This Is An Important Thread
So, for the majority of my ATAR Notes life (and, as we all know, ATAR Notes is life), I was curious about how one would actually end up, y’know, working for ATAR Notes.
Like, I posted on the forums and all, but was always curious about where ATAR Notes could take me. It was always a bit mythical, really. There were different “levels” of moderators with thousands of posts, (at the time) one administrator, and I knew a bunch of forum members wrote the notes that ATAR Notes publishes.
So, like, how did they get there?
I guess I’m making this thread because, now working full-time for ATAR Notes myself, I’d love to make that more transparent. The fundamental message is that we love giving work to forum members and, more often than not, they’re ~prioritised~.
If you think about it, it just makes a whole heap of sense. Why put your trust into an unknown, when you could put it in somebody who obviously knows what they’re talking about, and is obviously passionate about ATAR Notes?
So – how exactly might you end up working for ATAR Notes?
1. Authorship
At time of writing, there are 47 products listed on the ATAR Notes page. By time of posting, this probably will have increased again hahaha. Of those, I reckon ~40 were authored by forum members, which is pretty neat.
Basically, how that actually works:
1. We decide we want to write a new product
2. We look on the forums for helpful users in that subject (Brenden is literally Big Brother; he’s always watching – even when you don’t think he is)
3. And that’s pretty much it haha; authors then correspond with Lauren to get it done
2. Lecturing
ATAR Notes has run 100+ free lectures in both Victoria and New South Wales in just a couple of years. Really crazy statistic, but also entirely awesome.
Somebody needs to lake those lectures. Who are we going to get? Of course, we’d get the people we trust the most out of anybody: ATAR Notes Super-Users. Literally our first port of call.
HopefulLawStudent? Forum member first, now a lecturer.
RuiAce? Forum member first, now a lecturer.
zsteve? Forum member first, now a lecturer.
There’s a huge list of past and current (and future ;)) lecturers directly plucked from the forums. I really like that, and it will 100% continue from now.
3. Tutoring
As you may or may not be aware, ATAR Notes this year launched our tutoring program: TuteSmart. It’s pretty sweet; I’m sure our tutors would attest to that.
Thinking about it, I’m very confident that every single one of our tutors is on the forums. Many were plucked directly. Again, pre’ neat. So, if you want to work for AN, you know what to do. ;)
"Wait, but like… what do I actually do to work for AN?"
Great question. There are lots of things you can do.
Ultimately, the most basic (and beneficial!) thing you can do is simply post on the forums. Be helpful, get involved in the community. Answer questions, ask questions, make friends, have fun.
I think the important thing here is that everybody starts from zero. The more prominent members on the forums at the moment made a first post at some point – some more recently than others. They all probably posted in the wrong board, or had posts deleted or some shit. Everybody started from somewhere. And no matter how many posts you’ve made, there’s literally no doubt that you can rise up the ranks. There are lots of current users in these leaderboards.
After a time, you may be considered for moderatorship. Being a mod certainly isn’t a necessity to write/lecture/tutor for AN – not at all. But just in case people are interested, I might as well go off on a slight tangent here about mod structure haha.
There are two types of moderator: State Moderators (so, VIC Mods and NSW Mods), and National Moderators.
State Moderators typically look after a part or several parts of the forum. For example, you might moderate just the VCE English board, or just the HSC Modern board. You get the idea.
National Moderators have a little more authority – they can issue bans and stuff – and play more of an overseeing role across the entire forums.
Anyway, back to what I was saying about working for AN.
Aside from posting, I really recommend coming to AN meet-ups. It’s great to meet people in person. I’m very confident that Brenden (who we’ll speak about in a second) would attribute at least some of his employment to meeting people IRL. I’m the same – it definitely made an impact IMO.
Anyway, great segue. Here are some case studies about now full-time employees of ATAR Notes.
Case studies
So, Brenden joined the forums in early-mid 2012. He started posting a fucktonne (autocorrect tried to change this to “futon” lol) to help other people. I’m not sure if people would be aware of this, but one of the reasons Brenden has a million respect is that he marked almost literally every single English essay that was posted for a good stretch of time. Every. Single. Essay.
There were a lot of essays. We're talking many hundreds.
He went to meet-ups, got involved in the community. He volunteered for AN at career expos. Amazing. So he became a Vic Mod, then a Nat Mod. Then he wrote some stuff for vTextbook. Following that, he started working part-time for AN. And then full-time.
A couple of years ago, Lauren (who joined in late 2013) lectured at our first ever lecture series. Why was she chosen? Because she’d been posting a fucking heap of English advice, and answering practically every question. She almost single handedly kept the English boards running.
So she started lecturing for AN, and that developed into working part-time. She started doing some formatting stuff, along with online tutoring and other miscellaneous jobs.
Now, she’s full-time – still on publications.
I (Joseph), like Brenden, joined in early-mid 2012 (Year 12). I posted a little, but started posting way more when uni started. I’m not really sure why – I think I just wanted to help people who were trudging through the VCE forest I’d maneuvered the year before.
So I posted more, including a range of guides and stuff. After I while, I was approached to co-write a book for AN (coincidentally (or not), with Lauren and Brenden). So I did that, filled in for some online tutoring stuff, and then started tutoring full-time when TuteSmart came around. Now, I’m working full-time on other stuff, and I’m loving it!
All three of us progressed from new poster – regular poster – forum leader – State Moderator – National Moderator – Administrator and full-time work.
So, what’s the call to action? Post. Post a lot. Post helpfully. Get involved in the community.
There are clear career options. Ask your questions here! :))