Hiring Technical Writers Can Be a Grueling Task—We Know That First-Hand!

In 2019, before we developed Workello, we were a content team known as Content Distribution.com. We took on an ambitious VC-backed client and through hard work and perseverance, we managed to execute one of the most successful SEO campaigns of all time.

In under 2 years, we succeeded in growing our client’s website from 0 to 1,500,000 monthly organic visitors. We achieved this by maintaining a consistently high output of top-notch content.

In an 18-month period, we had to scale our team from 1 to 45+ writers and editors. As our content team grew and demand for our services skyrocketed, we became more and more aware of the faultiness of our hiring process. Qualified writers would slip through our fingers because of deficiencies in communication, and our Editors and Managers had to waste time on manual repetitive tasks, such as posting job ads, reviewing applications, and testing candidates.

That’s when we concluded that we needed an automated system that would streamline our hiring process.

After investing hundreds of hours and more than $100,000 into meticulous R&D, we finally developed a way to address our hiring problems—Workello!

In the following 15 minutes, we’ll show you how to hire a technical writer in record time, while reducing hiring costs by 50%! 

We’ll also answer the following questions:

• Why hire a technical writer?
• What companies hire technical writers?

Where To Find Qualified Candidates—Top 15 Technical Writer Job Boards

The following 15 hiring websites offer some of the best technical writer candidates available online. Take a look at their pros and cons in the table below:

Continue browsing this article, and we’ll show you an additional 15 sources to use when hiring a technical writer.

Why Hiring a Technical Writer Is a Necessity for Most Serious Businesses

The main responsibility of a technical writer is to take complex information about a given topic and present it in a simple, easy-to-understand manner, so it’s more clear to non-technical people. 

They can research and create documentation in a variety of industries, and their services are in high-demand among companies in various business niches. Nowadays, technical writers are mainly employed in sectors such as medicine, software engineering, finance, economics, robotics, and manufacturing.

Technical writers can be an invaluable asset to organizations of all sizes, as they create crucial technical documents that facilitate business operations. Here are some examples of the documents technical writers can create:

• Product specifications—Describe the design, parts, function, and delivery of a specific product. This document includes all the details necessary for a third-party—usually a manufacturer—to reconstruct it

• Instructions—Inform readers about the proper use of a product, service, or program. They typically include documents such as manuals and troubleshooting guides

• Case studies—Present in-depth analyses of particular situations or problems that a client/customer has faced, and how the company’s product or service helped them resolve it—as well as what the reader can learn from their experience

• White papers—Are typically thought-pieces written for professionals in a given field. For example, they might describe a novel approach to marketing or a fresh solution to some long-standing business problem 

All Companies Hiring Technical Writers Face the Same Issues

A technical writer is an invaluable asset to any writing team, as their role is to convert complex technical information into text that can be easily understood by all stakeholders, regardless of their technical knowledge. 

They are in high demand in many industries, but especially in large, multi-million IT corporations. Because of this, tech companies that hire technical writers tend to snap them up faster than any hiring platform can source new ones.

To find an experienced technical writer who is a good fit for your company, it is necessary to review and evaluate hundreds of applications in quick succession. The faster you can do that, the better—snapping up top talent means reaching out to them before the competition!

When our company started growing, we began using Upwork and Glassdoor but soon expanded to other job boards. Regardless of the platform we used to post our job ads, we faced the same problems constantly:

• It was difficult to track candidates by their status in the hiring funnel
• Hiring platforms aren’t built for testing and evaluating writers
• Applicants’ resumes rarely represented their true abilities

The issues only multiplied with each new hiring platform we tried out. Dozens of applications were coming in daily from various networks, such as Craigslist, LinkedIn, Facebook, and via email. 

It was obvious that our current system couldn’t keep up with such large quantities of applications from various sources. Our hiring funnel was getting clogged, and—despite the changes we introduced—we still couldn’t:

• Efficiently log application from a dozen different job boards
• Track applicants by their application status in our funnel
• Respond to teach candidate in a timely manner
• Keep tabs on applicants whose portfolios we initially liked
• Effectively filter out unqualified applicants

We knew immediately that we had to revamp our whole hiring system, but there was no solution on the market that would help us solve all our hiring problems at once. That’s when we decided to develop our own!

