Comprehensive Guide to Hiring a Great Content Writer

High-quality content is the engine that drives search visibility, nurtures leads, builds trust, and creates brand awareness. Whether you’re publishing thought leadership, launching a new product, or scaling your SEO strategy, a great content writer is essential to hitting your growth goals.

But hiring the right writer—someone who’s not just a good wordsmith but a strategic thinker who can deliver consistently—is easier said than done.

Luckily, content writing is a role that’s inherently remote-ready. That means you’re not limited to your local talent pool. In fact, you probably shouldn’t be.

This guide will show you how to hire a high-performing content writer, wherever in the world they might be located. Whether you want someone working in the next office, across town, or on another continent, the fundamentals of hiring the best remain the same.

We’ll cover the skills that matter most, where you can find top talent, and how to avoid the most common mistakes that cost companies time and momentum.

What Does a Content Writer Do?

Content writers turn complex ideas into clear, engaging content that informs, educates, and builds trust.

They specialize in long-form blog posts, white papers, email newsletters, and thought leadership pieces—anything that helps your audience learn and your business grow. 

Many people confuse content writers with copywriters, but they serve different purposes. Copywriters focus on persuasive, conversion-focused text like ads and landing pages, while content writers typically handle longer, more educational pieces.

How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Content Writer?

Salaries for content writers vary widely depending on region, experience, and whether you’re hiring full-time, freelance, or project-based.

In the US, a full-time content writer typically earns between $79,000 and $116,000 per year, with senior or specialized writers commanding even more.

By hiring offshore in regions with a lower cost of living than the US, bringing on a skilled, full-time content writer becomes accessible to many businesses, even those operating with leaner budgets.

For example, Latin American content writers with equivalent skills often earn between $18,000 and $42,000 per year.

That significant cost difference allows many companies to hire senior-level content writers on a mid-level budget—or build out full content teams for what one US hire might cost.

Hiring offshore isn’t about underpaying talent. It’s about leveraging global salary differences that reflect local economic conditions, not differences in talent or professionalism. It’s about hiring fairly within a different market, where your budget goes further, so your content program can scale faster.

What Skills Should You Look For When Hiring a Content Writer?

Great content writers don’t just write. They think critically. They ask the right questions, tailor their voice to your brand, and structure content for readability, search, and performance.

They also need to collaborate across teams—product, marketing, sales, design—and manage multiple projects with shifting deadlines. That’s why hiring the right writer isn’t just about portfolio polish—it’s about mindset, communication, and execution.

Finding a great content writer means going beyond surface-level skills. You need someone who can think strategically, write clearly, and collaborate effectively.

Here’s how to break that down:

Hard skills (the must-haves)

The best content writers have:

• Clear, effective writing: They can craft content that resonates with the intended audience, whether that’s simplifying complex topics for general readers, maintaining technical precision for specialists, or striking the right balance in between. Good writers adjust their depth and style based on who they’re writing for.
• Research ability: They can dig into unfamiliar topics, interview subject-matter experts, and synthesize information from multiple sources into cohesive, accurate content. 
• SEO understanding: While not all content roles require deep SEO expertise, most writers should understand how search works and how to structure content that performs well in search results. 
• Content structure and formatting: They know how to organize information logically, use headings effectively, and create scannable content that hooks readers and keeps them engaged. 
• Adaptable writing style: They can adjust their tone and approach based on different audiences, platforms, and business objectives.

These aren’t “nice to haves.” These are foundational for anyone writing content that drives results.

Soft skills (equally important)

While writing ability is fundamental, a writer’s soft skills often determine their true value to your team.

Content creation requires working with editors, subject matter experts, designers, and stakeholders, making interpersonal and organizational abilities just as crucial as writing skills.

Look for writers who demonstrate:

• Self-management: Writers need to juggle multiple projects and deadlines without constant check-ins. Look for candidates with a history of delivering consistent work on schedule and clear systems for organizing their workload.
• Clarity in communication: Effective writers ask thoughtful questions upfront, seek clarification when needed, and keep stakeholders informed. Their emails and project discussions should demonstrate this attention to detail.
• Accountability: The best candidates take ownership of their work and follow through on commitments. During interviews, listen to how they talk about past projects. Do they speak in terms of responsibility and results?
• Receptiveness to feedback: Writing requires iteration. Strong candidates view feedback as a tool for improvement rather than criticism. Ask about their revision process or how they’ve handled significant edits in the past.
• Curiosity and critical thinking: Writers need to research effectively and challenge assumptions. Look for candidates who demonstrate intellectual curiosity and the ability to synthesize information from multiple sources.

Tip: During the hiring process, look at how candidates communicate throughout the interview stages. Their emails, responses to your questions, and follow-ups reveal a lot about how they’ll approach their work.

