New system aimed primarily at matching newer sellers with buyers
So now it seems I have to wait two hours before I can bid for a job. This is extremely unfair. Not only do experienced creatives/designers have to compete with an unfair playing field, ie people offered to do a job for £10 when it is clearly worth £100, we are now not allowed to bid for jobs as soon as they appear on PPH. What kind of system is this?!
Awful. Unfair. Unprofessional. Discriminatory.
Regards
C. Howe
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I've just been approved as a seller and am getting "You can't send a Proposal to a job that's not relevant to your primary skills. Browse other jobs" for jobs that are ideal for my skillset. I have no idea what I have to do to fix this issue. The irony is that when approved PPH says "w*e expect new Freelancers to complete two separate projects* and receive a 4+ rating from Buyers within the first three months of joining"
A chance would be a fine thing indeed! Not impressed at all, maybe time to give up and move on.
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On June 27th Michael (PPH Customer Support Manager) wrote:
“As such, our development and product teams have deemed it necessary to re evaluate the way the feature works and we will be implementing changes towards the middle of next week.”
I decided to discontinue my ranting because of this input, and so I struggled through finding appropriate jobs, as many others have done. This period has come and gone (I believe that Thursday is after the middle of the week) but I have yet to see real changes. Yes, I have received fewer non-skill invites, but I assumed that this was due to my pressing the ‘doesn’t match’ button. I have basically received fewer invites, period. Nothing really noticeable there, no real change, just a nagging feeling that the ‘algorithm’ is here to stay.
PPH, you have promised deadlines, you have promised more communication. Live up to them – I have to! Everything (and more) has been said by the participants in this thread.
It is your turn PPH!
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I haven't seen a single invite since wednesday morning at 05:43. I've got to say that any company that shifts it's goal from quality to quantity is quite worrying.
- Fantastic point.
"1- according to PPH, this system was "designed" to give more chance to the developers who can't get jobs due to lack of rating etc..
My Answer: First of all, we (developers with rating) also started from there. we didn't have any ratings. did we? But we built our rating up by providing a good service and having enough skills to build our rating."
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I think we're in the realms of politics now. Even if you made this system and no longer believed in it, it's hard to turn to your boss and the investors and say "We made this feature and spent £50,000 (or whatever) but it doesn't work".
I think we're in the realms of PPH thinking "We're in deep and must give this a chance". Remember we are dealing with a company that thought this was a great idea, developed it and hardly tested it as far as we can see. It's hard to believe anyone did any analytical research before the project went ahead.
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Somewhat belatedly I have had a more in depth look at the notifications that I am permitted to bid on. Previously I have just glanced at them and as any I could do were for pennies I just ignored them.
I am now only getting jobs for "web development". I am a writer. My profile soley lists writing skills with 7 out of 10 using the word writing in the tag. It's so senseless. I haven't had even a crap invitation with "writing" involved this week. It is quite beyond me how someone could design something so useless.....
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I'm finding this whole new system is unfair, goes against PPH's own terms of service (as its now selecting who can make first bids which we all know is very important), and it doesn't work - it doesn't give me access to bid on the jobs I'm most suited for, whilst offering up jobs totally irrelevant despite having accurate skills listed for the right jobs!
PPH needs to scrap this system, its difficult enough bidding and getting jobs on here when there is much competition (which is fine), but adding this seemingly random dimension as to whether you can put an early bid in or not is ridiculous. There are now many jobs where I've had to wait to bid, and in the end just not bothered to bid as there has been so many bids anyway, mine won't get a look in. If this goes on, I'l stick to other freelancer sites as none other do this.
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I made it to CERT 4 last month and now am being shut out of jobs I am qualified to work on to CERT 2 people. And the jobs I get invited to I am not qualified for.
I was getting 85 free bids per month for a few months. That gave me 100 total bids total. So I made it a goal to use them all each month. I did and learned a lot about how to win bids. While PPH said it was because I'm so special, I am sure it was some kind of test. Maybe to see if higher CERT levels would help close more sales. That is, maybe PPH wanted to see if getting more freelancers to a higher CERT level would cause more clients to accept a freelancer. Thus closing more jobs.
