Tutty

As a content marketing manager for tech startups, I’ve learned a lot about recruiting and hiring technical content writers. At each startup, I begin by working with freelancers or agencies on developer content like tutorials and blog posts. Then I aim to hire a full-time employee to handle technical writing projects outside the scope of external partners.

In this tutorial, I share a process for hiring a full-time technical content writer based on my experience as a hiring manager. We’ll start by creating a job description that positions you and your future writer for success. Then we’ll explore how to attract candidates and actively recruit them. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have all the information and resources you need to confidently hire a technical content writer.

Prerequisites

1. Developer documentation: Ask some product managers and engineers you trust whether your documentation is in a good place. If it’s not, your writer will have a hard time creating solution-based content worthy of attention. Your friends from product may also slip into their DMs about writing documentation.

2. Production-ready platform: Bugs in platforms from budding startups are common blockers for technical content writers. This was the case for one tech startup I assembled freelance writers for. The writers did more QAing than writing and the developer content initiative was canceled. To determine if your platform is ready for a full-time writer, work with freelancers first.

3. Approval to hire: This tutorial assumes you already have buy-in from managers, finance, and human resources to hire a technical content writer. To attract qualified applicants, I recommend getting approval for a $100,000 salary if you’re hiring in the United States. This is how much full time content writers receive from Digital Ocean, a leader in technical content writing.

Considerations

• Technical writers are not the same as technical content writers. Technical writers work on the engineering or product team to write documentation and should be hired first. Technical content writers work on the marketing team to write blog posts and tutorials that show developers how to use your platform in novel ways.

With these prerequisites and considerations in mind, let’s get to hiring!

Step 1: Create an explicit writing goal

You want your writer to focus on creating a specific type of content. This focus is essential to keeping them productive and validating the business case for full-time employment. But which type of content should they write, and how much? 

There are two primary content options to choose from based on your goals:

1. Blog posts like this educate developers about various technologies and help you grow organic traffic. A reasonable requirement is one blog post per week.

2. Tutorials like this show developers how to build solutions with your APIs and help you drive demand. A reasonable requirement is one tutorial every other week.

Choose one type of content for the writer to produce, then add relevant copy to the Responsibilities section of your job description.

Use this copy for blog posts:

As a technical content writer, you will write at least one article per week for our blog to help us grow organic traffic. Your blog posts will educate developers about technologies related to our platform and include diagrams and code snippets. This blog post provides an example of the type of content you’ll create:  [link to a blog post on your website]

Use this copy for tutorials:

As a technical content writer, you will produce at least one tutorial every two weeks to help us drive demand for our APIs. Your tutorials will show developers how to build solutions with our platform and require you to create sample apps. This tutorial provides an example of the type of content you’ll create: [link to a tutorial on your website]

If you don’t have a link to relevant content on your website, you can link to the examples I linked to above, or link to other relevant content from a non-competitor.

Step 2: Require live writing samples

When reviewing applications, the first common step is to look at a candidate’s resume. But this doesn’t apply for technical content writing applications. If the applicant can’t produce the type of writing you need, what’s on their resume is irrelevant.

Create a custom field

To give yourself the opportunity to look at the applicant’s writing first, work with your HR department to add a custom field to the job application form.

Use the following text when creating the new field.

• Field title: Live writing sample
• Field description: Provide a link to your favorite tutorial/blog post you’ve written that’s published online.

Make the field a required field, and don’t require a cover letter. The live writing sample will serve as the cover letter.

When reviewing samples…

You want writing samples to be as good as content on the Twilio Developer Blog. This is an especially good point of comparison if you want your technical content writer to focus on solution-based content like tutorials.

More specifically, look for the following elements in the writing sample:

• Concise title
• An introduction that flows
• No grammatical awkwardness
• Organized structure and clean layout
• Code snippets and/or diagrams to support showing versus telling

You’ll know within 30 seconds whether the writing sample is good enough to warrant a gander at their resume.

Step 3: Share your job listing

To receive writing samples from enough applicants to make you feel confident in your hiring decision, you need to get your job listing shared in the right places.

Hacker News

The best free place to share your job listing is Hacker News, the most popular forum for developers.

At the beginning of each month, Hacker News creates a thread called Who is hiring?. I estimate that each thread receives at least 100,000 views. After your job listing is posted in the monthly thread, it’s automatically syndicated to other job boards for developers.

