John Jonas shares questions to ask when hiring a writer, focusing on English skills, reading habits, and writing practices. He covers what separates strong writers from weak ones and how to spot them in interviews.
Questions to ask when hiring a writer ofs. So I often get asked. So I write this newsletter every day. Not every day. I read it four times a week. People think it's every day because they get it Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. They don't get it on the weekend, and that still leads them to think it's every day. And I tried sending it less often and found that my people stopped reading. And I tried sending it more often and more people complained. And when I started sending it four days a week, it was like, oh, yeah, like everyone seems happy. And I can manage that amount of content, right? Because managing the content is also a piece of it for me. So I regularly get asked, who writes your newsletter? And that's simple. Two people, my ofs, Julia and me. Sometimes I write the full thing, sometimes she writes the full thing, and then I edit and add to it. But the two of us write it. And then the next question I always get is, how did you hire her? What did you look for when you were hiring her? And that's simple English skills. I just look for English. However, with her, I hired her like 12 years ago. And when I hired her, I was just looking for English. I just wanted someone who had perfect, perfect English. And she did. Since then, she's written countless things for me, like my personal blog or my personal social media or articles that had my name on it. So so many things that, that we've published, she has written and other people have written for us too. So how do you find someone that you can have right for you? So obviously English, English skills. Perfect English is the first thing that's a given. So here are some questions that I would ask if I'm going to hire a writer today. So one, do you like reading for fun? And if you do, what do you read? So if you don't like to read, it's really hard to write. To write you have to read and you probably have to read a lot to write well, you have to read a lot. And that's where ideas come from. You don't read, you don't get creative. You don't put other people's creativity into you. It's hard to be creative. Most Filipinos are exposed to a lot of American culture. And so asking what you read is another going to be another good sign of like, how good is your English going to be? How creative are you capable of being? One of the things that I will ask, another question I'll ask is, what kind of television do you watch? Do you watch like Filipino game shows? Or do you watch the Bachelor? You know, I don't specify those things, but I'm looking to see, like, are you watching American tv? Because if you are, your English levels are going to be likely to be higher and your ability to keep up on what's current and write something current is way higher. Okay, so here's another thing that I would ask. Do you write every day? Or how often do you write? Do you journal? Do you blog? Do you do something? The more you write, the better you are at it. And I want to know if you write and what are you writing? Can I see what you're writing? The next thing I would ask is, do you know how to create an outline? What I've found is when we just. When my team just starts like writing out something, blah, it just usually doesn't turn out right. Doesn't turn out super well. Writing an outline of something makes it turn out better. So do you know how to write an outline? And then can you write an outline for me? And here's how I'll do this one. So here's another question I'll ask. Go read these four pieces that I have written. Like, here's these four articles that I've written, and I want you to write an introduction in my voice to an article about X and write an outline for this thing. So write an outline for this article and write the introduction. That way I get to see like, do you know how to write an outline? And can you write in my voice after reading some stuff about me? So finding someone to write for you is not exactly science, but it's not super far from it either. There's definitely an art to it, but there's a lot of science to it. Like ask these questions, ask specific questions, have them do specific things, and you're going to find someone who's really good. At 1vaoa.com, I have like 50 other questions that I ask people that you can ask that I. It's part of the 1 VAOA course. I give you all these questions so you know exactly what to ask. And in specific situations, what are the things that you need to know that will draw out the best people and kind of get rid of the not as good people as you're, as you're doing your recruiting. So that's available at 1vaoa.com.
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