PPH has competitors and maybe they wanted to see if the abandonment rate (jobs the never close) would go down with higher level freelancers.
I suspect this new "Private" and "Invite" system is a way to pre-screen freelancers and close more sales by giving the client better or more qualified freelancers. And by better, that could mean cheaper.
In any event, I think that PPH is motivated to do this based on a theory of sales. I don't think this has anything to do with "3000 users who requested this." What nut would request this private bidding system.
That said, it does not appear to have anything to do with the skills a person has. I was just invited to a "SEO Optimization" job. I don't list that as a skill. Nor have I won any jobs in the area.
Looking at the people who can bid on these closed jobs, it may be a keyword density thing based on the freelancers description. Or a keyword match based on past jobs won. I can't seem to see how the algorithm works.
Tomorrow I am going to try a new strategy:1) Bid on other sites first (PPH last).
2) Ignore any "Invited" or "Private" jobs. As crazy as that sounds, if we all ignore these invites, I think it will starve PPH of some data and they may drop the whole thing.
3) Only look at jobs older than 2 hours.It may come to pass that if a lot of people are frustrated, the number of freelancers may decline on the site. And that may be a good thing.
4) I rarely see many job close within 2 hours of posting. Maybe PPH knows something that I do not. So ... if I but a featured bid credit, will it put me on top over the invited? Let's assume that people wait a day before they look at the responses to their job. If I buy a featured bid credit, will I appear above the people who got in under the two hour restriction. As long as most buyers look at the proposals AFTER the two hour limit. A "featured" bid may be the first one looked at.
This, of course, increases the cost to get work via PPH. I already have a paid membership on two other bid sites, and the works well for me. Maybe I need to do the same. And that MAY be the real reason PPH is doing this. It may be the only way to extract more money from freelancers.
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Well for whatever it's worth, I am new to this site, and only have a Cert1 level. So I keep getting the invitations to "apply for this job, it's a good match for your skills!" And some of them are a great match, but when I follow the link it will not allow me to make a proposal!! Now that's frustrating! I am already established on other sites, heard about how great this one was, and now I'm getting screwed!
Just thought I would add to the other side of this rant.
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OMG - PPH has excelled themselves! Instead of sorting out this problem, now we are being asked to submit videos when bidding for a job - REALLY!!!??? The client is offering £9 for the design of a flyer AND WANTS TO SEE A PERSONALISED VIDEO, when will they introduce the 'jumping through flaming hoops whilst singing the Hallelujah Chorus' requirement before you can bid for a job paying some paltry amount.
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@Beverly, I am pretty sure that it is an option and its the client;s fault for using it when it is clearly not appropriate. Its a good sign that it is a client you do not want!
I am concerned that the pressure to provide videos and photos may lead to discrimination (which is why most employers no longer ask for photos on job applications - it is considered bad practice for that reason).
I think the problem here is that PPH developed the technology for DeskDonkie, and probably tested it for that purpose, and then repurposed it for PPH. The problem is that DeskDonkie is intended for small, easy to specify jobs - like PPH hourlies.
They are obviously trying to solve the problems of spam proposals (i.e. from people who should know they do not have the right skills) and low quality sellers. UNfortunately it is not a problem that lends itself to an automated solution given the range of work on PPH.
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I'm new, just got my Cert1 but can't propose on a job that matches my skills. There is one proposal already made for the job, so I exactly matched their skill list. Logged out and in again just in case. I still can't propose as my skills are still not relevant apparently. I begin to think its not worth bothering with an irrational site where they cannot even respond to such a major issue. Maybe I'll check if its still in business and they have fixed this in 6 months time.
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I've just signed up, and recieved a message to send a proposal to the seller, it's a perfect illustrative brief but I can't apply to it because I don't have the right skills... skills being 'design' when making my profile there weren't as many option in primary skills, i.e. illustrator would've been a nice option, and hadn't even crossed my mind to put design. Additional skills I've put all the design elements I can, but some wording is limited.
