Editors/Managers

A. About Us

B. Duties

C. The Process of Launching a Web Site

D. Our Database

E. Personal Computers

F. Long-Term Approach

G. Qualifications

H. Entrepreneurial Opportunity

I. Full-Time Preferred, Part-Time is Acceptable

J. Opportunities to Learn

K. Can You Afford This?

L. Need for Continuity

M. If You Want to be a Writer

N. Choosing Between Being a Writer or a Manager

O. Please Read

P. When You Apply

Q. If You Are Interested

A. About Us

Juris Informatica publishes legal Web sites, sites that discuss particular legal topics. We also partner with other legal Web sites that place our Web forms and (800) telephone numbers on their site. Our sites and these affiliated sites produce leads from prospective clients, which we then screen to determine if they have a viable case. If they do, we refer the prospective client to a suitable attorney in their area, in exchange for an introduction fee from that attorney.

In the next 24 months, we expect to have over 1000 affiliated Web sites, with a typical such site introducing us to 20 to 50 actual cases a year (cases as opposed to leads). Accordingly, within two years we expect be handling approximately 30,000 cases a year. Our business is extremely lucrative, as legal cases can generate a lot of legal fees. For example, we recently landed a toxic mold case with over 1000 clients to be represented both individually and through a class action, with a settlement value in excess of $20 million; we will receive about 11 percent of that, and that is just one case. Using some very conservative assumptions, we expect to be generating over $100 million in revenues. For further information, see about our company.

B. Duties

We are looking for a few talented editors/managers, each of whom will manage 15 to 25 writers who are writing Web sites for us. We alternate between calling this position a “manager” or Chief Editor.

Duties include:

Recruiting writers, using LinkedIn and Craigslist for writers. We provide the copy, the writers to respond to a Gmail account. They receive an autorespond message with a detailed description. We then ask them to write to another e-mail address (writers@kensingtonllc.com) if they are interested. By the time they write to us, there already has been a level of screening involved, so the number of inappropriate people you would talk with will be minimal.
Review the e-mail sent to us by prospective writers, including their writing samples
Calling those writers who appear to be appropriate and qualifying them on the phone
Collaborating with them on picking an appropriate topic for their first Web site
With our team, picking a good domain name. We will pay to purchase the name. (”We” refers to James Mitchell and his team, not you. You obviously would not have to pay out-of-pocket expenses.)
Setting up an account for this domain name with our hosting company and then installing WordPress on the new account. (Our hosting company has an automated script to do this.)
Making changes to the default WordPress template we use, and setting up a user account for the new writer.
Reviewing the master outline the writer prepares for their site
Keeping in touch with these writers as to their progress
Providing technical support for the writers. WordPress is an easy software package to use, but there will be writers that will need your initial assistance. Some may have more advanced questions for you. Sometimes writers will copy (with permission) pages on other sites and you will need to help them convert the XHTML.
Once they have written Web pages, having other writers edit those pages. After that is done, you would do the final edit and you are responsible for making certain the published page is high quality.
Reviewing the site for completeness — Are there subtopics that should be covered in a site on that topic that we are missing?
Once version 1.0 of a site has been published, determining whether that writer should start on another version right away, or develop another Web site and come back to this topic a month or two later.

Most of this job is to manage the writers. Some will be self-managing — they don’t need your help, they know what they are doing, they are self-motivating, they simply get the job done, on time. (There is a special place in heaven for such people.) Others need more proactive supervision and encouragement. We want to work with the better writers and we have learned that a significant number of writers will not work out — they don’t have as much time as they said they did, they cannot work independently, they need too much supervision, the prose they produce is not as good as their writing sample.

It is important to keep our standards high, which means we (and you) will need to eliminate a significant number of writers, perhaps as high as 50 percent. We do not have a minimum percentage to eliminate. If every writer works out, great, who needs to eliminate anyone? But that is not how the world works and there will be writers who join our team who simply are not producing, who are a pain in the ass to work with, who require too much supervision time and energy. Those people should be eliminated as early in the process as possible so that you can focus your scarce time and energy on the writers who are producing. You will make the most money, and have the least amount of hassle, if you have talented and self-managing writers working for you.

Again, it is really important to eliminate non-performing writers very early in the process. Otherwise, they will drive you nuts and will significantly reduce how much money you make, because you only have so much time and energy.