To add your job listing to the latest monthly thread, click the link above and follow the instructions at the top of the thread.

If you’re hiring a blogger, your job listing might look like this:

Company Name | Technical Content Writer | Full-Time | Remote

Write at least one article per week for our blog to help us grow organic traffic. Your blog posts will educate developers about technologies related to our platform and include diagrams and code snippets.

https://yourcompany.com/jobs/technical-content-writer

Wellfound

Another place to post your job listing for free is Wellfound, previously called AngelList Jobs. This is the most popular place for listing and finding jobs at tech startups. However, technology companies of any size can use it.

Unlike Hacker News, Wellfound functions more like a traditional job board like LinkedIn Jobs. Because of this, it’s best to ask your HR team if they already post job listings here. If they don’t, offer to set up a company profile. 

After setting up your company profile, copy the job description for your future technical content writer and paste it in the Jobs section of the Wellfound hiring portal.

Because Wellfound does not allow you to add custom fields, add the following text in bold at the end of the job description: To be considered, please send a link to your favorite tutorial/blog post you’ve written that’s published online.

LinkedIn Jobs

The only other place you need to share job listings is LinkedIn Jobs. It’s the only mainstream job board that matters and table stakes at this point. Verify that your HR team syndicates all job listings here. 

Your applicant tracking system (ATS) is most likely integrated with LinkedIn Jobs and listings are automatically syndicated there. This way, you can review applications and move candidates through the hiring process from your personal ATS account.

Note: Popular ATS platforms include Greenhouse, Lever, Workable, and Ashby.

Step 4: Poach writers on developer blogs

If you have some extra time, you can poach writers from companies with developer blogs that have guest writing programs. 

Identify blogs

My favorite blogs with guest writing programs include the Twilio Blog (focused on APIs), AppSignal Blog (focused on programming languages), and Strapi Blog (focused on frontend development). 

You can find a list of developer-focused companies with guest writing programs here.

From this list, identify companies that build products in similar categories as your company, then check out their blog. Does it seem like their guest writing program is active? Are articles from contributing writers published on their blog?

Some blog posts like this tutorial on the Strapi Blog make it immediately apparent which blog posts are written by contributors.

Contact contributors

When you find a blog post that’s not written by an employee of the company, plug the author’s name into LinkedIn. See what their current work situation is like.

Are they a freelancer? Are they a full-time employee somewhere else who contributes to blogs on the side? If your company is not remotely friendly, do they live in your city, or at least the same country to make a potential relocation easy? 

If the contributor seems like a good fit, send them a note on LinkedIn or email them.

Poaching technical content writers this way requires additional effort but it answers the biggest questions you have for a candidate: Are you technical, and can you write?

Note: I don’t recommend contacting contributors with full-time jobs or contributors that are primarily developers, not writers. They’re most likely not interested and the hiring process will take longer.

Step 5: Offer paid test projects

After you receive applications from qualified candidates or find them on your own, the next step is to work with them in a freelancing capacity on a blog post or tutorial.

Give the candidate a topic for a blog post or tutorial you actually want to publish and pay at least $500 for writing projects that are successfully completed. This above-average payout will ensure you give the candidate the opportunity to deliver their best work.

If you don’t have content briefs ready to assign to candidates, you can create a mini content brief that requires them to choose their own topic.

Send candidates this mini content brief for blog posts:

Write a 1,500-word blog post that explores a technology or concept related to our platform (not a specific product). Include diagrams and/or sample code snippets to support the written content. The blog post can be a story based on your experience or a traditional explainer article.

Send candidates this mini content brief for tutorials:

Create a free test account and use our API documentation to create a simple solution that uses our platform and one or two supporting technologies. Then write a tutorial in the same format as tutorials found on the Twilio Developer Blog that shows developers how to build the solution. The solution should align with use cases mentioned on our website.

For candidates who successfully complete the project and you choose not to hire, keep them in your roster of freelance technical content writers. Content from these writers can augment content created by your in-house writer.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you learned from my experience as a technical content manager about how to find and attract qualified writers to create developer content on a full-time basis. You learned about best practices like sharing your job listing on popular developer forums and vetting candidates with writing samples and paid test projects.

Of course, if all this seems like too much, or you want to augment content created by your full-time writer, Tutty is here. We can help you achieve your content marketing goals in a way that requires little input and oversight. It’s the service I wanted when I was a full-time marketing manager in charge of developer content.