ERE.net

Corporate vs. Third Party

ERE welcomes submissions from experts in the corporate recruiting field. If you’re interested in becoming a contributor or submitting an article, email us at todd@ere.net.

While we’re at it, if you’re interested in contributing to the third-party-recruiting publication The Fordyce Letter in print or online, you’ll want to contact Elaine Rigoli at Elaine@ere.net.

Site vs. print Journal

The guidelines below apply mainly to ERE.net. Contact Todd Raphael (todd@ere.net) if you’re more interested in writing for the print publication, the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership (www.crljournal.com). That (paid) publication is geared toward recruiting leaders, such as a VP or director of recruiting/HR.

Length

There are no hard word-count rules, although 600-900 is a ballpark. When articles run shorter than that, it’s often difficult to convey any useful information, and articles longer than that sometimes have more information than people feel like reading online. Sometimes longer’s OK.

Article vs. Video vs. Audio and so on

We sometimes use the word “article” in these guidelines. But we’re just as happy to receive videos, podcasts, and other materials.

Topics

For the most part, the topic for an article or video or podcast is yours as author to decide. Obviously, the most important requirement for a topic is that it is of immediate importance to the recruiting community. It’s impossible to lay all those topics out in these guidelines, but if you are familiar at all with our publication you should have some idea of which topics are being most frequently covered and should focus your efforts on adding something “new” to the discussion. We’re looking for new/interesting/useful/compelling and maybe even provocative stuff.

You know your own expertise better than we do. If there is a particular area of recruiting that you have specific and in-depth knowledge of or experience in, we’d encourage you to generate topic ideas around it.

Be Specific

This is a concept that can’t be emphasized enough to new contributors: Be specific! Keep in mind that we are a daily publication, all about recruiting. We’re covering every dimension of the recruiting profession. We would run out of new material pretty quickly if every article just scratched the surface. An article called “Use the Internet for Recruiting,” for example, is a bit like an article for a basketball player’s magazine being called “Score Points to Win Basketball Games.” Skip the general issues that everyone is familiar with and get right to the good stuff. This goes for introductions too. You can safely assume that our audience is familiar with the basics, so there’s no need to spend much time introducing your concept.

Don’t say things in your articles/videos/pods like “the baby boomers will be retiring soon…” and “the recruiting profession has changed so much over the years” and so on. Each time you say something, ask yourself, “Do people already know this? Is it obvious?”

The best content will typically focus on one idea in depth. It’ll talk about the advantages and disadvantages of an idea or strategy, and how it has worked for companies in the past or will work for companies now. Then it’ll follow the exposition with a few hands-on tips that a recruiting professional can walk away with and start putting to work right away.

Audience

ERE is a broad community in terms of level of responsibility. It’s comprised of everyone from junior recruiters to senior VPs of HR. That means we frequently publish both high-end, strategic-level ideas as well as practical, hands-on tactics and tips.

Editing

All articles are edited for grammar, style, and clarity prior to publication. We do our best to preserve the author’s voice and intentions, but we reserve the right to make editorial changes at our discretion. We sometimes add a photo or other art.

Author agreement

We ask all contributors to sign an author contract, which essentially stipulates that the article/video/audio/etc. being published was written exclusively for ERE. We do allow reprints in other publications, as long as they follow our Article Reprint Guidelines (ask us about them if you want).

Vendors Writing

Our readers are often more “suspicious” of material by representatives of vendors, and are very watchful for implicit marketing messages buried in the content. If you do represent a vendor, just be aware of our readers’ concerns and be sure that your submission is more than just a vehicle for a marketing message. Also, please understand that we’re forced to be much more vigilant on these issues with you than with our other authors.

Even if you’re a vendor and you don’t mention your company in the article, it can still be problematic. We’re not really looking for an assessment vendor to write an article about “why you should use an assessment” (even if they don’t mention their own.) Having said that, if a consultant writes an article about “how to negotiate a job offer” and that consultant has done training on the topic before, that doesn’t necessary rule them out entirely from writing the article. In a nutshell, it depends!