Is The HOTH the Best Writing Company To Work for?
A question I get asked often when someone finds out that I worked for The Hoth is, “Is the HOTH the best writing company to work for?”
You are lucky; yours truly worked for the company from January 2019 until May 2019. Yeah, a short time, but boy, oh, boy, do I have a lot to say about the company and if it’s one of the best writing companies to work for.
Hiring/Training Process
The HOTH training and hiring process was lacking.
When I was first hired in January 2019, I was hired as a topic creator. I was stoked because I could make killer headlines and meta descriptions.
But what struck me as odd was that we didn’t get the training guide until AFTER we went through what The HOTH called “training.”
Now, the next position I got hired for was the writing portion.
This was more of the same type of training, just like the topic creator position. You don’t get the training guide until AFTER you’ve gone through training and already written a post.
Now, a little back story, when you are writing your test post, they don’t even give you any keywords to use or anything. You do a post and hope for the best. The HOTH is an SEO company, which boggles my mind. They don’t enforce keywords in the “training” as most other companies do.
The last and final position I got hired for was the quality control position. This training was just the same as the previous two. You are to QC a post with no instructions on how to do it, what to look for, etc.
Unprofessionalism
It’s all fun and games until the unprofessionalism is in the air, am I right? When I get emails from companies I work for, they are not trying to act cool. They are certainly not trying to act hip like The HOTH. They send us what we need to know, and that’s that.
No, trying to be relevant or keep up with the latest trends. That is not how business works. You want us to take you guys seriously and have a serious tone.
We would get Topic Tuesdays, Writing Wednesdays, and Feedback Fridays emails. These emails were not of a professional tone. Most of them felt like I was receiving an email from a young friend rather than a professional company.
Support Is Lacking
Everyone you could ever talk to at The HOTH hated emailing support for the following reasons.
- It WILL take days/weeks to hear back
- The HOTH is afraid to reach out to the clients
Good luck if you need a quick answer because the client is upset. It will take a while for them to come back with a half-assed solution.
If the client wants to talk to them because this is the umpteenth order that is screwed up, they will say, have them rewrite the article or another vague order and call it a day. They don’t want to talk to the clients, but as the writer and quality control person, you will get the brunt of the client’s anger.
Favoritism and Cult-like Attitude
I’ve contracted with many companies throughout my years of working from home. I’ve never worked for a company where you can tell who the “favorites” of the bunch were. Who got the “free” pass, and who didn’t?
The HOTH had a handful of their “favorites” and received special treatment over the others. If they had an idea, they (the head team) would run with it. However, if an average Joe had an idea, that could be frowned upon because they (the head team) would think you are going against the culture doc, which made you feel as if you always had to circle jerk them and not have any opinions of your own.
The atmosphere here dragged so much.
Verdict: Best Writing Company to Work for?
Heck to the no, it is not. Unless it’s changed in the last 3 months since I’ve been there, it’s a terrible company to work for. If you like being in a cult, getting highly unprofessional emails, and they mass hiring to the point that no one knows how to do their job, then go for it.
If you instead work at a place that trains its people properly, you’ll want to look elsewhere.
If you are in the market for work at a home job this summer, you’ll want to check out our 34 legitimate ways to make money this summer post.
