How Not To Hire A Freelancer

by Joe Wallace

Oh, but that game box art makes freelancing look exciting and lively doesn’t it? And then there are days like these, where a poor freelancer looking for work has to contend with the frustration of wading through job listings like the one I’m about to show you.

Normally I direct my writing here to freelancers, but this time it’s the employers who should sit up and take note. What follows are excerpts from an actual ad seeking a freelance writer. I did not change anything for emphasis. In all cases the case, the spelling, the capitalizations, and the breathless prose are all the original ad writer’s work. Behold:

“we are looking for writing and a sales person”

Great headline. You can already sense the trouble brewing.

“(Company name deleted) A NEW COMPANY IN (location deleted) IT IS LOOKING FOR A
-WRITING PERSON PROFESSIONAL AND WITH GREAT WRITING SKILLS RESPNSIBLE PART TIME JOB WORK AT HOME ”

Oh, yes, we are off to a great start here with the all caps. Writers, you should be ready to run away screaming at this moment, never mind what comes next:

“-SALES PERSON RESPONSABLE ,VERY PROFESSIONAL WITH GREAT SALES SKILLS MOTIVATED AND WILLING TO GROW WITH THE COMPANY IT IS A PART TIME JOB WORK AT HOME. ”

OK, so maybe they couldn’t afford TWO job posts, one for each position? We can give the benefit of the doubt here, right? Um….maybe not.

“VERY IMPORTANT IT IS A REQUIREMENT HAVE A LAPTOP OR DESKTOP WITH INTERNET CONEXION EMAIL US (name deleted@deleted.COM) WITH ATACH RESUME”

Yes folks, that Internet conexion is going to be crucial to your survival at this company–especially when you have to use an online dictionary.

“WE ALSO CHECK BACKGROUND AND CHECK REFERENCES FROM PREVIUS JOBS .
OUR COMPANY IT IS A WEB DESIGNS AND MARKETING ON LINE FOR SERVING SMALL BUSINESS IN USA IF YOU WILL LIKE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT US GO TO www.addressdeleted.com”

Hey! These folks are into MARKETING! That explains why this ad is so…stunning.

That last bit contained my favorite part by far–the marketing geniuses posted entire job ad in all caps except for the URL. Trust me, you’re going to LOVE working for this bunch.

“THE WRITING PERSON WE WILLING TO PAY FOR A JOB (WRITING CONTENT FOR WEB SITE)
THE SALES PERSON WE WILLING TO PAY BY COMISSION 15% FOR EACH SALE .

• Location: (deleted)
• Compensation: IT WILL BE DISCUSS IN THE INTERVIUW“

I’m not sure I would be able to keep a straight face in the “interviuw”. Now I hear some of you already mentally chiding me for poking fun at a freelance job ad that seems to be clearly written by someone who uses English as a second language, but I am certain that the phrase “spell check” is one of those universal things that can–or at least should–transcend the language barrier somehow. Or maybe I’ve been watching too much Bill Maher and it’s started to infect my brain.

So what’s the point of this article, besides having some fun at this poor job ad poster’s expense? My point is this: being critical and using your skills to size someone up for their suitability for the gig is NOT just the job of an interviewer. Freelancers, you should be interviewing THEM just as much as they are trying to interview YOU.

This freelance job poster blew the initial interview, at least in my mind. All the warning signs are there. You wouldn’t work for a boss who told you women can’t do a good a job as men, and you shouldn’t work for someone who can’t toe the professional line in less obvious–but still identifiable–areas (like the standard operating procedures used by professionals when writing help wanted ads to attract freelancers.)

Reply to a job ad like this at your own risk, but my personal advice is to stay away. Or better yet, get into your spaceship and fly somewhere else like the guy in the image above is clearly ready to do.

The Devil Is In the Details

by Joe Wallace

Take a good look at the picture and try to figure out what’s wrong with it.