Whenever you manage someone, you are constantly making tradeoff decisions between training them and just doing the work yourself. We expect you to be more knowledgeable in several areas than the writers you manage. We want to get Web sites launched so we can start to make money from them. You will encounter situations where you say to yourself, “I can just do this faster than it would take to explain it to them, and I want to get this site done.” On the other hand, if you do that, the writer has not learned anything. It might make more sense to take the extra time to teach the writer and have the writer do the work, so that next time the writer (hopefully) knows what to do.

We have decided to work only with writers located in the United States or Canada. Our Craigslist and LinkedIn ads do attract numerous writers from other parts of the world (particularly India, it seems as if every person in India and his brother reads Craigslist). We have found that the hassles in dealing with foreign writers — bad telephone connections, time zone differences, etc. — are simply not worth it, particularly when there are so many good U.S.-based writers who are interested.

Our goal is to have each writer produce 6 to 10 “normal” Web sites a year and after 12 months, for the writer to be generating sufficient income from his portfolio of sites so that he does not have to work anymore. Some writers will take on more ambitious sites on very broad topics, and those sites will obviously take much longer to finish.

C. The Process of Launching a Web Site

The process of launching a Web site is:

You and the writer agree upon a suitable topic for a new Web site.
You, the writer and we pick a suitable domain name and we purchase the domain name.
You set up the account, install WordPress and make whatever changes are necessary to our default template. (We have scripts for much of this.)
The writer looks at the top 100 Web sites covering that topic. He prepares a master outline, listing all of the conceivable page titles for the ultimate.
You then edit the master outline and the two of you agree upon priorities — these pages are in version 1, these are saved until version 2, etc.
For each Web page, the writer prepares an outline of headings. Since search engines pay particular attention to headings (h1, h2, etc.), from a search engine optimization (”SEO”) perspective, these headings should be chosen carefully.
The writer writes the Web page.
You then ask one or more of the other writers to edit that page.
Once they have edited it, you do the final editing, and then publish the page. The sooner a page is published, the sooner the search engines will index it.
Once version 1.0 is close to being done, the graphic designer and WordPress expert generate a visual design for the site.
After the design is finished, we officially launch.
We then submit the site to the appropriate advertising brokers (Google, Yahoo, etc.). They take a few days to inspect the site and ads appear a few days later.
We determine which products should be sold on the site, and negotiate affiliate marketing relationships with suitable vendors.
One of our SEO experts then begins the search engine optimization process. He first reworks the site a bit, changing titles and headings. He may ask the writer (through you) to change the copy to achieve the most optimal keyword density. He then submits the site to numerous directories.
The most important part of the SEO process is obtaining inbound links. Our goal is for hundreds of sites covering the same topic to refer to our site, ideally sites with high Google Page Rank (”PR”) scores. In most cases, we need to offer links to them in exchange. We have written an extremely sophisticated link management program to manage and partially automate this process. Since in some cases mutual link exchanges can penalize you with Google, in most cases we use more sophisticated link exchange strategies that cannot be detected by the search engines. (Once we get to know you well, we will tell you how we do this.)

The SEO process can take 3 or 4 months to achieve a high ranking, particularly on Google. Once you have a top search engine ranking, as long as you continue to add high quality content, in most cases you keep your ranking. If you have high rankings, you will have a lot of traffic. Once you have the traffic, the only issue is conversion — what percentage of our readers are clicking on ads and/or purchasing products. Our SEO experts are also search engine marketing (”SEM”) experts and they are particularly good at increasing conversion rates.

D. Our Database

We operate as a virtual company and it is important that everyone on our team has access to the same information. We have written a sophisticated database in Microsoft SQL Server to manage our writers, other Web professionals, applicants, domain names/web sites, and WordPress user accounts. It is essential that the managers who work with us are extremely careful about keeping our database up to date so that all of us are working off the same information.

Since you will be dealing with so many people — both writers working with us and writers/applicants who have written to us who then need to be qualified as to their suitability — there is a fair amount of time spent on administrative matters as well as entering information into our database. If you are not detailed oriented, this position is not for you. For each Web site you will need to set up a user account and install WordPress through a script used by our hosting company, so you will need to be good at computers. (We will provide detailed instructions for how to do this.)

