Finding an author for a future book, article, scientific work is a very serious task. For the first time faced with a candidate, any customer is dealing with a pig in a poke. However, many reputable publishers and serious media find authors thanks to open sources, and you are no worse. With the right approach to business, you will succeed.
You will need
- - a computer;
- - Email;
- - various communicator programs;
- - registration as an employer on job search sites and freelance exchanges, access to professional social networks and other online communities.
Instruction manual
1
The first rule is the more information, the better. Describe as much as possible the project, your requirements for the candidate, terms of cooperation. Imagine that such an offer comes to you as a performer. What will be crucial for you? Answers will help to reflect the most important nuances in the project description.
2
When the announcement is ready, place it on as many resources as possible: freelancers exchanges, professional communities of journalists, copywriters and other writing brothers in LiveJournal, Professionals.ru network and others, even professional communities in Odnoklassniki, VKontakte and similar resources, sites on job search.
3
Your proposal is likely to cause a lot of feedback. But do not be afraid to drown in this stream. Noteworthy among them will be much less. Indeed, many often react to almost all projects in a row, without really getting a grasp of what the customer actually wants.
4
Contact the applicants you are interested in. Examine their portfolio (if not submitted, ask for a link to it, and a serious applicant will offer a link to the works closest in scope). If the candidate has an account on the freelancers exchange, study his reviews. The presence of negative ones is not necessarily an alarm. In this case, read what the dissatisfied customer writes, the feedback left by the freelancer, ask the freelancer what is the matter. Do not hesitate to ask uncomfortable questions of this kind: the candidate’s reaction to them and the content of the answers will provide a lot of useful information, thanks to which the candidate can strengthen your rating in your eyes.
5
Offer selected candidates a small test task. And having given the offer to the one who will best cope with it, do not completely discard the other applicants who have reached the final of your selection. There is a chance that the selected author will need to be replaced at later stages (both through his fault and due to objective reasons). And in this case, you will already know who to offer the project in the first place.
note
On freelance exchanges, potential performers with great confidence relate to the customer who has experience on the specific exchange and reviews from the performers with whom he collaborated. But if you are new to the exchange, do not despair: everyone needs to start sometime.