The “Nice-to-Have” skills (the differentiators)

While not essential, these bonus skills can give candidates an edge, especially in specialized industries or growth-stage environments:

• Industry experience: Familiarity with your sector (e.g., SaaS, fintech, healthcare, or e-commerce) helps reduce onboarding time and strengthens the strategic relevance of your content.
• Content strategy understanding: Writers who grasp how content fits into broader funnels or growth campaigns can work more effectively with marketing and product teams.
• Analytics knowledge: The ability to interpret content performance data and adjust their approach accordingly.
• Technical know-how: For tech-focused content, comfort with APIs, cloud infrastructure, or data terminology can be a major plus.
• Design awareness: Basic understanding of layout, UX, or visual storytelling can help writers collaborate more effectively with design teams.

Where Can You Find and Hire Great Content Writers?

Finding content writers involves two key decisions:

1. Where your writer will be located (local, national, or international)
2. Where and how you’ll find and hire candidates in that location

Let’s walk through each part of the decision.

Choosing the right location (US-based or offshore)

Your first decision is whether to hire someone local to your office, a remote writer within the US, or expand your search internationally.

Content writing is one of the most remote-friendly roles out there. Unless you’re hiring for an in-office editorial team, there’s rarely a reason to limit your search to your city—or even the US.

Hiring remotely opens up access to a much broader talent pool, often with stronger candidates and more budget flexibility.

But there are pros and cons with each choice:

In-office/local writers

• Face-to-face collaboration and easier integration with in-office teams
• Direct involvement in meetings, brainstorming sessions, and company culture
• Simpler onboarding and administrative processes
• Often higher costs due to US average salaries

Remote US-based writers

• Broader talent pool than local-only searches
• Familiar with US business practices, cultural references, and language nuances
• No international payment or compliance complexities
• Still commands US-level compensation rates

International/offshore writers

• Significantly expanded talent pool makes it easier to find specialized expertise
• Substantial cost savings (typically 30–70% compared to US rates)
• Diverse perspectives that can enhance your content’s global appeal
• May require navigating time zone differences, depending on location

For many companies, content writing is perfectly suited for remote work, making the decision less about “Can this be done remotely?” and more about balancing talent access, cost, and collaboration needs.

If you do decide to look internationally, here’s why we think Latin America is often the best choice:

• Time zone compatibility: Real-time collaboration during US business hours
• Strong English proficiency: It’s easy to find writers with excellent written and spoken skills
• Cultural familiarity: Many writers understand US audiences, trends, and business norms
• Cost efficiency: Lower cost of living translates into more affordable, sustainable salaries

If cost is your top priority and you’re comfortable with asynchronous workflows, Asia and Eastern Europe can also offer strong talent pools at very competitive rates. Countries like the Philippines, India, Ukraine, and Poland have excellent writers—but real-time collaboration is tricky due to significant time differences.

The bottom line:

• Need real-time teamwork and cultural alignment? Latin America is your best bet.
• Comfortable with async communication and prioritizing cost savings above all? South/Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe may offer better rates.

Choosing the right sourcing channel

Once you’ve decided where geographically to search for talent, you need to determine how you’ll find and hire candidates.

Each channel has different strengths:

For critical, long-term content positions or when venturing into offshore hiring for the first time, working with a specialized recruitment partner can save significant time and missteps (which we’ll cover a bit more later on).

How to Hire a Great Content Writer: Best Practices

Hiring a content writer is easy. Hiring a great content writer who sticks around, elevates your brand, and collaborates seamlessly across time zones if needed? That takes a sharper process—and a few insider best practices most companies miss.

Here’s what experienced recruiters and hiring managers do when hiring content writers:

Stage 1: Define Your Needs Before Sourcing

Don’t chase unicorns—Define what great looks like for you

Too many companies default to “find someone brilliant who can do everything.” But great hires start with clarity. 

Do you need someone focused on SEO blog content or someone who can interview your founder and ghostwrite thought leadership?

Prioritize depth over breadth. The clearer your expectations, the easier it is to filter for the right fit—and avoid wasting time on candidates who look good on paper but aren’t aligned with your needs.

Craft a job description that attracts the right talent

Your job description is more than just a list of requirements—it's your first opportunity to attract quality candidates and filter out poor fits.

For content writers, emphasize the specific types of content they'll create, the industries they'll write about, and the skills that truly matter for success in your organization. Be clear about expectations around content volume, collaboration, and how success will be measured.

Avoid vague terms like "excellent writer" or "team player" in favor of specific, demonstrable skills. And don't forget to sell the opportunity—great content writers want to know their work will have impact and visibility.

Stage 2: Screening and Evaluation

Screen for ownership, not just output

Good writing is table stakes. What separates top-tier writers is how they think, not just how they type. 