With the same zeal we had for content creation, we sank countless hours and more than $100,000 into tireless R&D. The end product was a highly optimized, fully automated hiring funnel—Workello!

Hiring Funnel of a Top 1% Hiring Agency

Before we could implement any improvements, we had to first figure out what was wrong with our existing hiring funnel. That’s why we broke down our entire working system down to the smallest elements and analyzed each one. This is what we learned:

1. To successfully grow a client’s organic traffic, our technical deliverables need to be of the highest grade
2. Only top-notch technical writers can produce complete, accurate, easy-to-understand documentation
3. To find a single qualified technical writer, we need to review and evaluate hundreds of applicants
4. Employing a qualified technical writer means filtering out unqualified ones fast
5. We didn’t have an efficient testing system for spotting bad candidates

We never had any issues with receiving applications—if you post a job ad on any website, candidates will apply. The issues arose once the applications arrived, and we didn’t know how to manage them. 

We sorely lacked an automated hiring funnel that would streamline mundane tasks, such as reviewing portfolios, updating candidates on their status, issuing tests, and setting up interviews. To accomplish this, our new system needed to have the following features:

1. A unified platform that would collect candidates’ applications regardless of their source website
2. A easy-to-navigate menu that would allow us to sort candidates and update their application status with a single click
3. An integrated dashboard for reviewing resumes, testing, setting up interviews, and hiring technical writers
4. An effective testing system that would let us distinguish excellent candidates from bad ones with good portfolios
5. Automated email correspondence that would eliminate the need for manual correspondence while lowering the risk of human error

The first iteration consisted of Google Sheets + Google Forms + Zapier. It was an improvement over what we had before, but it was a patchwork solution. We wanted something more streamlined, easier to use, and more efficient in the long run. After many months of dedicated work, we gradually perfected our system. Our efforts paid off in the end, and we got—Workello!

The First Step in Hiring a Technical Writer is a Superb Job Description

No job ad will magically attract only the best candidates possible. No matter what you do, unqualified applicants will keep applying for the job. Even if you can’t filter them out entirely, you can still drastically lower their numbers by composing a highly specific job description. It is imperative that you be as precise as possible about the role in your organization—the more details you add, the more likely that it will discourage underqualified candidates from applying.

You should include all the responsibilities and requirements that the position entails, such as prior experience in a similar role, industry-specific knowledge, credentials, technical knowledge, and the skills necessary to perform the job well.

Alongside this, you should also promote yourself as a trustworthy employer—ambitious candidates will be more willing to work for your company if you list all the benefits they’ll enjoy. A qualified technical writer can pick and choose between companies—use the job description to make them choose yours!

If you’re not sure how you should compose your job description or what specifics the role entails, you can browse our knowledge base for a premade template! 

Select the role that best suits your company’s needs, swipe up our template, modify it a bit, and you can start using it to hire technical writers straight away!

• Technical Writer
• Technical Writer II
• Technical Writer III
• Junior Technical Writer
• Senior Technical Writer
• Technical Writer and Editor
• Technical Writer Intern
• Technical Writer in Healthcare
• Technical Writer for Cyber Security
• Technical Writing Consultant
• Quality Assurance Technical writer
• Technical Writing Manager

The Key to Successfully Hiring Technical Writers—A Well-Integrated Dashboard!

It tends to get chaotic when applications start arriving from a dozen different websites, especially if your hiring funnel isn’t prepared to handle them. Our new optimized system eliminates this issue by gathering all applications in a single place for you to review—your unique Workello dashboard!

A Workello-hosted application form guarantees that each submission ends up in your dashboard while simultaneously ensuring all candidates submit their applications in the same format.

Check out what the application form looks like here.

Watch Candidates Stream In

The Workello dashboard is the single access-point for all the decisions you’ll make throughout the hiring process. Moving candidates through your hiring funnel is as simple as selecting the appropriate option from a drop-down menu. 

To update an applicant’s status, all you need to do is select one of the following options:

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

Each application status is color-coded, so you can immediately tell how many applicants you have in each stage of the hiring process.

Reject Unqualified Technical Writers

Once an application appears in your Workello dashboard, you or your hiring managers can review it to assess the applicant’s capabilities. If the application doesn’t show the qualities your company is looking for, you can remove the candidate from the hiring process by updating their status to Application Rejected.

