oDesk Community - Buyers need limits too. - Comments

Flag the BUYERS, too

terrimorgan — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:56:43 -0700

You should flag the buyers who repeatedly low-ball jobs and those who post jobs at $1 an hour or less. This should be selectable and filtered. That way, providers can avoid the bottom-trawlers. Anyone stupid enough to filter for jobs that pay <$5 is welcome to them. If you want to pretend that these are simply "market rates," you are worse than the people posting these non-jobs. If you are going to put limits on providers to prevent them spamming buyers, you should keep the non-buyers who want to pay NOTHING from spamming "CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL" providers.

yang wrote:

I would say that, for the most part, oDesk buyers have been good about inviting only those providers that they are truly interested in. There may however be the more frequent occurrence when buyer hires someone before he interviews everyone he's invited but leaves the job open with the intent to continue to hire additional providers. However since a hire has already been made, the buyer is not as responsive to the remaining candidates. He may occasionally review the candidacy queue to see if there is anyone that really catches his eye.

I would say that spam invitations are clearly wrong and we at oDesk will continue to monitor and regulate the marketplace for abusive behavior such as this. (The spam post in question has long been taken down by our support team.) The latter behavior is somewhat inconsiderate but not really abusive per se. Do note however that buyer-initiated invitations do not count against the provider's job application quota.

We are considering possibly displaying the total number of invitations received per provider as an indication of how attractive the provider's profile is to buyers. Hopefully that should correlate strongly with actual provider quality. If/when this feature is released, a provider would benefit from being invited even if s/he does not end up getting hired for that specific opening.

Yang

oDesk

I would say that, for the

yang — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:27:27 -0700

Yang

oDesk

Trend?

daverobinson — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:12:18 -0700

I've seen it at least a couple of times when searching for jobs. I don't like the idea of forcing buyers to interview everyone who responds before assigning the job because sometimes people will send grossly inappropriate response letters.

However, I think posting a limit of 10 or 15 invitations per job (I know that's high but it would stop most mass spam invites) would be fine.

Not clear

noumankhan — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:34:53 -0700

Thanks for your comments.

I am not saying that buyer should interview all the candidates that apply for the job. I am saying that buyer should interivew those candidates to whom they send interview invitations. And i think buyers send invitations only to those candidates who interests them not everyone.

Hope this will clear you.

Thanks,

Nouman.

Are you sure?

sbullo — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:42:35 -0700

I hope you didn't mean that a buyer should be restricted to interviewing all acceptors before hiring. What if after they've requested to interview several candidates they've discovered that perhaps one or two of those candidates aren't exactly what they're looking for? Are you saying they have to interview those candidates even though they have absolutely no intention of hiring?

I do agree with the mass buyer interview send-outs though I have to say I haven't seen it happen too often.

Susanne Bullo
sbullo@odesk.com

I agree

noumankhan — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 01:44:21 -0700

Yeah that' 100% right. Buyers send interview invitations and then disappears. Currently i have 5 interview invitations from 5 different buyers and i have got response from only one buyer. If buyers are not interested then why they sent an invitation.

Odesk should limit the buyers to send invitations and restrict them to take all the interviews before hiring someone for the job.

Thanks,

Nouman.

oDesk.

It is definitely a trend.

amohler — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:25:33 -0700

It is definitely a trend. I would say that most buyers know that it is not in their best interests to send out this many invitations, but some "bottom line" buyers do it anyway.

The link I gave was one of the most extreme examples I've seen yet, which is why I brought it up.

When I recieve invitations, I always look to see how many other people recieved the same invitation. If I see a list like this, I decline automatically. They aren't doing themselves any favors by operating in this fashion.

Is this a single occasion or

okudamanova — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:40:56 -0700

Is this a single occasion or is this something that you can call a trend that is really bothering you?

The Provider's application quota was introduced due to too many spam applications reported by Buyers.

Regards,
Olga

let's not forget

doreenmartel — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:03:38 -0700

amohler wrote:

Buyers should be limited as to how many invitations they may send out for a single job posting. Stuff like this is ridiculous: http://www.odesk.com/jobs/Business-Directory-Listing_~~6d5a8b0126dba87b.... We, as providers, are limited as to how many assignments we may apply to. I firmly believe buyers should be subject to a similar limitation.

that this particular buyer claims to be from Israel but his NDA is from Florida....that's a red flag if I ever saw one! Sign an NDA just to discuss the job? I don't think so :)

Buyers need limits too.

amohler — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:43:14 -0700