E. Personal Computers

We are exceptionally advanced users of computers. Our Chief Technology Officer, Keith MacKay, is a graduate of MIT and has managed over 1000 software development projects, including more than a dozen for Microsoft and more than 90 for Harvard Business School. Our CEO, James Mitchell, was a senior software engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation and had a research fellowship in information systems at Harvard Business School. Our software developers are among the best in the world. For our Web sites, we typically use WordPress running on the LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) software stack. For our internal information systems, we use Microsoft tools: Windows Server, SQL Server, .Net, Visual Basic, Access. We have developed some of the most sophisticated software systems in the world. We do not expect or require all of our professionals to be software developers, but we do expect them to have a strong aptitude for computers, have a high level of intellectual curiosity about them, and to be keenly interested in enhancing their computer skills.

Applicants who are not computer proficient regularly assure us, “I can learn them.” Our experience has been otherwise. Let’s assume that one starts to be exposed to computers at age 15 and you are now 25. You’ve had 10 years of exposure, 10 years to become really good at using them. If after 10 years you are not really good, it probably means either (i) you are not inherently interested in them, or (ii) you simply do not have the talent (most people do not). Either way, we are not the right firm for you. Realistically you will not be able to meet our expectations for computer proficiency and it will be a frustrating (and short) experience for both of us. Every time we have gone down the “I am not good at computers now but I can become good quickly” path we have regretted it.

If on the other hand you are really good at using computers and you want to become an expert, JI would be a fantastic company for you! You will be working with some of the top software minds in the world, and we will show you things you have never imagined.

We use Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 (Word, Access, Outlook) extensively; please read our page on Microsoft Office. You will need either a PC running Windows or a Macintosh that runs Windows. If you are a Mac user, please read our page for Macintosh users.

In the “If You Are Interested” section below, we ask numerous questions about your use of computers. Please do not let these questions intimidate you. As we mention below, there is probably no one on the planet who can provide a favorable response to all (or even most) of them. The comprehensive set of questions we ask does allow us (and you) to get an overall sense of how good you are at using computers.

F. Long-Term Approach

In building Web sites, we seek to generate properties that will be valuable for a long-time, ideally forever. We are looking to build high quality Web sites. First, we have a strong sense of professional pride and responsibility. We want to launch sites that will be the best sites on that particular subject. Second, in the long run, quality wins. Although there are short-term SEO gimmicks which one can employ, in the long run, high quality sites will have a large number of inbound links and such links ensure a high search engine rating, generating lots of traffic.

G. Qualifications

This job requires an unusual combination of skills.

You must obviously be an excellent writer and editor. As an editor, you would provide conceptual advice at the high end and detailed copy editing at the basic level. You must have a fine level for detail. Nothing destroys the quality of a Web site more than typos, grammatical mistakes, etc.
You must have excellent oral communication skills.
You must be good at managing writers, some of whom will have an artistic personality. In many cases, the better way to manage them is to get them to buy into an idea, rather than telling them what to do.
If you do not know WordPress well, you will need to learn it.
If you do not know XHTML well, you will need to learn it. Any Web design experience would be a plus.
You should be knowledgeable about the Internet. Ideally you should have some understanding of how search engines work and basic search engine optimization (”SEO”) principles, since you will be making numerous suggestions to the writers about how to improve their sites from an SEO perspective. If you don’t know SEO, you should be willing to learn. (We have a few good books we will send you.)
You are pro-active and self-managing. If we have to spend much time managing you, then what is the point?
You have a high level of personal responsibility. You do what you say you are going to do and you meet deadlines. If you fit the stereotype of the artistic flake, please do not write to us. We are highly successful entrepreneurs who get things done and we have zero (actually, negative) tolerance for flakes.
You are easy to reach on the telephone and are extremely good at returning e-mails and phone calls promptly. You have low total cost of interaction.
Insatiable intellectual curiosity, a desire to learn new things, particularly computer skills.
You must be really good at computers (although you don’t need to know how to program). Although you will have access to amazing technical talent (James Mitchell is truly a guru and our WordPress/PHP developers are among the best in the country), you will have to provide hands-on training to the writers.

H. Entrepreneurial Opportunity

This is an entrepreneurial situation. That means there is no salary or draw. Once a month, you would receive a check for a percentage of the revenues your Web sites generated in the previous month. We are entrepreneurs, always have been and always will be. We are not looking to work with those who seek or need a salary. It’s a different mindset and we have found that through an entrepreneurial approach, we get a higher caliber of partner. So we are looking for good writers/editors who are more entrepreneurially minded than many of their peers, which may be a tough combination. You obviously need to be able to afford something as entrepreneurial as this.

