Hacker News Reader

Comment by k-mcgrady | Hacker News Reader

I wish they'd focus on improving the market by weeding out poor contractors and employers. The rating system doesn't work. If you're an employer you post a job and have to wade through dozens of messages from outsourcing companies who usually do a poor job. And if you're a contractor trying to get seen through that pile is a nightmare - the only way to succeed to is to watch for new job posts and immediately bid. If there are already a few bids you don't have a chance.

View on HN

There are definite ways to succeed as a contractor without being the first to bid. A while back (when Elance was just Elance) I decided to do some digging to see how the buyer side looked and ended up with some key learnings that landed me most jobs I went for. Nothing too fancy or "hacky", but the majority of bidders - at the time, at least - were lazy and had messaging very similar to everyone else.

I wrote about it here: https://medium.com/@disruptivedave/how-im-gaming-elance-guru...

the only way to succeed to is to watch for new job posts and immediately bid. If there are already a few bids you don't have a chance.

Speaking as someone who occasionally hires people off of odesk, I've learnt to basically ignore any bids that come in the first few hours and give it at least 3-4 days before starting even to seriously evaluate candidates. I don't see how being the first bid vs the seventh bid should affect your chances of getting the job.

Interesting. I find that a lot of employers look through bids and stop as soon as they think they've found something good. In my experience if you are higher than 5th you won't ever get a message regardless of the quality of those who bid before you.

I've spent a bit of money (over $10k) on oDesk for my mobile app. I used a lot of translators and some artists (Illustrator), and did the programming myself.

Everyone wants you to review them with 5 stars because anything less is bad for business. The quality does greatly vary and so does the pricing. You can get good deals and you can get burned. I once had someone using a keep-active program so they could log more hours. Thankfully I looked close enough at the screenshots to notice.

If anyone can recommend a great mobile designer on oDesk, I'd like to redesign my iOS app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4-spanish-lite/id388918463?...

My account on oDesk is h4labs, not sure how to link to it.

Hey melling -- if you post your job on upwork and send me the job post, we can try to source some good designers for you. you can email me at mbueno at elance-odesk.com

You can invite me to the design project https://www.upwork.com/o/profiles/users/_~015159f894bb70a226...

I've noticed the same thing as a contractor. I only seem to get hired if I am one of the first few bidders. Otherwise there is a slim chance I will get noticed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com