If you have trouble spotting it at first, don’t feel too badly–the image is so tiny you probably missed it the first time, but look again. Nobody in their right mind would actually put a full coffee cup ON their laptop the way this one is. It’s an invitation for disaster all right, and anybody with morning brain could easily knock over a cup of java–especially where THIS one is placed.

Seems sort of dumb not only to put a coffee cup on a laptop, but then to take a PHOTO of it, to boot. Somebody thought this looked great, but didn’t think about the implications. (And before you ask, I’m the one who took that photo. On purpose. It amused me, but stupid things like this do before I’ve had enough caffeine.)

But it does prove a point—it’s easy to overlook something terribly obvious in the rush to get the goods. How many times have we ALL hit “send” on that e-mail before proofreading it? When you find out later that you dropped a “the” or mangled your recipient’s name, the rest of the day is spent kicking yourself until you’re too sore to sit.

I catch e-mail marketers out all the time. You know the ones–they’re trying very hard not to make their sales pitch read like a form letter, but they forget to snip out some crucial part of the e-mail they sent to the last poor schlub. Your “personalized” e-mail has somebody else’s information in it. Or just plain wrong info. “I’d love to help you promote your purple envelope business, Mrs. Wallace.”

Tee hee.

Then there’s the way you get burned when you’ve hit “reply”. Or rather, you THINK you’ve hit “reply”. Instead you hit “reply all”. Then you accidentally send that candid message about your crappy lunch break to someone you really didn’t intend to contact. Whoops.

I’ve made a fool of myself enough to teach myself a couple of tricks in this department.

1. I never hit “reply” anymore unless I’m able to reply to EVERYONE in the e-mail. I always initiate a new e-mail. Sounds obvious, but it’s not–otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation here and now.

2. I proofread my e-mails. This might seem excessively nitpicky, but now that it’s a habit and I do it with ALL e-mail, I tend not to send out things that have flaws, errors, unintended recipients and other not-ready-for-prime-time problems.

3. I walk away from e-mail for 10 minutes or so before replying to bad news, things that make me angry, or information that increases my work load. For me, the time away gives me a moment to think through everything.

4. I always re-read the last paragraph of everything I write one last time before I declare it finished and hit “send”. For some reason, people tend to forget tact most at the end of an e-mail. I like to catch that sort of thing when I can.

5. I try not to assume people know what I’m talking about or even remember conversations we’ve had about what I’m getting in touch for. It makes life so much easier to give a little road map (in a nice and tactful way) just in case.

6. I try to write e-mails and cover letters with the assumption that the reader hasn’t had any coffee yet.

My Favorite Freelance Resources

by Joe Wallace

I have a set of unusual resources I like to use to keep pushing my freelance career forward. A lot of them are things I use to keep tabs on the next big thing, some of them are related to finding freelance jobs, and some of them are about the craft of writing. In no particular order, here are my favorite freelance resources:

Google. Not the search engine, which I use for research, but all the other features. I give my clients access to my work via Google Documents instead of e-mailing attachments, I use Google Alerts to keep me posted when people are reposting or otherwise discussing my writing, and I like to keep track of how my blogs are doing via Google Analytics.

Craigslist. I never use Craigslist to look for freelance work, but I do use it to look for deals on office equipment and other things I should be spending money on to further the business. Sometimes I use Craigslist to hunt for new advertisers for Freelance-Zone.com, too—a company advertising jobs for freelancers on Craigslist is one I probably want to get to know better.

Wired.com. Some people read Darren Rowse to take the pulse of the pro blog world, but I do my own research a bit differently. I like the info Darren Rowse puts out, but I find that information to be far more valuable when coupled with reportage coming from and intended for techies and word nerds not necessarily involved in the pro blogger side of things. Call it triangulation of information–I like to find the sweet spot in today’s fad-driven marketplace by using a combination of intel from a variety of sources.

Small, unknown blogs. There’s nothing more valuable to me than reading the perspective of a new freelancer, pro blogger, or other creative just starting out in the business. A fresh set of eyes on old problems often reveals plenty of new insight. When it doesn’t, you’ve had a good laugh.