This is an opportunity to make a substantial amount of money. Just as writers will be developing a portfolio of Web sites from which they will be generating income, so will you. The difference is that your portfolio will be much larger than theirs. If after 12 months a writer has written 10 sites, then he has 10 sites in his portfolio. Assuming you are working 60 hours a week, you should be able to manage approximately 30 to 50 writers. Assuming 30 writers each with an average of 10 sites per year, that means that after one year, you will have 300 sites in your portfolio. If your share of the profits equates to $250 per Web site per month (the number should be higher, much higher, as we are focusing on lucrative topics), that means you would be making $75,000 a month or $900,000 a year, at the end of the first year. If you repeat that level of performance during the second year, that means you will be making $1.8 million a year. Obviously there is some limit — trees do not grow to the sky — but the chance to make a significant amount of money is obvious.

I. Full-Time Preferred, Part-time is Acceptable

Our strong preference is to find a couple of full-time Chief Editors. If your definition of full-time is 40 hours a week, this is probably the wrong situation for you. We would much prefer to have fewer managers who are busting ass working 60 hours a week (we would not object to more).

Why does it make sense from your point of view and ours for you to make a significant time investment?

First, we will have to spend a considerable amount of time training you. It makes more sense for us to spend our scarce time and energy to train someone who is totally committed.
Second, you will have to spend a considerable amount of time learning, both our specific procedures (we are very good at systematizing process) and whatever skills you need to develop. (Few people are going to have everything we are looking for at the onset, so whatever you are lacking, we would want you to jump in and master the material you do not know.)
As noted below, it is extremely important that we have low turnover in this position. Those who are making a total commitment are more likely to stay.
There is a learning curve in doing this job. Just as you want the heart surgeon who has performed the most operations, the more writers you manage, the more sites you launch, the better you will become in managing the next writer and in launching the next site.

So when will be make an exception? First, if someone came to us and said, “I used to be a senior editor at The Economist, I then learned Internet technologies and launched a few Web sites. I am now retired and I don’t want to work 60 hours a week, but I can work 30,” we obviously would be interested.

Other than a case such as that, it would be up to you to convince us that we should make an exception. In some cases, we would say, “Let’s work together as a writer first. Write a few Web sites and show us how talented you are as a writer and editor. Blow us away with how dedicated and responsible you are, how quickly you produce excellent prose, and after a few sites we will try to find a way to make you a manager.” This could also be a good avenue for those who do not have the necessary skills now but believe they can quickly learn whatever they are lacking.

What about editors and writers who lack the necessary technical skills? If there is a specific technology you do not know, that by itself should not be a deal breaker, provided you are really really good with computers. If you are not really good at computers, however, realistically there is no way you will be able to get up to speed on the various technologies you will be using.

J. Opportunities to Learn

If you are looking to branch out in other areas, this could be an excellent opportunity. Among our team we have outstanding entrepreneurs, Internet experts, Web designers, PHP programmers, WordPress experts, and search engine optimization experts. If you are looking to learn more about any of these fields, we could provide you with substantial exposure to these experts.

K. Can You Afford This?

It is obviously very important that you can afford an entrepreneurial situation such as this one. As noted in Section H, this opportunity offers the chance to make a significant amount of money. In fact, we would say with absolute certainty that if you stick with it, if you have the necessary skills and talent, if you work the necessary hours, you will make a lot of money, the only question is how much. The sites we will be launching will be such high quality, the topics we pick will be so lucrative, and our SEO experts are so good at what they do, that financial success is certain. Again, the only question is how much.

However, you have to be able to afford this. We are not going to ask you for financial statements, but we will want some indication of how you can afford this. If you say, “I was a senior manager at GE, they offered me a huge severance package when my division got bought out,” we will assume you can afford this. If you tell us, “I inherited $10 million and I haven’t blown it,” we will assume you can afford this. If you say, “My spouse makes $500,000 a year and we do not have an expensive lifestyle,” we will assume you can afford this.

The last thing we want is for you to start this job and then have to quit because of finances. As noted in Section L, that means we will have wasted a lot of time training you and our writers (who will have to interact with a new manager) will wonder why they have a new manager. So please don’t waste our time or yours — If you cannot afford something like this, it does not make sense to apply. It may be that being a writer (part-time is fine for writers) makes more sense; see Section M.