The best content writers will clarify a vague brief, challenge a weak idea, and take full ownership of their work from first draft to final edit.

Ask about how they’ve handled ambiguous projects in the past. Look for candidates who can navigate fuzziness without constant hand-holding.

Prioritize remote-ready soft skills

In remote content roles, execution is only half the equation. Communication, proactivity, and time management are what make a writer truly valuable to a distributed team.

Great remote writers:

• Ask smart clarifying questions
• Manage their own deadlines
• Flag risks early
• Are comfortable collaborating asynchronously

These aren’t bonus traits—they’re essential. Watch how candidates communicate during the hiring process. Their emails, Slack responses, or async project handoffs often tell you more than their resume ever will.

Look past the portfolio—Test for fit

Portfolios are curated. What you really need is a window into how a candidate works in your context. 

That’s why we recommend a short, paid test project tailored to your brand. It doesn’t need to be elaborate—just something that shows how well the candidate can follow your brief, adopt your tone, and hit your goals.

Pro tip: Give the same brief to your top 2–3 candidates. You’ll spot the standouts fast—and avoid “falling in love” with a resume that doesn’t deliver in practice.

Stage 3: Making the Offer and Closing the Deal

Move quickly and communicate clearly

Top content writers don’t stay on the market for long. If you take too long to schedule interviews or provide feedback, they’ll be snapped up by another company. 

Hiring is competitive, especially for roles that offer creative ownership, flexibility, and fair pay.

Set expectations about your hiring timeline from the beginning. Be responsive. And when you find someone great? Don’t wait. Make the offer.

Treat your offer like a sales pitch

Top content writers have options. If you find someone who’s a strong fit, your offer needs to be more than just competitive pay.

Ask yourself:

• What does this role offer beyond a paycheck?
• Are you offering flexibility, autonomy, or the chance to build something from the ground up?
• Can you clearly communicate the career path, team culture, and impact of the role?

In offshore markets, you also need to understand what makes a local offer competitive.

That means knowing what salary range top talent expects and what benefits matter most—whether that’s USD payment, paid time off aligned to their local holidays, or a clear path to skill growth.

Miss the mark, and you’ll lose your best candidates to another employer who didn’t.

You can read more about making strong offers and how it leads to securing and retaining top talent in our guide on the topic. 

These aren’t just best practices—they’re your edge in a competitive hiring market. And when done right, they don’t just help you find a writer. They help you hire a content partner who can grow with your company and drive results for the long haul.

Interview Questions That Reveal the Right Fit

Interviewing content writers isn’t just about checking for grammar or asking, “What’s your writing process?” You need to uncover how they think, how they collaborate, and whether they can consistently deliver value.

Here are five questions to ask and why each one matters:

“How do you approach a new topic you know little about?”

Writers are often dropped into unfamiliar territory. This question tests their research skills, resourcefulness, and ability to synthesize complex ideas without relying on hand-holding.

Look for someone who describes a systematic approach: conducting initial background research, identifying credible sources, interviewing subject matter experts, organizing information into key concepts, and validating their understanding before writing.

“Tell me about a time your writing directly contributed to a business goal.”

Writing for impact means thinking beyond words. This question helps you assess whether the candidate understands the strategic purpose behind content, whether that’s driving traffic, generating leads, reducing churn, or supporting a product launch. Bonus points if they can explain metrics or outcomes.

“How do you balance SEO strategy with voice and readability?”

You want someone who can write for both humans and search engines. This question reveals whether the candidate knows how to integrate keywords naturally and still maintain clarity and sound like your brand.

Avoid writers who will treat SEO as an afterthought or over-optimize at the expense of flow.

“Describe your typical writing process—from brief to final draft.”

Process reveals a lot about work habits. You’re looking for structure: how they interpret a brief, outline, draft, revise, and submit. A thoughtful answer here shows ownership, time management, and the ability to work independently.

“How do you handle feedback or editorial changes you disagree with?”

Every writer gets feedback. The best ones welcome it—even if they don’t always agree. This question surfaces emotional intelligence, professionalism, and collaboration style. Listen for answers that balance confidence with humility and that show an understanding of working within brand or stakeholder boundaries.

If you’re looking for more comprehensive interview guidance, especially for remote roles, check out our article on the 15 best interview questions to ask remote workers.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Hiring Content Writers

Even with a solid process, it’s easy to make missteps that lead to subpar hires or wasted time. Here are four of the most common—and costly—mistakes companies make when hiring a content writer:

1. Prioritizing price over quality

When content is treated like a low-cost commodity, you get low-impact results.

Content isn’t just words on a page—it’s your connection to your audience. It’s how you educate, build trust, and drive people to take action.

Choosing the cheapest writer may save money upfront, but it often leads to shallow work, missed messaging, and rework that costs more in the long run.

