Simple way to weed out idiot freelancers with a BANANA

bizousoft

bizousoft

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Mar 5, 2010
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I put this almost closer to the end project's description:

"Please write the word BANANA when submitting the bid, this way I'll know you've actually read the project description"
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Eliminates so many morons that submit bids that begin with:

"Dear sir, we have 10 thousand years experience in everything"

If anyone has any other tricks like that please do share, so far this has done wonders for the quality of outsourcers...
 
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bizousoft said:
Eliminates so many morons that submit bids that begin with:

"Dear sir, we have 10 thousand years experience in everything"
Click to expand...
Not bad, not bad...

Much more practical than the way I've been going about it.

I usually have them hold up a sign of my choosing like my last coder here:

borstal_boy.jpg
 
I just ask them what the color of the boathouse is at Hereford.. the bad ones just get all nervous and get fucking discovered.

smart method though, out of all things you went with banana.. good choice.
 
(btw bizousoft not personal just poking some fun a la wickedfire) all shit aside, its a solid way around bot replys but its been around for a while though, just sayin
 
I have one too, don't use Freelancer.com.

and only stick with vworker.

Make sure they put down the 10% Expert Guarantee before accepting big projects.
 
If they're going to be writing content, posting links which require good written skills and analysis of the situation, etc. I'd make a typo that's hard to spot and ask them to point it out in their reply. This way you know you won't have to be correcting their shit all the time and won't be caught for spam.

If they're going to be doing programming, ask for them to do a test and have them submit to you a youtube video of them writing the problem and include a running timestamp on the screen while they're writing it along with periodically saying funny, predefined words so you know they aren't cheating.
 
I include something similar in all my job postings. I usually say something along the lines of "No proposals will be accepted if you do not . . . " I try to keep the request relevant to the job being bid out but yeah, it does narrow down the list of candidates. :-)
 
A few weeks ago I outsourced some php coding and one of the questions I asked potential freelancers was "will the php code leave the hymen structure intact?", you'd be surprised how many of them said yes.
 
MadMaxNine said:
I just ask them what the color of the boathouse is at Hereford.. the bad ones just get all nervous and get fucking discovered.

smart method though, out of all things you went with banana.. good choice.
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funny you mention it, it's one of my favorite movies.

I just got fed up with going through 20 generic messages searching for the word and broadcasted this message to all bidders on vworker

Broadcast message sent to all bidders:

for future reference I invite you all to actually read the description which was submitted, so far it looks like only 1 coder has done so... After over a 100 project on RAC, I'm still amazed at how you can submit bids without reading the description fully....... /rant
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in response I got this

Dear Rant,

We have read you requirement and then placed our bid in this project.

Thanks,
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ET7Awl.jpg
 
If i'm hiring a serious programmer, I just ignore all of the applications out of india, bangladesh, and pakistan.
 
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