L. Need for Continuity

We are only interested in long-term relationships. You will be developing close relationships with a lot of our writers. If you are their manager for six months and then disappear, that makes us look bad. It’s essential that you will be committed to this for the long term.

M. If You Want to be a Writer

You may have concluded that being a manager is not for you, but you would like to write Web sites with us. If so, please read this page and then write to writers@kensingtonllc.com.

N. Choosing Between Being a Writer and a Manager

By definition, a manager manages people — in our case, writers, Web designers and SEO experts. He gets results through the efforts of other people, rather than doing the work himself. You must enjoy managing people, which frankly can be a tedious process of following up. It would be good if you had some prior supervisory experience.
A manager needs to have a high level of personal responsibility and follow through. We do not have the time to provide much management of our managers.
Managers need to be easy to reach. You will be working with a lot of different writers, some of whom will have odd schedules. If they are difficult to reach and you are difficult to reach, then nothing will get accomplished.
A manager must be a good editor. After a writer writes a site, we will have two other writers edit the site. After that, the manager does the final editing. Hopefully by then the site will be in good shape and not much editing will be necessary. But that might not be the case, and you may have to do a lot of editing. (In that instance, obviously something went wrong, and you will want to have a talk with the people who worked on the site.)
A manager needs to be mature and grounded. Some of our writers will inevitably be a bit flaky, they might be space cadets. That is tolerable. A manager who is that way would be a disaster.
Managers need to have a broader range of skills. Over time, you will need to become very proficient in WordPress, search engine optimization, and other Internet skills.
A manager needs to have stronger computer skills. WordPress is simple to use from a writer’s point of view. But there are always small issues and you need to provide technical support for your writers.
We will ask more questions of a prospective manager about time availability than of a writer. If it turns out that a writer is not producing as fast as we like, that’s not good but we might be able to live with that. If a manager does not have sufficient time, he will be slowing down a dozen or more writers and Web sites, which is more serious.
A manager needs to have a high level of intellectual curiosity, a willingness to learn new things.
Probably most important, turnover among managers is a disaster. Writers want to work with one editor / manager, not a revolving door. A prospective manager needs to convince us he will stay long-term, that he is totally committed.

O. Please Read

If you are interested in this position, please read:

P. When You Apply

When you apply:

Please include the questions along with the answers; otherwise, we have no way of knowing which question you are answering. If you do not, we will simply write back and ask you to resend.
Please format your responses. Make it easy for us to read your answers. The best is to copy and paste the answers and responses into Microsoft Word, and then send us the Word file.
Please include the headings in your responses.
Please send us a resume.
If you have a writing samples, please send them.
In the subject line of the your e-mail, please include the position you are applying for.
Please send your response to jmitchell@kensingonllc.com, and also send it (including any attachments) to recruiting@kensingtonllc.com.

Q. If You Are Interested

Many of the questions listed below are computer questions. JI is an exceptionally advanced user of computers, and it’s important that every professional who joins our firm is highly competent in using them and is keenly interested in becoming more proficient. We have included an extremely comprehensive set of questions. There is probably no person alive who could truthfully provide a favorable response to all of them, not even our Chief Technology Officer. Please do not let these questions scare you, we do not expect favorable responses from you to most of these questions. We have included all of them in order to get a comprehensive view of your computers skills. At the same time, after reading these questions, you might say to yourself, “Realistically, I am not very good at computers.” In that case, it makes absolutely no sense to apply, as we are simply the wrong firm for you.

If “(1-10)” is listed after the question, that means please provide an answer in English and also answer the question on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 = no experience or knowledge and 10 = world class guru.

If for any section you do not use that software package, just say that in your answer to the first question and then feel free to ignore the remaining questions in that section.

In your e-mail, please tell us:

Name and Contact Information

What is your full name?
What is your e-mail address?
Do you have any other e-mail addresses? If so, what are they?
Please list all of your telephone numbers.
Which telephone number is best to call you on? As noted below, please state this in your local time and in Boston time.
Do you have Skype?
If so, what is your Skype ID? (If you live outside the United States, please install Skype (www.skype.com) now (ideally before you fill out this form), so that when we want to call you after receiving your e-mail, we can do so.
Where do you live (city, state, country)?
What is your address?
James Mitchell lives in Boston, and Boston is the same time zone as New York City, namely the East Coast time zone. When it is 9 a.m. in Boston, what time is it in your time zone? In other words, how many hours ahead or behind Boston are you?