Marketplace. I listen to American Public Media’s daily finance report on my Chicago NPR station, and in the two years it’s been quite valuable to be as a freelancer. Financial literacy as a self-employed creative–especially when you’re successful enough to worry about changing income tax brackets and other problems related to cash flow issues–is NOT an optional pursuit. If you want to be a successful freelancer, you have to be aware of your finances, the issues that affect them, even the ones that don’t seem to hit close to home–the collapse of Lehman Brothers, for example–but ultimately DO change the landscape for you as a self-employed business person.

I suppose I should throw a freelance gig-related resource in here. Part of the secret to my own personal freelance success has had much to do with networking, being creatively diverse, and not putting all my eggs in one basket. That’s one of the reasons why I’m a big believer in creative temp agencies like Artisan Creative. Creative temp and placement agencies are not for everyone–they don’t take all comers and your creative chops are only one part of the picture. But if you’re skilled, you’re a people person who can work as part of a team, and you bring an optimistic attitude to the table, a creative temp agency is a great addition to your list of freelance job options.

When it comes to doing the job hunt on your own, I strongly recommend scoping out the Careers and About Us section of any media website you run across. Going directly to the source has been a very productive strategy for me, and while I can’t knock the job sites for passing on the latest details on current gigs, my own personal experience has been better when I take the direct approach. Your own results may vary.

Poll: What’s On Your Mind?

by Joe Wallace

After much discussion today about all things freelance, Catherine and I realized that there’s an important part of the freelance puzzle we’d like to spend a lot more time on in these posts.

While most freelancers know it’s far better to work for yourself then somebody else, there’s always a nagging doubt in the minds of even the best freelancers out there. “Can I really make it?” or “Will I really find enough work to justify going freelance full time?”

Cath and I say yes to both of these questions, but it’s obvious that there are plenty of unknowns out there for those still part-timing it in the freelance world. And that’s why we are asking you, dear reader, to send us your questions about the freelance life. We want to know what we can do to help.What is it you want to know? What’s your burning question about freelancing? What do you want to see given more coverage on here?

Send your questions about any and all aspects of the freelance life to:

questions@freelance-zone.com

We’re soliciting questions for two reasons–we want to know what’s on your mind, and we want to use your questions to guide future content here on FZ. It does us no good to endlessly pontificate on subjects that don’t mean anything to you personally–consider this your open invitation to influence future posts here–we won’t hold back on the answers, either. Sharing is a good thing.

If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, you know Cath and I have many years of experience in this business, and we’ve come as far as we have via trial and error, calculated risks, wild speculation and every tactic in between. How can we help you? Drop us a line and we’ll do our level best.

We don’t promise to have all the answers, and in the end what worked for us might not work for you–but we can at least share what we have. We look forward to the first round.

Stretch Out, Stay Flexible

Greetings Freelancers! I am an editor but I come in peace!

Let me introduce myself. My name is Amanda and I’ve been a professional editor and a writer for seven years. I’ve run the spectrum when it comes to the writing and editing industry, from my early days as a music journalist to the more recent corporate world of B2B copy editing and I’ve lived to tell the tale. Currently, I spend my days as a Community Manager for RunMyErrand (a start-up based out of Boston) creating marketing strategies on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, which is a fancy way of saying I screw around on-line all day and get paid. Woot!

But I digress. You, reader, come to this valuable blog site to learn how to make it in this tough and unforgiving industry, and to that I have but one piece of advice for you: Be flexible.

Within the writing and editing industry, the opportunities for job growth and change are constantly appearing, disappearing and reinventing themselves. Who knew when Facebook first popped up that there would be lucrative marketing opportunities on-line for nearly every company in the world? Who knew that Twitter would become such a powerful beast in terms of information sharing and driving website traffic? Who could have guessed that blogging would become the bread and butter for so many wonderful writers to launch careers?

