An interesting Proz.com job bidding experience Persoa que publicou o fío: Todd Field
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Todd Field 
United States
Local time: 20:32
Membro
Portuguese to English
Dear colleagues,
We had an interesting experience we want to share with regard to job bidding here at Proz.com.
Monica and I are Portuguese/Spanish > English freelancers. Recently we decided to switch roles and post a job for the translation of our new web site into Portuguese. We could have done it ourselves, but being perfectionists, wanted to enlist the help of a native speaker.
Before closing the job 24 hours after posting it... See more Dear colleagues,
We had an interesting experience we want to share with regard to job bidding here at Proz.com.
Monica and I are Portuguese/Spanish > English freelancers. Recently we decided to switch roles and post a job for the translation of our new web site into Portuguese. We could have done it ourselves, but being perfectionists, wanted to enlist the help of a native speaker.
Before closing the job 24 hours after posting it, we had accumulated 52 emails. The results were pretty interesting. Here is what we got:
- 15 of the bids were from competent, legitimate freelancers who fit the criteria of the posting and did an adequate to outstanding job of translating the sample text
- 19 bids came from freelancers who bid without consideration of the criteria in our posting (as an example, we specifically asked for a native speaker of European Portuguese, but got bids from non-native translators of Brazilian Portuguese... or, sort of Brazilian Portuguese!)
- 9 form-letter style messages arrived from translation agencies wanting to introduce themselves to us... these folks did not even realize that they were promoting their services to a pair of freelancers!
- 8 freelance translators did not bid on the job at all, but sent us their CV\'s and asked if we had any work for them
- 1 translation agency offered their assistance using their \"vast team of freelancers\" that could do our project at $0.01/source word, complete with a machine translated sample text!!! (oh, the shame...)
Out of the chaos we were able to find someone to help us, but golly do I feel sorry for folks posting a job here at ProZ.com. You have to have the skills of a detective, it seems, to find your way to the legitimate bids, in this case only about one third of the replies.
This was a bit of an eye-opener for us, so we thought we would share it with the ProZ.com community.
Good luck to all of you in your freelancing this year.
Todd and Monica
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| | | | | Thanks for posting this | May 16, 2003 |
This is a great glimpse from someone who has \"crossed over\" to the outsourcer side.
Most outsourcers (here or anywhere) know that while offers to provide services abound, well-prepared quotes are always in the minority.
The moral of the story is: read job postings carefully, and quote only on the jobs that you could do best. Quote less frequently, but with care and consideration and you will get the best results.
| | | | | Thanks for this encouraging statistics! | May 17, 2003 |
It indicates that the chances for successful bidding are more than 2 times better than they look by the visible bid count, at least for adequate to outstanding bidders for this language direction. 
[ This Message was edited by: Harry_B on 2003-05-17 11:37]
| | | | | Two ways of looking at it | May 17, 2003 |
Harry_B wrote:
It indicates that the chances for successful bidding are 3.5 times better than they look by the bid count, at least for this language direction. 
That is true for all language directions, I would say, and in fact all jobs here or elsewhere in any industry!
On the other hand, if you are one of the ones blindly spamming job posters with form letters, the odds are much *worse* than the statistics suggest...you'll probably never get a job, at least not from a desirable client...
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| More information would help | May 17, 2003 |
\"15 Seconds Customer Satisfaction Survey\"
Wouldn\'t it be a good idea to ask job posters generally about number and percentage of the received bids that have been in the range of adequate to outstanding?
This kind of voluntary feedback could tell a lot about bidders (and posters).
[ This Message was edited by: Harry_B on 2003-05-17 14:49]
| | | | Anne Lee
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:32
Membro (2003)
Dutch to English
+ ...
| Similar experience | May 17, 2003 |
Yes, that experience sounds familiar to me. I once posted a job here (English-German), which resulted in an overwhelming quantitative response. Many of the 300+ applicants sent me excellent emails. Others gave a short résumé but would not give their rates, saying I had to contact them \'if I was interested\', which I unfortunately had no time for. I was not after the lowest quote, but it made the process needlessly complicated. Others replied long after the deadline had passed. It was impossi... See more Yes, that experience sounds familiar to me. I once posted a job here (English-German), which resulted in an overwhelming quantitative response. Many of the 300+ applicants sent me excellent emails. Others gave a short résumé but would not give their rates, saying I had to contact them \'if I was interested\', which I unfortunately had no time for. I was not after the lowest quote, but it made the process needlessly complicated. Others replied long after the deadline had passed. It was impossible for me to reply to everyone but the first few, so that taught me not to expect a reply myself in future.
I must say I was delighted with the translator I found, so the system definitely works! ▲ Collapse
| | | | sylvie malich (X)
Germany
Local time: 04:32
German to English
| I agree with Harry_B | May 17, 2003 |
Quote:
On 2003-05-17 12:08, Harry_B wrote:
Wouldn\'t it be a good idea to ask job posters generally about number and percentage of the received bids that have been in the range of adequate to outstanding?
This kind of voluntary feedback could tell a lot about bidders (and posters).
I\'m actually surprised that this sort of feedback survey hasn\'t already been do... See more Quote:
On 2003-05-17 12:08, Harry_B wrote:
Wouldn\'t it be a good idea to ask job posters generally about number and percentage of the received bids that have been in the range of adequate to outstanding?
This kind of voluntary feedback could tell a lot about bidders (and posters).
I\'m actually surprised that this sort of feedback survey hasn\'t already been done before, or if it has, the results should be made public without naming names.
-sylvie
[ This Message was edited by: smalich on 2003-05-17 15:43] ▲ Collapse
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