Professional Experience and Skills

How much experience as an editor do you have? (1-10)
How good at you at copyediting? (1-10)
How many Web sites have you launched?

Education and Professional Training

Briefly describe your education. If you have sent us a resume, then you can just refer us to your that.
Which professional organizations, if any, are you a member of?
Which Web sites and blogs topics do you read for professional purposes?
What other forms of professional development do you engage in, if any?

David Allen

Have your read James’ essay on David Allen?
How interested are you in learning and implementing David Allen’s system? (1-10)

Personal Responsibility

We are looking for professionals with an exceptionally high level of personal responsibility. Please tell us your thoughts about how this applies to you.
We are looking for professionals who are self-managing. How does this apply to you?

Responsiveness

How easy is it to reach you on the telephone? In other words, if 100 people call you in X days, what percentage of them are able to reach you when they call, as opposed to your calling back?
How quickly do you return telephone calls?
How quickly do you respond to e-mails?
We will most likely need to talk with you at least once a day. What are your thoughts about that?
We are looking for professionals with an exceptionally low total cost of interaction. How does this apply to you?

Personal Computers

Do you have your own PC (as opposed to using one at work or at a library, for example)?
When did you purchase it?
How much RAM do you have?
How many monitors do you have connected to your PC?
Tell us about your computer skills. (1-10)
How often, if ever, do friends of yours ask you for computer advice? (1-10)
If you have a Macintosh and you do not have a PC, are you able to run Windows on your Mac? Do you have to boot your computer to switch operating systems or are you able to run both operating systems simultaneously? Which program are you running to run both OS X and Windows?
If you have a Mac, have you read our page for Macintosh users?

LAMP

What does the acronym “LAMP” stand for?
How well do you know Linux? (1-10)
Which Linux control panel (e.g., cPanel) do you use?
How well do you know Apache? (1-10)
How well do you know MySQL? (1-10)
How well do you know PHPMyAdmin? (1-10)
Do you know how to program in PHP? (1-10)

Computer Programming

How much computer programming have you done? (1-10)
Which computer programming languages have you used? How good are you at each one of them? (1-10)
For how many years have you programmed computers? In which year did you start?
If you are not currently programming in a programming language, in which year did you last use any programming language?
What is your favorite programming language and why?

The Internet and the Web

What kind of Internet connection do you have (e.g., cable, DSL)?
How fast is your Internet connection?
How reliable is your Internet connection?
Do you have your computer connected to the Internet via a wired connection (such as Ethernet), or do you use a wireless connection?
Which browser are you using?
Do you know what a top level domain is?
What does “http” stand for?
Do you own any domain names, and if so, which one?
Which domain name registrar do you use? Why do you use them?

Web Design

How well do you understand Web design? (1-10)
Have you ever designed a Web site?
If so, how many? Please provide the URLs.
How well do you know HTML? (1-10)
Are you aware of the features that have been added to HTML 5? (1-10)
Do you know how to write a hyperlink from scratch, using the HTML href tag? (1-10)
How well do you know CSS? (1-10)
How well do you know CSS positioning (the box model)? (1-10)
How well do you know XML? (1-10)
How much experience do you have in programming Javascript? (1-10)
How well do you know Adobe Dreamweaver? (1-10)
Other than Dreamweaver and WordPress, are there any other software packages you use for Web design or layout and/or as a content management system (“CMS”)?
How well do you know Adobe Photoshop? (1-10)
How well do you know Adobe Flash? (1-10)

WordPress

How well do you know WordPress (“WP”)? (1-10)
Which version of WP are you using?
For how many years have you used WP? In which year did you start using it?
Are you currently using WP? If not, in which year did you stop using it?
Do you know how to automatically update your version of WP? (1-10)
Which WP plugins do you like?
Which WP themes do you like?
Do you have any experience with the Thesis theme? (1-10)
Do you understand the WP loop? (1-10)
Do you know how to program in PHP? (1-10)
Do you know how to modify a theme? (1-10)
Do you know how to write a WP theme? (1-10)
Do you know how to modify the code in a WP plugin? (1-10)
Do you know how to write a WP plugin? (1-10)
Have you setup a WP blog/site from scratch? (Using a script such as Fantastico is acceptable.) (1-10)
Which blogs about WordPress do you read, if any?

