Are you interested in helping others succeed in relaunching their careers? Looking for a new audience with whom to share your career perspectives? Have a unique idea you think would be helpful to professionals who want to do more meaningful work? I’m always excited to feature guest writers interested in sharing their career perspectives with others on my blog and/or career change or personal branding publications on Medium.
Before pitching any idea to me, please review the following guidelines carefully. Due to the volume of pitches I receive, I will only consider those that strictly follow these guidelines. Note, I’m looking for original pieces written specifically for my audience of aspiring professionals. I use AI detectors with all submissions, and I will ignore posts that contain obvious, AI-assisted copy.
What I do want
- Advice from people who have navigated times of change in their careers or can provide expert advice when it comes to marketing your personal brand during times of transition.
- Articles that offer a deeply personal take on making brave leaps in your career (think “What I learned from leaving my job behind,” not “How to write a resume”).
- Expert-backed pieces that provide clear, actionable advice to my readers to help them in their career progression.
- Strong, high quality writing that matches my voice and style (empowering, supportive, and personal).
- Length between 750-2000 words. Yes, articles here can be longer, which my readers don’t mind!
- I’d encourage you to check out my blog to get a sense of the article style.
What I don’t prefer
- Generic or broad job-related content. E.g., How to dress for an interview, 4 cover letter tips. You can find this plenty of other places.
- Articles targeted to college students or recent graduates. Not my target audience. I instead focus on mid to senior level professionals.
- Anything disguised as a blog post that is instead focused on blatantly promoting a specific company or brand, including YOUR brand. (Trust me, my readers can tell).
- Anything with unnatural inline links. If it becomes obvious at any step of the process you’re only doing this to drive traffic to a particular site or affiliate, your article will be rejected. Trying to sneak these in at the end of the process will only end up wasting our time.
- Grammatical errors, typos, profanity, or cuss words. It really needs to be high quality writing that doesn’t require further edits.
- AI-written copy. Absolutely not allowed. My readers are interested in human perspectives from individuals, not AI bots.
3 benefits for you!
- Impact: First & foremost, the opportunity to have a positive, clarifying impact on someone’s career & life.
- Exposure: Your article will be shared with an engaged audience of people who aspire to do meaningful work. As of Aug 2018, I currently average about 8,000+ page views per month & 4,000+ unique monthly visitors to my website. I also manage the #1 most-followed career change publication on Medium. Finally, on social media, I have thousands of followers on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, where I’ll also share your article.
- Credibility: You’ll have an opportunity to host your content on an established, professional platform to share your unique insights, partnering with someone (me!) who’s been featured in leading career publications like Forbes, Fast Company, Glassdoor, Career Builder, Monster, and other leading media outlets. Here are a few things readers have said about this site:
- “Thank you for helping me figure out what I want to do next in my career.” -reader in Singapore
- “I absolutely love reading your blog. Your articles are always so ‘pleasant’ to read.” -reader from San Francisco, CA
- “Your career change articles have made such a positive difference to my life. I can’t thank you enough for the work you do.” -reader in London, UK
FAQs
- Can I include “do-follow” links to my social media accounts and website in my bio? Absolutely. When you submit your post, simply include these links as you want them to appear in your bio.
- Can I include other links that drive traffic to my clients or other sites in the article itself? Only if the links are natural and provide added value. Anything that seems like an shameless plug to drive traffic to another site will be remove, and your submission will likely get rejected.
- Can I write about a topic unrelated to personal branding, career change, or self-employment? I don’t tend to accept posts about other career topics that don’t relate to my core areas of focus. Plenty of other sites exist that host more general content.
- Do you accept posts that offer advice to college students or recent grads? No, I don’t tend to focus on this audience. Instead, your post should be targeted toward experienced, seasoned professionals.
- When will you publish my post? It really depends. I get a lot of submissions, and the publish date is driven by how well it fits in the sequence of my other content, my own workload, and the time of year. If I’m interested in publishing it, you’ll hear back from me, and I will publish it when I think the timing is optimal. That could be within a few days, but in some cases, a couple months.
Ready to get started?
To submit a story for consideration, please contact me with the subject line ARTICLE IDEA: [Story Idea]. Unfortunately, I can’t respond to all inquiries, but I’ll definitely be in touch if I’d like to hear more. I provide these guidelines to help your understand what I’m looking for, so please keep them in mind.
Please include the following:
- Your background: Share a few sentences that describe your professional background and the experiences that make you credible in this area of offering career change and/or personal branding advice.
- Your idea: Pitch your article idea. Share the draft title, target audience, and high-level outline of how you would approach the piece, citing any experts or sources you plan to include. No need to send a full draft at this stage.
- Your writing samples: Send me 2-3 samples of your previous published writing.
- Your LinkedIn profile URL: This helps me understand the relevance of your background to the topic you’re covering. I’ll include a link to your LinkedIn profile in your bio at the bottom. Therefore, you must write using your real name, not a pseudonym. This is important for credibility.
Thank you!
-Joseph Liu