What's New
We’ve added more options for buyers and providers to find better matches quickly and easily. Buyers can specify up to 5 different preferences and dynamically see how many candidates meet all of the qualifications.
Once the buyer has posted their job, they can quickly review the providers that meet all their criteria and invite them to interview. Buyers will see this option when they’re viewing their job opening in the My Jobs tab.
And for providers that are viewing job openings, you will see the buyer’s preferences listed in the job opening page. We hope this helps providers gain a better understanding of exactly what the buyer is looking for in a candidate. You can always apply to the job even if you don’t meet all the preferences, but it should help set the right expectations and lead to more effective applications.
We are pleased to announce our new provider search with enhanced filtering.
Now, it’s easy to find what you are looking for when searching for candidates.
What did we change? 
We hope these enhancements help make everyone’s hiring experience a great one.
If you have any feedback for us about provider search, please tell us here.
We’ve fully released a WYSIWYG editor in all main free text fields in the job openings and provider profiles. We would like to enable users to customize their profiles to the best of their ability to showcase their jobs, skills, experience, and portfolios. We selected an open-source tool, FCKeditor, that seemed to have one of the simplest interfaces.
We hope you utilize the new editor to spruce up your profiles, customize your messages, and add some color to the marketplace.
oDesk currently offers over 100 different skill tests as part of the oDesk online testing program to our entire provider network free of charge. These tests enable providers to certify their skills for the latest technologies and business practices. We have received a great response to the online testing program and the number of tests taken by our providers is increasing rapidly and steadily every day. Read more about the online testing program.
Today, we are happy to announce that we have 4 new tests available for all of our providers:
You can click on the link above to take the tests or also go to the “My Qualifications” area in your account console.
When taking any of the new tests, remember to help us improve the quality. Recently, we enhanced the online testing program with a feedback feature that allows users taking an online test to submit issues, concerns, or errors in the questions. We have received a great response from our providers and in a short period of approximately 2 months we have received a huge number of tickets regarding our test questions. We look forward to getting your comments and suggestions on these 4 new tests as well.
From the beginning of oDesk, a few founding principles have guided our product development strategy and process. High on the list among the principles is,
-Transparency breeds accountability
This principle has always been most evident in our core application, oDesk Team and the Work Diary. Many oDesk outsiders have looked at the Work Diary that includes screenshots and sometimes webcam shots and thought that we were spying on our providers. Some have gone so far as to call us “Big Brother”. We know that oDesk is unique and doing things differently than anyone else before us and we are proud of that. We also know from your comments that our users almost never share the same opinions as these external critics and bloggers.
This principle has led us to what we believe is another important milestone in the development of the oDesk marketplace. We are pleased to announce that full job history is now available online and searchable. Over 15,000 job openings including those that have long since completed and/or cancelled are all available online as part of a user’s assignment history. We will always give the option to our user to hide the details of their jobs if they choose, but we believe that transparency in the majority of jobs will help all of our users learn about the marketplace and make better decisions about who to hire / work for. Now, when looking at oDesk Assignment History for a buyer or provider, you will see job opening titles and will be able to click thru to see the details of the job if it is not private.
You will also note that you can now view a candidate list at the end of every job opening and provider profile. On job openings, this will give providers that may apply some insight into the other applicants. On provider profiles, it will give to potential buyers some indication of the interests of the provider.
We welcome any feedback on the feature in the ongoing discussions in the community forums here or here.
After getting lots of feedback from oDesk providers, we are excited to announce the new “My Candidacies” page. We hope these improvements make your job hunting process easier and more efficient.
Take a look at what’s new: 
Thanks to all of you who gave us feedback on how to improve this page. Be sure to always let us know what we can do to make oDesk work best for you.
Best,
Jon
Product manager
oDesk
My Account tab
We have brought all admin information under a new tab, called “My Account”. It includes User Information, as well as Company and Billing information for Buyers. It will also be where we add our new billing & payment features.
Here is what it looks for buyers:
And for providers:
Work Activity Tab
We are pleased to offer the first step in increasing your visibility into your oDesk spending and earnings. The Work Activity tab shows your weekly Work Activity Statement, with each hourly and fixed price invoice, bonus, refund, and account adjustment. This serves as a complete record for your oDesk work activity for the week.
Two notable things about this new features: (1) You can now view historical timelogs, not limited to four weeks in the past; (2) Freelance providers and Affiliate Managers now see financial information in their timelogs, not just hours. Buyers, please note that in the past, adjustments were not included in the timelogs (they were included on a separate invoice), so timelog/invoice totals may vary slightly.
Note: the Work Activity tab replaces the Accounting pane in the lower left corner of the screen.
While we know that only a small percentage of buyers and providers utilize the integrated Bugzilla tools, we’ve invested in the upgrade of our Bugzilla version from 2.16 to 2.20. All information was fully preserved and migrated to the new version. If you login to your oDesk Bugzilla account you will see some new features and enhancements in the 2.20 version, including:
- User-interface: A little cleaner, a little prettier, a little easier to understand.
- High-level categorization: If you’ve made use of the product – component structure of 2.16, you now can create a higher level categorization of bugs under “classifications”
- User drop down menus: It’s now easier to select assignees and email addresses
- User and Email preferences: You now have enhanced control over your preferences
For a complete description of the new features in 2.20, please check out bugzilla.org.
We’ve always believed that oDesk should offer value-added services and tools that will help our users be successful in any projects that are performed through the our system. Internally, we have made full use of Bugzilla to track all of our tasks and bugs. For us, we’ve found that 100% adoption of the tools and process has greatly helped improve our overall efficiency. Whether you decide to use oDesk’s version of Bugzilla or your own tools, we hope you find best practices that work for you and your team.
We are excited to announce the new candidate list. Now, it is easier than ever to evaluate and manage your candidates. Take a look at some of the new improvements:
We hope the new candidate list helps make your hiring experience a great one.
If you have any thoughts or feedback on the new candidate list, please let us know here.
Dear oDesk Providers,
We are pleased to announce a new way to get paid on oDesk. The oDesk Debit MasterCard, powered by Payoneer, is now available for pre-order.
The oDesk Debit MasterCard is a full-featured prepaid debit MasterCard that can be used to withdraw cash at any MasterCard ATM worldwide as well as make purchases anywhere MasterCard is accepted, in stores or online. With low fees and great exchange rates, we believe it will be the best way to receive funds for most non-US providers. Learn more about the oDesk Debit MasterCard, powered by Payoneer.
For more information on the oDesk Debit MasterCard, visit the oDesk Guide to Payoneer, or discuss the new card here. Note: the oDesk Debit MasterCard will replace iKobo, so if you currently use iKobo please click here to learn about the transition to Payoneer.