A $75 blog post might sound like a bargain—until you spend hours rewriting it, or worse, publish something that weakens your credibility.

Offshore hiring can absolutely lower costs, but focus on value, not just price. Invest in quality, and you’ll get content that performs and builds lasting traction.

2. Hiring based solely on portfolio 

Yes, you need to see writing samples—but those samples are curated.

What you don’t see is how many drafts it took, how much editing was involved, or whether the writer followed a brief.

That’s why you should always go beyond the portfolio. Give a short paid test project, ask about their process, and check how they communicate. You’re hiring a collaborator, not just a content machine.

3. Expecting one writer to do it all

Content writing, content strategy, SEO analysis, editing, UX writing—these are distinct skill sets. Many companies try to combine them into one catch-all role, only to end up with a writer who’s overwhelmed or underperforming.

Be clear about your needs: are you hiring someone to generate consistent blog content, craft technical documentation, or develop a full content strategy? Hire for depth, not breadth, when you need long-term success.

4. Overlooking soft skills and remote readiness

A technically skilled writer who can’t communicate clearly, manage their time, or respond to feedback will slow your team down, especially in a distributed setting. 

Remote content writers need strong async habits, self-direction, and the ability to work across time zones and tools.

During interviews, pay attention to how they write emails, follow up on next steps, or ask questions. Those “small signals” speak volumes about how they’ll perform in a remote role.

5. Underestimating the time required to create high-quality content

Great content usually can’t be churned out fast. It takes research, outlining, writing, editing, and review—especially if you’re aiming for thought leadership or SEO traction. 

One strong article can take anywhere from 4 to 10 hours, depending on the topic and depth (even with the help of AI).

If you assume a writer can turn out ten blog posts weekly without sacrificing quality, you’ll likely end up frustrated... and so will they.

When expectations don’t match reality, even great hires can fail fast. Writers may burn out, disengage, or leave entirely, forcing you to restart the hiring process just weeks in.

During the interview phase, ask candidates what a sustainable workload looks like for them, and align early on timelines, editing cycles, and publishing cadence. A little clarity upfront can save you from churn and costly delays later.

Avoiding these mistakes doesn’t just save you from bad hires—it sets you up to find content writers who are aligned, invested, and ready to contribute meaningfully to your team from day one.

How Working With a Recruiting Expert Makes a Difference

You can absolutely hire a great content writer on your own—many companies do. If you have the time and internal resources, a DIY approach can work well, especially if you already have a solid hiring process and know what you’re looking for.

But if you’re short on time, facing pressure to scale quickly, or you’re hiring from outside the US for the first time, working with a recruitment partner can save you weeks (or even months) of effort. Yes, we know we are biased here (it’s what we do), but we’ve seen time and time again how working with a partner simplifies things for our clients. 

This is especially true if you’re hiring internationally. Navigating global job boards, vetting candidates across time zones, handling contracts, and managing compliance can be a steep learning curve.

A recruitment partner with experience sourcing offshore content talent can help you move faster and more confidently. They can screen for both skill and remote-readiness, surface top candidates, and help structure offers that make sense in the local market, so you’re not unintentionally lowballing or overpaying.

Yes, there’s a fee for working with a partner, but that cost is often offset by:

• Time saved in sourcing and screening
• Avoided the risk of a bad hire
• Smarter offers that reduce back-and-forth or offer rejections
• Lower total cost of hire when you open up access to top-tier, lower-cost markets

If you’re hiring—especially offshore—a good recruitment partner can be the difference between spinning your wheels and getting the right person in-seat fast.

It’s not the only way, but it’s often the fastest and least stressful route, especially when hiring outside the US.

Final Thoughts

The right content writer becomes a key player in your marketing team. They’ll understand your audience, capture your brand voice, and consistently produce work that educates readers, builds your authority, and drives long-term brand awareness. 

But finding that writer requires looking beyond the portfolio to assess how they think, collaborate, and execute.

Whether you need someone to produce weekly blog content, craft research-heavy white papers, or develop thought leadership that positions your executives as industry experts, the investment in finding the right talent pays dividends across your entire marketing strategy.

If working with a recruitment partner seems like the right approach for your needs, consider a specialized firm that can make the hiring process seamless, efficient, and stress-free.

At Near, we take the time to understand exactly what our clients need in a content writer—whether that’s specialized industry knowledge, SEO expertise, or adaptability across different content formats. We then match you with pre-vetted Latin American content writers who fit your specific requirements, work style, and budget.

Our candidates work during your working hours, integrate seamlessly with your team, and deliver exceptional quality at rates 30–70% lower than US-based writers.

Ready to find a content writer who can elevate your messaging while fitting your budget? Book a free consultation call with our team today, and we’ll help you find the perfect match within 21 days.