As the demands for your company grow and your work needs expand, you may consider opening up your employee and contract work to people from all around the world. When hiring creatives to meet your increasing demand for content, it takes the prospect more than just simply understanding how to be creative.

They should also understand the potential audience, the region that audience lives in, and the types of idioms, slang, and images that the audience will understand. These points are especially critical while working with individuals in remote and virtual capacities.

As we all know, the benefits of working virtually allow for individuals to collaborate and work together, often from different parts of the world and at other times of the day. Therefore, when screening potential contractors and employees, especially when considering hiring international employees, you should first set up a formal screening process.

Between language barriers and different idiomatic expressions, native English speakers will speak and spell words differently depending on their nation of origin. These variances can create confusion or misunderstandings, so establishing clear screening procedures is crucial whether hiring for creative projects, marketing,  logistics, or otherwise.

Regional Understanding And Interests Are Critical

In creative industries, having a regional understanding is critical in crafting the right message and tone for your project in creative industries. The only way to guarantee that your newly hired individual(s) can match that tone and intonation is through proper pre-hiring screening.

For your Human Resources (HR) department to conduct a screening that matches your exact needs, you should establish a screening process that includes:

• Understanding the idiom of the area they apply
• Video chat or pre-recorded answers
• Virtual skills
• And working a paid trial to determine comprehension and feasibility

When hiring a creative position for content needs (such as copywriter, content marketer, or technical writer), a simple writing test that emphasizes the type of terms and “slang” needed for your readership should be a simple first question to answer.

It takes more than just understanding how differences in spelling may be in different regions of the world to be an effective marketing and technical writer. For example, the difference between American and English words, such as “behavior” (American) and “behaviour” (English), can impact both readership and your SEO strategy based on search results your prospects may be querying.

These differences may seem trivial at first glance, but to readers and SERPs alike, they can profoundly affect the outcomes of searches and understanding of the content you’re trying to promote. Other creative positions such as photography and graphic arts have less impact based on regionality. However, even during the hiring process, these positions should still come with a pre-screening process.

The possible impact on your content may not be as detrimental as having words and sentences written for a different audience than your target. However, it could still have some impact, either positively or negatively.

With visual creatives, taking a picture of a couple in front of a building or landmark that is exotic or well-known may be distracting for your audience. For example, if you’re writing content for a traditional brick-and-mortar shop in Austin, Texas, but the images you’re trying to use are of a couple in Paris, France, the disconnection may be too distracting for your readers.

Whereas with creatives such as copywriting, it’s crucial that they pass a regional language comprehension “test,” with visual creatives, it’s more critical for them to understand the region that pictures must be sourced. A good alternative is to have visual creatives use neutral, evergreen backdrops for their photos, which can be resourced for multiple regions and areas.

As your business grows, your employee and contractor needs will expand with those demands. How your organization hires out for those expanding roles can be a delicate balancing act of finding qualified applicants and individuals that can meet your creative content needs specific to your audience.

The balancing act between qualified individuals and those that can provide content specific to your audience is one of the benefits of working with a decentralized, remote workforce. But to do so effectively, you need to build in some safeguards during the screening process that will help you evaluate the talent so that you can plug them into the roles you need for each project you have.