The Editor Hiring Nightmare (and How We Fixed It with a Funnel)
TL;DR
- Traditional editor hiring is time-consuming, messy, and unreliable
- Freelancers often juggle clients → delayed edits, ghosting, lost momentum
- Job boards = flood of unqualified DMs, noise, and wasted hours
- Delegating hiring doesn’t fix it — it just shifts the bottleneck
- We built a hiring funnel with Meta ads, smart forms, and Slack automations
- Result: filtered hundreds of applicants → 2 superstar editors in 2 weeks
- Cost: $178 AUD → saved 35+ hours vs manual review
The Editor Hiring Nightmare
You post an editor job.
Your inbox blows up with 97 DMs.
You still end up hiring the wrong person.
We’ve been there. Too many times. And every flop costs momentum, inbound leads, and a lot of stress. When editors disappear mid-project, growth slows to a crawl and content pipelines dry up.
Like many founders, we thought hiring an editor would be quick. In reality, it eats 40–50 hours and still ends with a flaky freelancer going MIA.
Something had to change.
Why Job Boards Don’t Work
We tried it all: LinkedIn, X, Fiverr, YouTube Jobs. Every platform delivered the same result — generic DMs, autoresponder fluff, and low-quality leads.
Freelancers often:
- juggle multiple clients
- disappear without notice (“sorry, was sick/on holiday”)
- send cookie-cutter portfolios unrelated to our niche
Each replacement cycle meant starting over — briefs, tests, communication, onboarding — while growth stalled.
Why Delegation Didn’t Fix It
Naturally, we handed the problem to our Head of Content.
He’s a weapon. But even he was buried under:
- hours of reviewing applications
- chasing no-shows
- dead-end calls with unqualified editors
Instead of creating content, he was firefighting hiring chaos. Delegation didn’t solve the system problem — it just shifted the pain.
The Funnel We Built Instead
The breakthrough came when we stopped treating hiring like a job board problem… and started treating it like a funnel.
Here’s how it works:
Meta Ads → Simple, low-budget ads ($177 AUD total) to reach beyond our own network
- Static + video ads with humor and personality
- $5 per qualified form completion (cheaper than a single LinkedIn job ad)
Smart Application Form → Ruthless filters
- Required a custom video intro (instant vibe check + skill preview)
- Wrong answers = auto-disqualified
- No vague responses, no portfolio spam
Slack + Notion Automation
- Every valid submission pinged us instantly in Slack
- Synced with Notion for easy shortlisting
- No inbox overload, no spreadsheet chaos
This system ran quietly in the background, surfacing only the most serious applicants.
Results: Fast, Cheap, and Quality
In just over a week:
- 68,000 impressions
- 1,900 form visits
- 51 actual submissions (97% filtered themselves out)
- 2 superstar editors hired
💰 Cost: $178 AUD (~$100 USD)
⏱ Time saved: 35+ hours of manual review
⚡️ Speed: compressed months of hiring into 2 weeks
Best part? The funnel keeps running. Great talent can appear anytime — and now they come to us pre-filtered.
Why This Works
Hiring isn’t a “people problem.” It’s a systems problem.
- Job boards = noise
- Delegation = bottleneck
- Funnels = leverage
Like Steve Jobs said: “A small team of A players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.”
This funnel is how we consistently find those A players — while protecting our time and momentum.
Final Thoughts
Traditional hiring is slow, noisy, and exhausting. By flipping the model and building a hiring funnel, we:
- attracted only serious editors
- automated the first-pass filter
- saved time, stress, and budget
If you’re drowning in DMs or wasting hours on bad hires, build a funnel once — and let it run in the background forever.
