oDesk Community - Buyers posting same job twice, hiring 2nd, and leaving 1st posting open. - Comments

thanks

jwichman — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:40:24 -0700

Yang,

Thank you for clarifying that for me.

Perhaps a method could be implemented that would allow users to see when there are one or more active hires currently assigned to the still-open job (and notify existing Candidates and Interviewees of the update).

This would let prospective Applicants know that the job is still active ( rather than collecting dust). At the same time, it would provide existing Candidates and Interviewees with information on the status of the project for which they applied. They could then use that information to update or retract their candidacy and/or direct their focus towards other projects as they see fit.

~Jeff

Hiring and keeping job open is perfectly okay

yang — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:10:20 -0700

Jeff, what you are seeing is a result of our implementation rather than any buyer intent. When a buyer posts a job on oDesk and then hires a provider for the job, he is given the option to either close the opening (if he's done hiring) or hire but still keep the job open so he can continue to interview other providers. In the latter case, you would see a clone of the original opening with a single candidate that is immediately hired. I believe this is exactly what happened in the 2 cases that you've observed. We apologize for the confusion. This is a legacy implementation issue rather than improper buyer behavior.

Yang

oDesk

Buyers posting same job twice, hiring 2nd, and leaving 1st posting open.

jwichman — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:27:20 -0700

I am curious as to why I have noticed (at least 4 or 5 times) a Buyer will post a job opening and then a few days later re-post the same job, often with the same title and description, and in the same category. I noticed this last month and just thought it was weird, but I was looking over some old candidacies today and found two more examples of this (two different Buyers). Oddly enough, both of these examples show the buyers re-posting a job, and then (the same day) hiring a single Provider who applied for the job.

As a Provider, this adds just another ghost candidacy to our candidacy list, and a pointless job posting to the Job index (which means people are spending time writing cover letters for jobs that are already filled). I suppose one could keep double-checking each posting, or manually ending these particular candidacies, upon realizing the Buyer has already filled the job under another posting... but I'm curious as to why these second postings are occurring to begin with. Admittedly I am unfamiliar with the Buyer interface and any advantages that such a strategy may or may not provide. My first guess was that perhaps a Buyer is posting in multiple categories or simply "bumping" their listing, but why then are both of the examples I have showing a single candidate hired on the same day of the posting? Perhaps there is some kind of database issue going on?

Anyways, I'm not sure whether or not it's offensive to the parties involved, so I'll hold off on posting the links for the duplicates until a mod. gives me the go-ahead.

~Jeff