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Blogger Beware: The Schedule Function in Wordpress

by Joe Wallace

Freelance productivity tools are supposed to help you get things done while you’re busy on other tasks. But sometimes the very tools you’re using to help you can come back to haunt you in ways you never expected.

In the freelance game, as in life, perception is often more important than reality. Here’s a puzzler for you–could your freelance tools actually lend the impression that you’re stealing company time from one client to service your other clients or your own freelance blog?

I run another blog, Turntabling.net. It’s a site for vinyl junkies, soundtrack collectors, and drive-in movie lovers. Part of the reason I’m able to do Turntabling is because I write the blog posts two and three at a time in my off hours, and use the Wordpress Schedule function to add the posts in over time during the day. … Continue Reading

Holiday Guilt?

Yo Prinzel wrote a great blog entry aimed at all of us who felt slightly guilty for taking a glorious four-day weekend off for the holidays. Adding my own two cents to this blog post, I’ll just say that one way you can offset the guilts for taking time off to stuff your face full of turkey is to pre-position some content or work for submission during your down time. If you’re running a blog or a for-pay website and have content that shows up over the holidays, you can feel confident that you’re feeding the audience while still giving yourself some much-needed down time.
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Kaizen for Freelancers

by Joe Wallace

I was reading an interview at FreelanceSwitch and stumbled across a word I haven’t seen used in ages. Kaizen is a Japanese word (and concept) imported to the west by management types. The term basically translates as “improvement” but is used in context as “continuous improvement”.

It’s tied to a philosophy–you never stop learning ways to improve your business, and never stop looking for ways to make it more efficient.

Do you use kaizen in your freelance routine?

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Freelance Career Stuff that Works For Me

There are plenty of writing blogs that advocate “best practices” or things that seem to be best practices…and enough of those things are similar enough that a newcomer might get the mistaken impression that the writing game has a set of rules or ways to “do it right” that, when used like a magic formula, equal success.

But the fantastic truth of the matter is, there’s no one right way to do this–freelancing is about what works for YOU. No formulas aside from a few professional courtesies and common-sense activities like spell-check and final draft revisions.

That said, here’s a list of things in no particular order, that I do on a regular basis that seem to work for me:

–I like to stay up late. Past midnight. I try not to work myself into the ground, but around 11PM, after Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, I do some shameless self promotion. … Continue Reading

Freelance Writing Jobs for Thursday September 10 2009

The never-ending quest for more freelance jobs and jobs for writers continues. A creative staffing agency seeks a freelance medical writer for telecommute work for oncology and hematology topics. Don’t apply if you aren’t able to write in depth about those–this one’s not for the inexperienced.

The American Association of University Women seeks a writer who can do articles and marketing materials. This is a freelance position but you’ll be plenty busy–the list of projects they want you to work on is quite extensive. Send them your resume, cover letter, writing samples and references to editor@aauw.org.

CVTips.com has positions open for freelance writers who can write web content and SEO. This is a good opening for a new freelancer developing their SEO content skills and the pay is commensurate with that experience level.

A Houston-based online news group seeks freelance reporters for community reporting. Pay is listed as “competitive” and you’ll have to do local and suburban news topics–drop an e-mail to jpape@instantnewskaty.com and include at least three writing samples.

Writer Jobs Monday August 31 2009

by Joe Wallace

I can not stop laughing at the call for a writer I found this morning with a list of required skills which included English, spelling, and “grammer”. I realize full well this makes me a bad person. So be it.

If you live in Iowa, want to write scripts and can run a pro-grade video camera, there’s a job waiting for you in Omaha. I have a sneaking suspicion–but no proof–that this is a civilian contractor job at Offut Air Force Base, but I could be dead wrong on that score. But if it IS such a gig, there is seriously decent money to be made.

Medimmune seeks a big league phara/medical writer for a position in Gathersburg, MD. This requires some heavy credentials so it’s not for the generalist writer. Got post-grad in medicine or pharma? This is the gig for you.

