Academic Writers Interview Preparation Guide

Download PDF

You're looking for a writer who's committed to keeping his or her skills sharp, and that includes reading some of the better blogs on the subject of content creation.Two that come to mind are ProBlogger and CopyBlogger, but any marketing- or content-focused blog would be an acceptable answer.

This one is pretty easy. Because I always felt writing is in my bones J I am an Engineering graduate and understandably this was a standard question in all interviews. I gave the same reply in all interviews and it worked just fine.

From this question you would be able to judge the type of articles that they are 'interested' to write. Then you would be able to allocate specific contents to such persons depending on their interests. But sometimes, there are writers who do manage to write a variety of topics. This would mean that they have habit of reading and gathering information. Based on the type of contents that you are interested to display, you need to be careful in selecting writers. By reading the articles you would be getting to know on how much depth they are involved in the related subject. Besides, getting writers for writing technical related subjects needs to be based on their technical writing skills and their education qualification.

This will help to know whether the writer is having ideas to incorporate and bring out new thoughts. Based on the skill or talent you would need to know how you hire another writer who would be supportive. Or if the writer is happy to write contents on the subject being given, then you would need to make choice based on the type of work assignments or type of work to be executed example whether marketing or web site contents. Some writers do have lot of ideas and thoughts but they may not know what is the requirement in the market and will be willing to adapt themselves. Such writers are sometimes preferred as they will be willing to change according to the situation and write contents to suit the trend.

☛ Why it's important to ask this: The candidate may understand Google ranks content based on inbound links, but they also need to know how to accumulate inbound links.
☛ What to look for: A good content marketer knows how to get links by producing great link worthy content, and promoting it in a clever manner. Here are some good responses to the questions:
☛ I interview influencers, not only because they have good things to say, but because they promote the resulting content to a large audience as well-and some of those people will end up linking back to my interview.
☛ I include content others can reuse. For example, I may create a quick infographic that other bloggers may want to curate or include in their own posts, with a link back to mine.
☛ I write long form content so I have the most comprehensive and authoritative post on a particular subject, which tempts others to link to me as the reference source.

What you're looking for here is listening. A good content writer will spend time with the client to get a feel for the brand's personality as well as the needs of its target audience.

Why it's important to ask this: I am always surprised by how few marketers at any level understand how Google really ranks content. Though you're not interviewing for an SEO position, content marketing is intrinsically tied to search engine optimization; everyone should know the basics when creating content.
What to look for: You don't need a candidate to know the PageRank formula, but rather the basic premise behind Google's ranking algorithm, along with other auxiliary factors that help with SEO. For example, many naive marketers think Google ranks content largely on meta tags and keyword stuffing. In reality, Google primarily ranks content on inbound links, and the authority of the sites doing the linking. It's a bonus if a candidate can mention other contributing factors such as the text of the hyperlink, the title tag, keywords in the URL, and others.

What you're listening for here is either the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook or theChicago Manual of Style. I'd even accept the Yahoo! Style Guide as a runner-up.

Although content writers aren't supposed to know much about SEO but if they do it's a added bonus because writing and SEO go hand-in-hand and website popularity depends on the right balance between the two and not just one of them. Obviously if you have mentioned SEO as one of your skills then be prepared for some searching SEO questions from the interviewer. Even if you mention SEO as a separate skill as distinct from SEO content writing, mention it after your writing skill and not before that. But handle all SEO related questions with tact. If the interviewer just has some basic SEO knowledge then you can convince him/her quite easily by talking about on-page and off-page optimization but if the interviewer has in depth knowledge then you will need more than just SEO basics. So it's advisable to state upfront your comfort level with all things SEO.

It will help to know what techniques the writer has used and what were the various websites referred. Also it will tell whether the articles were thoroughly read through before writing. Getting to write the appropriate content for the subject requires a step by step process. Some articles are to be written in sequential way and from the writers perspective you would come to know about the way he/she underwent to get the desired content. This will help in making your selection of writers.