This will trigger an automated polite rejection email that notifies the candidate that your company will not be considering them for the role at this time. This eliminates the need for manual correspondence with each candidate and saves you a ton of valuable time in the long run.

Point, Click, Test

The biggest mistake you can make is hire a writer based solely on their portfolio. Portfolios usually don’t accurately reflect a candidate’s first draft capabilities and might even fool you into thinking an unqualified candidate is the perfect fit for your company!

To accurately gauge someone’s writing capabilities, you have to test them.

When we first started hiring technical writers, we didn’t have testing as a part of the hiring process, so we picked the candidates whose portfolios we liked the most. This cost us dearly, and we ended up with tons of unusable documents that we had to heavily edit and sometimes even write from scratch. 

We wasted a lot of money on unqualified candidates who seemed good on paper but didn’t do well in practice. To avoid this, we had to devise an effective testing process that would allow us to reliably spot bad candidates.

Workello makes it easy to test someone’s writing skills. All you need to do is change their application status to Test Candidate.

This triggers an automatic email congratulating them on passing into the next stage and including a link to the written test.

When an applicant goes to the link, they will see something similar to this:

How To Make a Good Test

An excellent test should be thorough enough to give candidates a chance to display their technical writing abilities. Ambitious and confident technical writers will be glad to show you a sample of their work.

Bear in mind that, while it should be thorough, a test shouldn’t be tiresome or exhausting. Even highly skilled candidates will be put off by having to complete a 1,500-word assignment for a job they might not even get. When making a test, you should make sure it can be used to assess every crucial skill for the position while also being easy to complete in a reasonable timeframe.

A good test needs to test technical writers for the following skills:

1. Grip on language
2. Ability to conduct research
3. Ability to present highly technical information in an easy-to-understand manner

It’s incredibly easy to plug your test into Workello and have it automatically sent to candidates. Here’s how to set up a test in Workello in 3 minutes.

Interviewing Candidates

Once an applicant submits the completed test, their status will be automatically updated to Test Complete and they’ll no longer have access to it. From that moment on, your Editors and Managers can read it and assess the candidate’s writing skills.

After they have evaluated the written test, they can update the applicant’s status to:

1. Reject Candidate—Triggers an automated message that informs them of the unsuccessful outcome of their test
2. Interview Candidate—Triggers an automated email congratulating them on passing the test and inviting them to schedule a Zoom meeting via Calendly

The Candidate Status Page

Workello makes the hiring process easier for your candidates as well—they no longer need to bombard your HR team with emails since all the information they need is displayed on their Candidate Status page!

The Candidate Status page also has a general section where candidates can find out what they can expect in the next stage of the hiring process.

You can take a look at the Candidate Status page here.

Our Investment Paid Off Big Time

Hiring technical writers who can do their job well is a challenge—Workello makes the endeavor easier. 

It’s a simple process when your hiring funnel is automated and every feature optimized—when Content Distribution.com started out, we had to do everything the hard way!

It was impossible to keep track of all the applications we were receiving, and we missed out on many talented technical writers. By the time we reached out to them, they had accepted a position at a different company, or became disinterested due to ineffective communication.

Our editors and managers had their hands full posting job ads and manually sending out tests. Our content production was lagging, and we didn’t have an alternative method in sight—but you now have Workello!

We had to invest $100,000+ and devote hundreds of hours to meticulous research and development. In the end, we devised the perfect hiring system, which allowed us to:

1. Scale our company to 45+ people in under 2 years
2. Reduce the cost of content production by 75%
3. Launch one of the most ambitious SEO projects ever
4. Let our Editors and Content Managers focus on their main tasks instead of posting job ads and testing candidates

Try out Workello for free! The platform is pre-configured so you can start hiring technical writers in under 3 minutes!

Where To Find Qualified Candidates—Additional 15 Technical Writer Hiring Websites

With Workello’s automated process, you can distribute your job ads across as many websites as you please! To cast a wider net and catch more qualified candidates, you could try out some of the following job boards:

• Scribewise
• ContentGrow
• Mediabistro
• Skyword
• Zerys
• PeoplePerHour
• Masthead Media
• Pod Reacher
• Pitchwhiz
• HireMyMom
• Pure Content
• Copify
• Craigslist
• Freelancer
• Muck Rack