Hi folks! I do a lot of ghost writing for executives - so articles have their byline, but I wrote them. How would you go about putting those types of samples on an online portfolio?

You would need consent from the person you wrote for I'd imagine

Yes, like Cierra said, you'd likely need permission to add them to a public online portfolio. But if you're sending writing samples directly to a hiring manager, you can probably just label them as ghostwritten articles.

Hi @orange-doctor-94254, I really think you can't. You can try asking for consent like Cierra said; not many will give it. You'd need to write an original piece to show your expertise on the niche. There's Medium & industry blogs to do that.

On my website, I note that I've written for specific brands or that my work appears in certain places, but I don't link to those if I wrote them for someone else. If someone is really curious during a job interview, then I'm happy to provide more information. Very few executives will want it publicly known that the piece placed in the Washington Post under their name was not actually written by them.

this was really helpful, thank you everyone! So basic consensus would be: don't post on public portfolio (unless given permission/consent), but do send samples if asked directly from hiring managers.

For what it's worth, I stipulate in my contract that I can use ghostwritten materials in promotional activities - sometimes, that just means I include a PDF in my portfolio rather than a live link.