Why Writing Skills are so important...

There is no getting away from the fact that we live in the digital era.  Letter writing is going out of fashion - in fact I can not remember when I last received a hand written note from a friend.  It is quicker and easier to text or send an email.  Yet it is still important to be able to communicate well, and perhaps more importantly to have good writing skills.  If you are applying for a job, one of the first things a prospective employer sees is your application letter or resume.  Mistakes can be costly, lead to misinformation, and unemployment.


Nikolas Baron, a member of the Grammarly marketing team in San Francisco has some very interesting facts on the correlation of writing well and monetary reward.

Grammarly, a company that develops and distributes professional writing software, was interested in knowing if the accuracy of a writer’s Elance profile affected the writer’s candidacy, earnings, and reputation. To this aim, the company surveyed the profiles of some 450 professional freelancers on Elance.com. The study yielded this interesting result: There is a strong correlation between the highest-rated writers and the accuracy of their profiles. In fact, four- and five-star rated writers offering services on the online staffing platform have something in common. Can you guess what it is? No, it is not college degrees or years of experience; some freelancers are self-taught, and others are just entering the world of writing. What is it?

Grammarly found a positive correlation between the accuracy of the freelancer’s profile and their ratings. The highest possible rating on Elance is five stars. Of the writers evaluated, the ones who received at least four stars for their completed projects had a lower number of errors in their profiles than freelancers who received less than four stars. In other words, contractors with few errors in their profile statements were more likely to receive high ratings on the jobs than writers who had less grammatically correct profiles. Why do you suppose this is? We have three theories.

Theory One:  They Spend Time Writing a Good Profile

One idea is that writers with high ratings take more time to write their profile. They invest the time and effort necessary to create a complete, well-written description of their experience and talent. If this quality transfers to the jobs that they perform, these writers spend more time writing documents for the client. This careful diligence, in turn, leads to high ratings and satisfied clients.

Theory Two: They Are Meticulous about the Details

A meticulous person pays attention to details. Therefore, writers who possess this quality proofread their profile several times after writing it. They may use professional tools such as an automated grammar checker to screen for mistakes. When hired for a job, they spend as much time as is necessary to ensure the documents they author are as accurate as possible. They take care to fulfill all of the job’s requirements. As a result, the clients are happy and give the writers high ratings.

Theory Three: They Command More Respect

Clients use profiles to decide which contractor is best suited to complete their project. Writers with well-written profiles impress clients with their skills before hire. When the contractor’s work lives up to the profile, the impressed clients may be more likely to translate their satisfaction into stars.

What is your theory? Why do you think the highest-rated contractors have the fewest errors in their online profiles? Do you have a profile on an online freelancing platform? If so, you might want to test the first two theories. Take a few moments and review your profile. Complete all the relevant sections. Update your experience and education. Finally, clean up any spelling or grammar errors. Soon, you may see your ratings improve!

Bio:

Nikolas Baron discovered his love for the written word in elementary school, where he started spending his afternoons sprawled across the living room floor devouring one Marc Brown children’s novel after the other and writing short stories about daring pirate adventures. After acquiring some experience in various marketing, business development, and hiring roles at Internet startups in a few different countries, he decided to re-unite his professional life with his childhood passions by joining Grammarly’s marketing team in San Francisco. He has the pleasure of being tasked with talking to writers, bloggers, teachers, and others about how they use Grammarly’s online proofreading application to improve their writing. His free time is spent biking, traveling, and reading.