Search Engine Optimization

How much do you know about search engine optimization (“SEO”)? (1-10)
Which programs do you use for keyword discovery? (1-10)
How well do you know Google Analytics? (1-10)
Which traffic measure services do you use (e.g., Compete.com, Quantcast)?
Have you read Aaron Wall’s SEO Book?
Excluding black hat techniques, are there any SEO techniques you think are particularly clever?
Which SEO blogs, if any, do you read?

Microsoft Windows

Is your computer running Microsoft Windows?
If so, do you have a PC or are you have a Mac that can run Windows?
Which version of Windows are you running (e.g., XP, Vista, Seven)?
Which edition of Windows are you running (e.g., Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate)?
Are you running 32 or 64 bit Windows?
How often do you use the Command Prompt?
How familiar are you with Windows PowerShell? (1-10)
Do you know how to add or remove programs from the Startup folder? (1-10)
Do you use any text editor other than Notepad? If so, which one?
Do you use any file manager other than Windows Explorer? If so, which one?
If you had a program and were unable to close it through the “normal” way, would you be able to close the program using Ctrl + Alt + Delete?
How familiar are you with the Windows Control Panel? (1-10)
How much experience do you have in editing the Windows registry? (1-10)

Microsoft Office

Which version of Microsoft Office are you using (e.g., 2003, 2007, 2010)?
Are you running Office on a PC or a Mac?
When did you start using Office?
If you are not currently using Office on a regular basis, when did you stop doing so?
Have you read our page on Microsoft Office?
Does your version of Office include Microsoft Outlook?
Does your version of Office include Microsoft Access?
Have you recorded Visual Basic for Applications (“VBA”) modules in Office? (1-10)
Have you written VBA modules in Office? (1-10)

Microsoft Word

Which version of Microsoft Word are you using (e.g., 2003, 2007, 2010)?
Are you using Word on a PC or a Mac?
How well do you know Word? (1-10)
For how many years have you used Word? In which year did you start using it?
Are you currently using Word? If not, in which year did you stop using it?
How well do you know how to use styles in Word? (1-10)
Do you know the differences between the three types of hyphens? (1-10)
Do you know the differences between the three types of page breaks? (1-10)
Do you know the differences between the four types of section breaks? (1-10)
How well do you know how to use sequences (a type of field code)? (1-10)
How well do you know how to use bookmarks? (1-10)
How well do you know how to use cross references using sequences and bookmarks (1-10)
How well do you know how to use mail merge? (1-10)
Do you know how to create a custom dictionary (for spell checking)? (1-10)
How well do you know how to use track changes (aka blacklining)? (1-10)
How well do you know how to use compare documents? (1-10)
Do you know how to insert a hyperlink in Word? (1-10)
Do you know how to insert footnotes and endnotes? (1-10)
Do you know how to change views (e.g., go to Draft view to Print Layout view to Outline view)? (1-10)
Do you know how to customize the ribbon in Word? (1-10)
How much experience do you have in recording Visual Basic for Applications (“VBA”) modules in Word? (1-10)
How much experience do you have in writing VBA modules in Word? (1-10)
Unless you already are an advanced user of Word, we will probably ask you to read a comprehensive book on Word, such as Special Edition Using Microsoft Word 2007. How do you feel about that?
In general, how interested are you in becoming highly proficient in Word?

Microsoft Access

Which version of Microsoft Access are you using (e.g., 2003, 2007, 2010)?
How well do you know Access ? (1-10)
For how many years have you used Access? In which year did you start using it?
Are you currently using Access? If not, in which year did you stop using it?
Do you know how to create tables in Access (i.e., column definitions)? (1-10)
In defining tables, how many different data types have you used?
Do you understand the relationship between a parent table and a child table (i.e., one-to-many table relationships)? (1-10)
What would an autonumber field/column be used for?
Do you know how to create a query in Access? (1-10)
Do you know how to create a report in Access? (1-10)
In creating a query, do you know how to link two or more tables to each other? (1-10)
In linking two tables, do you know the difference between an inner vs. outer join (i.e., and vs. or)? (1-10)
Do you know how to create a query upon a query? (1-10)
Have you ever created an update query? (1-10)
Using the wizard, do you know how to create a form in Access? (1-10)
Do you know how to create a subform in Access? (1-10)
In creating a form, have you used the radio button control? (1-10)
In creating a form, have you used the check box control? (1-10)
Using the wizard, do you know how to create a report in Access? (1-10)
Do you know how to create a report from scratch in Access? (1-10)
In creating reports, do you know how to use sorting and grouping? (1-10)
In creating reports, do you know how to use subtotals per group? (1-10)
Have you used macros in Access (e.g., Access macros as opposed to VBA modules)? (1-10)
Have you written Visual Basic for Applications (“VBA”) macros in Access? (1-10)
If you are not highly proficient in Access, we may want you to read a book such as Microsoft Office Access 2007 Forms, Reports and Queries. How do you feel about that?
In general, how interested are you in becoming highly proficient in Access?

