What's New

We are introducing a new, more detailed version of the buyer candidates queue. We’ve made it easier for buyers to manage the candidates in each active opening. Specifically, the more interactive view will allow buyers to:

• Scan candidates’ key qualifications and cover letters
• Filter out candidates that do not meet the preferred qualifications for the opening
• Quickly grant interviews to quality candidates without navigating away from the queue
• Quickly reject (or mark as spam) obvious misfit candidates without navigating away from the queue

Note that this view is still in beta and we would very much like to solicit your feedback on the new functionalities as well as suggestions for improvements. Please post your comments here.

(For now, you can click on the “standard view” to access the original candidacy queue UI.)

Now you can opt to have most notifications sent exclusively to your oDesk Message Center!

For example, if you’re checking your candidates queue regularly and would rather not receive an email every time someone applies to one of your jobs, you can opt out of emailed Job Application Notifications. All messages will still go to your Message Center, so you won’t miss anything. You asked, and we’re listening — watch for even more new Message Center features in the coming months.

Customize your Message Center Preferences now!

We’re happy to announce that we’ve just launched certification tests for both iPhone development and osCommerce. These are 2 of the most sought-after skills on oDesk as evidenced by recent trends. Be the first ones to obtain these free certifications and show buyers that you have what it takes to complete their iPhone or osCommerce projects!

We’ve redesigned the Team Room to be easier to use than ever!

See your whole team

Team members are now arranged in a tile pattern instead of a long list. With four tiles across on most screens, you can probably see your entire team without scrolling down Better presence indicator.

It’s even easier than before to see who is online right now, and who has worked in the last 24 hours.

At long last, time zone conversion!

One of the top requests we’ve heard, especially from Buyers, is to show the local time zone of your team members. We heard you! So whether your teammates are across the country or across the globe, you’ll always know what time it is wherever they are, all in the team room.

Filtering and sorting for bigger teams

For larger teams, it can be difficult to sort through all of your members, so we have added new sorting and filtering based on name, role, and when they have last worked, as well as a “quick search” option to find a specific team member quickly.

We hope you find these improvements useful. Please let us know your thoughts in this thread.

Yes, you can hide a team

Owners can now hide teams. Hiding a team makes it disappear from your team room and all pages with a team selector bar — no more scrolling through a list of inactive teams! A hidden team is not deleted from the system. We find hide to be more useful than delete because you can toggle the show/hide setting whenever you need to on the new My Teams page.

Please note that you cannot hide a team if it has an active assignment, or any team members (besides yourself). You may remove additional team members such as managers and ACs in your Roster.

For all completed assignments, we will be displaying both provider and buyer feedbacks, side-by-side, in the provider profiles and buyer facts. This will give the feedback scores and comments more context.

User security is a top priority here at oDesk. In addition to entering a password all users must now also answer a security question to perform sensitive operations. We also added an option to receive vital notifications via SMS.

Why do I need a security question?

Users log in with their user ID and password to use most of our online and software features. Due to concerns about fraud and unauthorized access to financial information we’ve added an additional level of security to protect users’ accounts. The security question helps prevent unauthorized access if a user’s password is stolen.

Read more about the security question in the help pages.

How do I set my security question?

The next time you access your My oDesk page you will be prompted to create a security question.

How do I choose a security question?

The security question and its answer should be intuitive to you and easy to remember. Having said that, make sure to select a question to which the answer is difficult to guess.

What is a security (SMS) email notification?

Many cellular phones come equipped with SMS (text messaging) capabilities. If you choose this option we will immediately send a notifications to your cell phone of changes made to your account.

Why should I add a security (SMS) email address?

We strongly suggest that you use a security (SMS) email address that forwards to a cell phone. That way you can be notified immediately of changes to secure settings of your account, even if you’re away from your computer. In the event of unauthorized account access, the sooner you know there’s a problem, the better.

What if I don’t normally receive email on my cell phone?

Your phone probably has the ability to receive SMS (text) messages sent to a special email address (e.g. 8881231234@yourprovider.net). Contact your carrier or check out this Wikipedia article to learn more.

We have made some changes to how oDesk users can manage their candidacies. Specifically we’ve consolidated and worthsmithed the pre-populated list of reasons for

• Buyers rejecting candidates for their job openings;
• Providers declining interview invitations from buyers;
• Providers cancelling their applications to jobs.

These changes should more accurately reflect the most common reasons oDesk users would have to terminate candidacies. However, if none of the new reasons is exactly what you’re looking for, we are also allowing users to specify their own reasons as free-form text.

Further more, in our attempt to combat Spam applications to job openings, we are introducing the “Flag as Spam” button so buyers can, with one-click, reject the undesired candidate. Providers with a high percentage of applications flagged as Spam will be investigated by oDesk and may face disciplinary actions.

We are pleased to announce the Beta launch of the oDesk Message Center! This is just one of many features we are launching to improve our communications capabilities, both from us to you and between you and other oDesk users.

What is the Message Center?

The Message Center is an email-like interface that captures messages generated by oDesk or oDesk users within the system. Messages are divided into 3 tabs:

• The Account Alerts tab contains message with direct or indirect financial implications. Examples include hiring actions (hire confirmations, raise rates) as well as payment-related messages (e.g. payment and withdrawal confirmation, payment methods changes)
• The Updates tab contains other system messages, with no direct financial implications
• The Tickets tab will contain discussions with the oDesk support team – no more fishing through your email to find our response to your support inquiry!

Will I still get oDesk messages via email?

For now, yes — all messages from oDesk will continue to be sent to your email account. But we are working on Message Center Preferences, which will allow you to configure which message types you receive in your email, your Message Center, both, or not at all. By enabling you to opt out of certain message types, the Message Center will help reduce your email load from oDesk and help you focus only on the highest-priority messages that truly demand your attention.

Will my messages “expire” from the Message Center?

For now, no, but once we have Message Center Preferences, we will likely delete Message Center messages after some period of time. You will always have the option to receive messages via email that you want to make sure you permanently keep.

What else is coming?

The next big thing is the “Inbox”, which will contain messaages from other oDesk users. The inbox will contain interview correspondence and team invitations, and will also enable buyers to email their team and keep the correspondence in one central location.

Oh, and by the way — you may notice that “My Stuff” has disappeared. We have moved “My Favorite Providers” into the “Find Providers” tab, and “My Referrals” into “Billing & Payment”. We think this is more intuitive, and hope you don’t mind!

As promised, we have launched the second phase of the oDesk Readiness Test. This means buyers are now be able to explicitly search for and find oDesk Ready providers in provider search. Providers’ oDesk Readiness will also be displayed as part of their public profiles.

We are also going to enforce provider oDesk Readiness by setting the job application quotas for all providers who are not yet oDesk Ready to ZERO. Therefore, all freelancers, company managers, and affiliated contractors on oDesk will have to become oDesk Ready before they can apply to any more jobs.

If you have any concerns or suggestions please post your feedback here, http://www.odesk.com/community/node/3572.