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It is imperative to know about the basic qualification of the person you intend to hire. If he/she is a graduate in English literature don’t be too happy about it because they might not be able to write creative contents. Read through their resume and find out if they have been involved in writing or editing their work related documents. Sometimes this skill will help to know that they would be accurate in pinpointing grammatical errors. Besides, they would have an eye for reading each sentence word by word. Anyway, it is best if the writer is a graduate and has worked for few years.

While making selection for skilled writer, you would be willing to have someone in your team who takes feedback in a positive way. As most of the content work is a collaborative work, making the right changes to the content is based on way the writers incorporate the feedback into the articles. A writer who defends their work or not open to suggestions would be difficult to handle as it would cause lot of headaches. Especially when you are looking for content writers for marketing purpose you would need to be careful in hiring the right candidates. They need to be open to suggestions and positive in their approach, willing to make changes as per needs.

☛ Why it’s important to ask this: Your content marketer will need to express a unique voice and opinion in their work. However, they also need to adapt their own style as a function of your company’s needs, the audience, format of the content, person they’re writing for, and so on.

☛ What to look out for: Look and ask for specific examples of how they modified their style, as well as asking them to identify why this is important.

Mediocre Responses:

☛ I publish my content on WordPress, and then tweet it out as well.

Great Responses:

☛ I publish the post on our blog using WordPress.

☛ I then schedule a minimum of four tweets at different times of the day in HootSuite.

☛ I email coworkers to retweet and share my post as well.

☛ I ask the demand generation team to include it in the next email newsletter to our database.

This is perhaps the most important question, because if their writing skills aren’t up to snuff, your content writer might succeed in driving people away from your site, not to it. While reading previous work will give you great insight into their writing level (they need to know the difference between “there,” “they’re” and “their,” for one thing), also ask questions specific to online writing, such as Can you explain technical content without using meaningless buzzwords?

Probably not the first question that comes to mind, but an important one nonetheless. The old saying goes that if you keep doing the same thing, you're bound to get the same results. There's a reason you're hiring someone else: you want a different perspective, a different voice, right?

This question can be answered by asking what blogs, books or magazines they read, who would play them in the movie version of their life or what profession they would choose if they could start all over. You might be surprised by the answers, but what you're really looking for is to be entertained by their responses and understand their personality.

As you look through a prospective writer’s “clips” or writing samples, select one to ask about in detail during the interview. The goal is to get an idea of how they go about getting to the final product.

The answer here should jive with the sort of working relationship your marketing team wants to have with its content marketing writer. If you want to be the ones coming up with ideas, then you need a writer who is happy to take assignments as they come. If you don’t have the time or inclination to come up with ideas, then you need a writer who is happy to take on that task. When there is a mismatch here, it will cause frustration on both ends of the working relationship.

Yes, it sounds asinine. But I see this mistake All. The. Time. And I know at least some of those errors are the work of allegedly professional content creators. A good writer knows that a spellcheck program can only get you so far.

There are tons and tons of different tools that a writer can use. Mentioning any sort of social tools for promotion (Buffer, SocialBro, etc.) is a great way to show that he/she understands the industry. Any talk of using analytics and analyzing CTR is also a great (and fairly advanced) answer. This is one of those questions that you’ll have a good feeling about right when it is answered.

Depending on your specific needs, you want to make sure your content writer can get you the results you’re looking for. If you need someone with advanced SEO skills, or a social media guru, make sure they have these skills before work is done. If you want your content to go viral, make sure the writer has a large Twitter following and knows how to generate buzz for your site or business. Ask to see successful stats from the writer’s previous clients. With Google changing search algorithms often, it’s helpful to have a content writer familiar with the Google SEO Initiate. If the writer’s still using old ways to build links, this could hurt you instead of help.

☛ Why it’s important to ask this: This is a good question to tease out which parts of the content lifecycle the candidate is familiar with. Do they only have experience with copywriting, or can they come up with blog ideas themselves? Do they stop at writing the blog post, or do they keep promotion on social media in mind as well?

☛ What to look out for: You should look for a response that captures the whole process from start to finish, from ideation to production to distribution to analytics. A great answer will include specific tools and details. Here’s an example of great and mediocre responses.

Many writers keep in mind their certain set of target audience to get to write their content. Having being exposed to variety of audiences will help one to know how to manage writing articles. Certain set of audience require little more explanation while certain set of audience who are professional will be conversing in professional level. Some may be targeting younger age groups, while some middle age groups. Some target college graduates, while some working professionals or those seeking career changes. Be it for marketing or for blog, each writers has their own style of writing which is unique to them. Hence, take care to select writers on the type of contents.

This is the most common interview question which will almost certainly be asked to any candidate. While it seems a pretty straightforward question many find it the toughest as it’s quite open ended and people fumble when required to speak about themselves rather than about their work and/or skills. But fear not friends. The question is asked merely to know more about your personality than actually seeking your personal details. The best way to approach this question is to start with your high school, go up to graduation/post graduation and move towards your work experience. If the interviewer seeks family details only then you should provide it, otherwise it’s not necessary.

Most of the writers do use the common social media tools to get help with writing. Each writer would have specific flair for topics of their interest. Those writers would have books or magazines related to the topic. There could be some who are tech savvy and depending on the type of articles they would know where to get access to reference subjects. This question will allow you to know whether he/she will be referring to the right site or will be able to bring out genuine or relevant contents. You could also make sure of their capability to handle topics assigned.

This will help you get a better idea of the quality of the writer’s raw work. Every writer needs some editing, but you want to find a content marketing writer whose work will need as little editing as possible. The less time and money you spend on editing, the better.