to decide their relative high quality. For this, we created a guidelines to evaluate and rating their efforts rapidly.
Right here’s an excerpt from our guidelines:
You may see that we examine the article as an entire for just a few fundamentals, then evaluate every part in additional depth.
For instance, listed here are just a few of our standards for the definition:
- Is it written within the appropriate format (in line with our pointers)?
- Is it correct?
- Is it nicely written?
In whole, there are 30 issues on our guidelines. Each equals one level, so we rating every applicant out of 30.
Hiring is the simple half. If an applicant scores nicely on their check article, we assign them an precise one to write down. If that goes nicely, we give them extra.
Right here are some things to look out for when working with freelancers:
- High quality deterioration – Freelancers can generally get lazy and even start subcontracting work. Each of this stuff result in a discount in high quality.
- Reliability points – Life often will get in the way in which for everybody however be careful for constant unreliability.
- Communication points – For no matter motive, disappearing off the face of the earth is surprisingly frequent.
Don’t hesitate to drop writers in the event you face these points. Persevering with to work with them will suck your time and power.
By that very same token, if you come throughout dependable freelancers who constantly produce high-quality work, deal with them nicely. Nice writers are value their weight in gold, so maintain giving them work and evaluate their charges periodically.
Ultimate ideas
Hiring freelance writers is simple when you’ve got a system in place. You may even automate lots of the steps with instruments like Zapier.
For instance, we’ve zaps for define requests, logging particulars, and sending cost requests to our workplace supervisor.
Acquired questions? Ping me on Twitter.