thinking of hiring some highschool/college students...would this work?

[Snowballer]

Would this job offer attract highschool / college students?

I'd be willing to pay them around minimum wage, so about 15 hours per week of work to come into an office and just TYPE away on topics like:

windows xp
php
javascript

etc.

[r2d2]

Would it be better to pay by the article, to ensure work actually gets done?

Do you already employ people? Do you have all the insurance etc you need (not sure where you are)? I know employing people is generally a bit of a mine field - if you paid by the article, I believe you would be buying a product rather than their time, so not technically employing anyone. Why not pay $10 per 500 word article or something - then they can do it in their own space.

[LuckyShima]

why do they have to come into your office? are you running a 1950s retro company?

[Cutter]

In general, employing high school students and college students can work very well. However, here are the main issues I see.

First, how many average students can write all day about windows xp let alone php?

You have to have someone who has both writing skills and is knowledgable in these areas.

If you aren't interested in building high quality sites and just want lots of keyword traffic then this might work.

As for hiring writers for non-technical subjects, then I would strongly recommend trying out what you want to do.

[Snowballer]

LuckyShima, I know what your saying. I'm thinking about just hiring via the net, but i'm weary of people getting lazy ond not doing work on time etc.

Cutter, I see what your saying. It would def. have to be students in the computer related field etc. There's always young tech geeks out there and I can provide the topic areas that they can research and write about. I'm talking really short articles or FAQ, 150+ words per article (or even a blog entry!).

[Cutter]

Thats true, I forgot how geeky some people can be good luck!

[LuckyShima]

Snowballer, you have to apply some sort of balance to this.

Requiring the person to attend your office cuts the number of available candidates to about .01% of the actual number of people available to do the work you require.

Plus, amongst the multiplicity of reasons why it is a bad idea to have the worker come to your office, you should think of r2d2's advice that you actually become liable for the person while they are in your office. e.g., fall over, hurt their back, get repetitive strain injury, cut their lip on one of you coffee cups, and they are in your office for absolutely no good reason.

There are also massive and entirely unnecessary problems with recruitment and selection, staff turnover, and absenteeism.

However, you are on the ground in your situation, you are the one on the front-line, so you should be able to decide what will work best, better than an outsider who is not aware of all the variables, and I respect that, even though I give my advice.

[Cutter]

Liability aside, if you are hiring a high school or college student I think there are some good reasons to have them in-house. The biggest is to ensure they are doing their own work. I trust a professional writer to do their own work, but not a minimum wage employee.

If you end up publishing a bunch of work that was copyright your insurance isn't going to cover you.

[LuckyShima]

Good point about copyright.

Some things you could do:

- Get the writer to supply you with references to the material they have used to prepare the article so you can check where it is from and how close it is to the source.
- Get them to sign a guarantee (this will work well if the writer is in India )
- Google the material they supply

But anyway ... maybe snowballer is not looking for really professional work anyway so a local high school student can just come in and write about what he does in php or something.

[John]

I saw this site posted on here a while ago and it's great for finding stolen works...

http://www.copyscape.com/

[James]

Highschool students are idiots: they will NOT be able to write you a quality article, unless you find people who are gifted, and feel like charging less than they deserve.

Or maybe everyone was just stupid potheads around here cause I'm in BC?
Not to sound bitter or anything, most teens around here aren't arseholes, but they're also not smart.

[Cutter]

You can use Copyscape and Google, but what if they copied the article out of an old magazine?

[The New Guy]

You could try posting some flyers in Colleges and Universities particularly in the Engineering / Comp Sci buildings.

[James]

You can use Copyscape and Google, but what if they copied the article out of an old magazine?

Then it'll probably be saying stuff about PHP3-.

[Snowballer]

Well I live in Canada so we don't have to worry about the insurance thing much from what I know.

anyhow, it seems like a odd idea to open up a office considering all the advantages of being able to hire over the web and save the overhead $$ etc. (not to mention tieing me down since I'd have to be at the office!).

back to the drawing board! hehe