oDesk Allows providers to get away with lying

Hi Kellie.

I wish you all luck with oDesk and suggest that you continue with "personal" cover letters for job applications.It took me a couple of months to land on a project. It sure takes some time, but the wait is worth it. So dont loose heart. Keep trying. Someone might just be looking exactly for your skill set.

however, i wanted to ask you about seomthing from your msg.You have said

... I agree taht when our application is rejected / another provider is chosen, we get an email alert.But .How did you come to know that your messages were marked as spam. Did you get any notification or so ? I would like to know. Perhaps i overlooked something. Could you please clarify ?

Regards
Deepa

Hi Deepa

Yes, the email alert stated that my candiacy had ended as my application had been marked as spam.

Regards

Kellie

Hi Kellie,

Welcome to oDesk.

Well I hardly get any responses to my positions, so I've stopped posting 90% of them.

As for the spam, I consider anyone who doesn't read the hring ad & just spams me a generic cover letter that doesn't address the skills needed or the position itself, to be spam.

I pick the reason "provider ignored the hiring ad" or whatever that reason is. It's unfortunate, but based on running my companies since 2002, I have found that 90% of all ICs do NOT read the hiring ad or don't follow simple instructions. That's even when they fill out our online application.

Even when they do read the hiring ad, most (not all) aren't even skilled at what they said they were skilled at. That was my expercience with this last IC & it wasn't just one thing she wasn't skilled at, it was a meriad of different tasks she was given, so I couldn't even find an area she did excel in.

I don't go by feedback. I've hired people on bidding sites with a high feedback & they have either been arrogant, disrespectful, or didn't live up to our expectations of skill.

I learned a long time ago that just because one employer likes an IC, doesn't mean we will. It all depends on the level of quality the company requires.

If the company just gets by with a mediocre product/service, customer service, etc. then hiring anyone is probably okay for them, or if they aren't in touch with how well that person is in that position, they may never know what's "really going on" in the position.

We care about quality, intelligence, & I work very closely with almost all my team members, so what they can get away with at other companies won't wash over here.

But, I'm the exception to the rule in most cases :  ) I don't care about feedback, I care about quality, wanting people who can actually read & follow English etc. LOL

I hope you get a project soon & that maybe something I said has taught you something.

Take care

 

Michelle :  )

I do believe that at oDesk, you are only allowed to give feedback on a ended assignment.

I am not sure though, that this is the actual reason behind why oDesk took that action on your opening and would like to hear an official statement from an oDesk staff.

Regards,

You are charging twice minimum USA wage, 5x Philippine min wages, with no visible expertise and no test scores to back up your
claim.

You claim a "5" in English skill, yet you scored in the bottom half of those who took the sentence structure test.  That makes me wonder what other skills you are over-confident on. That is enough to make me wibble about hiring you.

If you claim any expertise, take the test ... Excel, MSWord, etc.

Lower your bids until you have either high scores on the skills tests and/or work history and feedback. This is  a very competitive market, and you need to "pay your dues".

 

Your comment seems a bit  harsh.  Perhaps you should be me polite if you are going to give advice.   Your comments are pretty valid no doubt but the tone is not very pleasant.  As a writer I am sure you could make more effort to qualify your critisism .  i.e some friendly preamble or empathetic comment. 

 If anyone wanted to give you advice they might suggest that if you are advertising yourself as a technical writer then you might be a bit ashamed of your 69th percentile score on the technical writing test.

 Please don't flame my profile.  I know I'm not likely to be getting much work with it.  I am a bit of a mess I know.

 Blunt, yes. That's how technical writers write.

Thanks for reminding me about that test. It's a top 20% now, but it took me 23 minutes.

That test confuses knowledge about specific programs used by some writers  with knowledge of how to write technical documents.  I
don't care what the name of the image resizing command for Word 2003
is. If I need it, they have a nifty feature called "Help".

What would be more significant would be asking which kind of graphic resizes best: JPG, PNG, DFX, or BMP? What are the advantages of conditional content? That sort of stuff would be better to ask.

 

First, let me address the feedback issue. Having a new posted job closed will not affect a feedback score that's already been left - even if it's a repost of the same job. I can see one buyer-to-provider feedback score in your post's assignment, and you can always double check your feedback is there by looking at the provider's profile.

I've emailed one of the managers about your case to find out the answer to your 'why' question. I do not have access to the ticket system, but I was able to look up your job post. I do not know exactly why it was taken down - again, I can't access the support system notes. I do hope that you'll receive a response to your ticket in the next few hours from the customer support team that just started their shift so that your question is answered before the manager is back to work in the morning.

I am curious that you have posted 32 openings but only have 2 jobs visible in your assignment history. Is this the first time one of your job posts has been closed?

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Thank you for responding.

First let me address a couple of things:

1. We never post a job we are not hiring for. If I didn't hire, it's either because people didn't read the hiring ad or application, weren't skilled, or somewhere there was a breakdown during the interview process.

I don't have time to post jobs just to waste time. The HR role I play is very stressful, I'd love nothing better than to post, hire & be done with it, but it never seems to be that easy. A lot of ICs, refuse to be screened & I feel it's an overall air of "this is the net, it's not real life, so the same rules don't apply as they do for brick & mortar companies." They can also be very disrespectful. Once again, because they are hidden behind a monitor, they will say things they would never dare say in person to a potential boss.

On oDesk we find we don't get a lot of responses, or when they do, they are just spamming out generic cover letters. We don't hire people who aren't very good in communication (that means can read English, follow instructions, communicate through written English, & actually cares about the company & isn't just looking to make quick cash.) I will say this has nothing to do with where the person comes from, as even within NA we encounter this issue & have for years.

2. This is the 2nd time one of our job postings has been taken down, the first time was a while ago & once again it was because of an IC not liking something that happened, so they tried to bring us down by having the hiring ad taken down. Like I said, ICs can be very vindictful.

I tried to communicate with the ticket, but they refused to listen to what I had to say & so I didn't bother chasing oDesk, as I don't have the time for that. I am shocked that without even discussing the issue with me the posting was just removed. If I were running any site were there are issues, I would ALWAYS listen to both sides of the story before making a decision, but one again, this seems to be common place online, ICs are respected a lot more than the companies are. At least that has been our experience.

So long as I know their feedback wasn't affected, I don't much care if the posting was taken down. No one was responding who was qualified anyway, & I think we only received 3-4 responses in total.

We may have already found someone else to fill that position from another source.

Once again thank you & have a good day/night.

 

Michelle

It's too bad we can't rate replies in the forums. You get 10 stars for that, Doreen.

- Danalyn

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The same in Russian:

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