Either way I WANT to apply to this job it really fits with my style but I can't and it's quite annoying is my first experience on here isn't great so far. I want to give it on opportunity but I want be able to make the quota of jobs to do within 3months if I want to stay on here if most jobs I can't apply to anyway.
Please is there an email or number to contact you guys directly to help me resolve this.
I can't even change my primary skills now
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@Graeme - The video thing Beverly has mentioned seems to be appearing on ALL jobs now that fall outside of the 2 hour, selected-sellers-only nonsense. So no matter how low the budget you have the option of adding a personalised video to help you stand out. Whoopee - thrilled NOT!
I have extreme camera phobia so there's no way I want to be filming videos of me talking about my work. What I look and sound like is of NO relevance to my work. As a graphic designer/illustrator what my work looks like is what is important and I already send examples of that with every proposal.
Do the buyers really want to spend extra time watching poorly lit, fuzzy videos of freelancers talking about themselves? Unless how you look and sound is important to the job (e.g. voiceover, face to face promotion, acting, etc), I doubt it.
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I have just checked the requirements for this new video option and you have to record it from either your webcam or phone. So that means the videos are likely to be poor quality, as there seems to be no option to provide a more professionally produced video (i.e. which has had some post-production done on it), or one that just features my work rather than my face (which, as I said above, is irrelevant to the quality of my work).
Another pointless, flaming hoop to jump through!
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Insane. So they managed to spend development time on this video update, but can't be bothered to remove the useless 2 hour time constraint.
Funnily enough, one of the other sites I am web editor for, has a similar facility. The developer added it in one day 'cos he thought it was a cool idea. In 3 years nobody has ever used it.
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What I look and sound like is of NO relevance to my work.
Absolutely.
This could really backfire on PPH. If the people who struggle to string a coherent English sentence together on the clarification boards are now going to make videos too, it's really going to help the professional image of PPH.
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Job matching is not friendlier. The skills you can list are limited and most do not clearly fit within what the client wants. If you do not match the language exactly you get a message that says you are not qualified to bid on a job. This eliminates the jobs to keywords which the client never uses when they post. The result will be loss of clients for PPH because the most qualified applicants never get a chance to bid on the job. Also, your more qualified and skilled workers will leave and go elsewhere where they can bid on jobs instead of being constantly told NO. I have yet to bid on a job since this new so called matching process has changed. It appears I am not qualified although I have over 25 years experience in legal, I am not qualified to type a pleading. Although I also have 25 years experience in bookkeeping, I am not qualified to enter receipts onto an Excel sheet--the Excel program I have used since its invention. There is NO job matching process going on here!
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I agree: on the jobs I've looked at, it is marked as optional. Doesn't mean I've tried to send a proposal without the video. Strangely, PPH already knows that you have a 3x higher chance of being accepted for a bid with a video - wonder where that came from?
Making a Video-Bid on most proposals, seems irrational. For some genres it might be of value (as previously mentioned), but for those the placement (in the individual bid) seems whacky.
If it does become mandatory for every proposal...
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sadly _ the other thing i'm beginning to suspect of pph
some of their statistical claims are unfounded _
i would need to see clear evidence of 3000 freelancers asking for these restrictions before i believe that
and pph claims about technology and 'extras' enhancing freelancer chances are obviously self-serving _
pph would not_ by any means_ be the only online marketing company guilty of such practices
but restrictions on this forum prevent me from naming examples -
This does system does not work ..... is it legal!!!! Was working fine before!!!
It is illegal to expect someone to work below the minimum wage - so why do you continue to send me these type of jobs and block me from the jobs that are within in my skill set....
What is the sense of sending me a job at 3am that I have 2 hours to respond to!!!
if you continue with this ridiculous feature and don't ditch it - I shall vote with my feet and move my work to one of your competitor sites who are much more straight forward.....
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