A Canadian tourism site run by Niche Media Solutions needs a expat living in Canada to write tourism pieces for a full or part time freelance gig. Base pay is $1000 a month. Drop them a line with your resume plus some detailed background information and how it relates to the job. Send all info to NicheMediaSolutions@yahoo.com.

And finally a bi-monthly Texas magazine seeks freelancers living within 100 miles of Austin for features, travel and food pieces and much more. Pay for this one is up to $500 based on word count but the ad stresses you must live within the specified distance or don’t bother applying.

Writing Jobs For Friday August 28 2009

Today’s writing jobs include a writing gig that would make Jared proud. Yes, you too can apply for the rare writer job advertised by Subway.

This writing position is at Subway World Headquarters (sounds a bit like a villain’s hideout on a 007 film, doesn’t it?) and requires relocation–no telecommutes allowed. This isn’t a glorified white paper writing gig, Subway wants an actual writer to create articles, newsletters, etc. When you follow that link, scroll down til you find the Executive category and you’re there.

If you can’t stand the smell of baking bread, maybe you want one of the bizillions of writing and editing jobs advertised by Time Warner. Scroll through their extensive listing of brand new writing and editing gigs including Supervising Editor for CNN, and writers for HLN Dayside.

The headhunting firm KL Anderson is looking for a medical writer. If you have a PhD in medicine, chances are you’re probably not reading this, but just in case, have a look at the gig and you’ll find a nice opprotunity to write for a living. I mention this gig because KL Anderson, in all likelihood, needs other qualified medical writers with or without a doctorate, so don’t hesitate to get in touch.

FinanceInsights.com needs finance writers for a variety of freelance gigs, and CareerBuilder.com also advertises a finance writing gig. Lots of freelance jobs lately for anybody skilled in finance stuff….

A Secret Source For More Freelance Work Between Gigs

by Joe Wallace

A good post at FreelanceWritingGigs offers some advice on how to scoop up some extra freelance writing jobs when you are between gigs. But there’s a little secret you might not find mentioned in other posts that could put you in a completely different place financially when you find those freelance projects scarce in your favorite places.

I’m talking about signing up for creative temp agencies like Artisan, or FILTER. These agencies are often regional–Artisan serves a select group of major cities only, for example. They are also highly selective in some cases, but for those who make the cut, the pay can be phenomenal.
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Freelance Writing Jobs For Tuesday, August 25

Here’s a hot one with a few key details left out of the ad–TheStreet.com, home to Jim Cramer and other financial whiz-kids, has an opening at its MainStreet.com site which focuses on personal finance.

You need three years of online writing experience for this freelance writing job (is this a full-time position? Contract?  On site?) and you also have to be groovy enough to require absolutely MINIMAL editing. Send resumes, clips and cover letter to resumes@thestreet.com with “MainStreet Writer” in the subject line.

Someone in NYC needs a writer who can do a 15-page e-book about how employers come up with the right salaries for their work force, how they evaluate potential employees and much more.

Greenhouse Partners seeks a freelance copywriter. You need to submit samples in a PDF file for this one, nothing short of that will do.

JaneContent.com is advertising for SEO copywriters for high volume work. Unlike some other SEO freelance job ads, this one requests you send your rate per word along with writing samples and such. Send your cover letter, resume, samples and rates to Julie@femalebusinessauthors.com.

Freelance Writing Jobs Monday August 24 2009

by Joe Wallace

Have a look at our freelance writing jobs and see what fits for you, and don’t forget to share with us if you know of anything worthy that belongs here that hasn’t been listed. We’re always glad to get more leads, freelance job updates and such from our favorite people.

The Tribune Company seeks a freelance writer for KPIX TV in New York. This is a part time gig for anyone with a television background looking for a good freelance writing job with an Emmy-winning company.

Are you living in the Cape Girardeau, Missouri region looking for some extra freelance writing assignments? The Southeast Missourian is looking for some freelance writers to cover community events.

Pygmalion Films seeks scripts for commercials. This is low pay for the industry, about $100 per, but is an interesting possibility for someone looking to break into script writing, especially if you have a background in commercial copy.
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