About.com Guide Prep - Training Given to Potential Guides

How Does Guide Training Work?

Every week, our editors pick a group of topics and review applications, looking for five candidates to put into training. If we select your application, you'll start in Stage One, a two week period where you'll write three blog posts and a several articles under the supervision of an editor. At the end of Stage One, the editor will review your writing skills and ability to adapt criticism of your articles to determine whether or not you'll continue on to Stage Two.

In Stage Two, you'll learn to use our publishing tools by publishing the content you created in Stage One to a test site over a second two-week period. As in Stage One, your editor will review your work and make comments and suggestions for improvement. At the end of Stage Two, your editor will evaluate your work and the work of anyone else in Stage Two for the same topic and make a hiring decision in conjunction with other members of our editorial staff.

How Does About.com Evaluate Potential Guides?

When working with potential Guides, we look for the following:

• Writing Ability: A strong writer whose content is not only informative and factual, but compelling enough to make you want to read more. Because we're on a publish-first model, we'll also be looking for writing that is free of spelling and grammar errors.
• Web Formatting Comprehension: Someone who grasps the idea of formatting for the web (whether from prior experience or from our training materials), applying it to their first article and organizing their content into clear, easy-to-understand sections with proper use of bold and bulleting.
• Topic Expertise: An expert in the topic with the knowledge to be able to cover the basics with ease and the passion to research anything they don't already know.
• Desire to Educate: A teacher who can communicate the basics of the topic to a neophyte audience in a way that's not only easy for a novice to understand, but interesting too.
• Passion: Someone whose love for the topic motivates them to see being a Guide as an opportunity to write in-depth about something they love. Writing for About.com is a long-term investment of time and energy, and the ones who do best are those treat the job as a labor of love.