Happy Halloween! A Truly Terrifying Content Recruiting Tale

Once upon a not so very long time ago, I hired a writer — a seemingly well-qualified writer. He had it all:great writing samples, a super attitude, prompt actions, pleasant to speak with, very well educated, and talked a great game about having “strong SEO experience and knowledge.” He was extremely eager to work, so I put him to work!

In came the first assignment and I thought: “Whoa…” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing:

• He had zero SEO knowledge. If it were possible to have less than zero knowledge, this guy would have managed it!
• He didn’t use our SEO cheat sheet, which clearly tells you precisely how to write a Title tag!
• His idea of writing copy for the homepage was to write a shotty H1 tag and call it a day. I kid you not — there wasn’t one word on the page.

And that was just the beginning. As I read through various parts of the copy for the other pages, it was clear that it had been written quickly, was filled with typos, and hadn’t been given a second glance before being submitted, as evidenced by the glaring grammatical errors.

I figured one of two things happened here. Either: a) the person I hired to write copy outsourced it to someone offshore, or b) the person I hired to write copy took the “fake it ’til you make it” motto much too literally.

But wait! Those are only a few of the problems you can run into when you’re trying to find a qualified…