Microsoft SQL Server

How much experience do you have using Microsoft SQL Server? (1-10)
How much experience do you have using Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (or Management Studio Express)? (1-10)
In creating a table, do you know how to define a column as the primary key? (1-10)
In creating a table, do you know how to specify a column as a autonumbered column (e.g., identity specification) (1-10)?
In creating a table, do you know how to write computed column specifications? (1-10)
How much experience do you have in writing Transact-SQL statements? (1-10)
How experienced are you in writing stored procedures? (1-10)
How experienced are you in writing triggers? (1-10)

Microsoft .Net

How much experience do you have using Microsoft .Net? (1-10)
Which version of .Net are you using (e.g., 3.5, 4.0)?
How much experience do you have using Microsoft Visual Studio (“VS”)? (1-10)
Which version of VS are you using (e.g., 2005, 2008, 2010)?
For how many years have you used VS? In which year did you start using it?
Are you currently using VS? If not, in which year did you stop using it?
How much experience do you have programming Microsoft Visual Basic.Net (“VB.Net”)? (1-10)
For how many years have you used VB.Net? In which year did you start using it?
Are you currently using VB.Net? If not, in which year did you stop using it?
Are there other .Net languages that you have programmed in? If so, which ones? How well do you know them? Are you currently using them? If not, when did you stop using them? (1-10)

Commitment You Can Make to Juris Informatica

Are you currently employed?
How many hours per week are you currently working in your current job?
If so, are you planning on continuing with your current position, or would you quit your job to work with us?
If you will be quitting your position, how much notice do you need to give?
How soon would you be able to start?
Once you start, for the first 90 days, how many hours a week are you able to devote to this opportunity?
After those 90 days, how many hours a week will you be able to provide?
We want to get a sense of when you would be able to work, stated in both your time and in Boston time. Monday through Friday, when would you be able to work and for how many hours each day? Again, please state both your local time and Boston time.
On Saturdays and Sundays, when will be you able to work and for how many hours each day? Please state in your local time as well as Boston time.
Are you looking for a short-term, medium-term or long-term relationship with JI? How long can you commit to working with us?
Please tell us about family commitments. If you have kids, who takes care of them? Are there other relatives (e.g., parents) that you take care of?
What else is going on in your life? Hobbies? Board memberships? What other commitments do you have?

Salary History and Earnings Expectations

Please provide your salary history for the past five years, broken down into base salary, bonus, commission, and any other categories you think are relevant.
How much a month do you need to live on?
How much would you realistically like to make 12 months from now?
24 months from now?
36 months from now?

Miscellaneous

Is there anything else we should know about you?
Any comments you have on our idea?
Which topics for new legal Web sites do you think would be particularly worthwhile?
Are there any areas of the law, particularly in the area of mass torts, that you think we should be paying particular attention to?
Do you have a blog or Web site? “You” means yourself or a company that you control. If so, what is the URL?
What questions should we have asked but did not?
If we or one of our associates sent you an e-mail through LinkedIn, there was a nine digit number towards the end of the e-mail, immediate after their name. It would be in the format of 100-029-987, or something like that. Please list that number if you can find it in the e-mail we sent to you. If you cannot find it, do not worry about it.

Have You Sent Us

Have you sent us a chronological resume?
Have you sent us writing samples?

Please include the questions and answers in your e-mail. In the subject line, please state “Chief Editor / Manager Position.”

We will respond to every inquiry with 48 hours. Our founders have an impressive track record in starting, managing and selling businesses successfully. We are kick ass, get things done type of people and by the end of 2011, we expect to have more than 1000 affiliated Web sites, with another 500 added in 2012. For the right person, this could be an extraordinary opportunity.

We look forward to hearing from you!

James Mitchell
jmitchell@kensingtonllc.com
(781) 718-1301
www.jmitchell.me