Thursday, August 22, 2013

How to be a successful Leapforce Agent



That’s great, you’ve been given a 6 month contract to begin working as a Leapforce Agent, now what happens?   After all your online “paperwork” is completed you can start working and earning money.

Much of the work you will do will be just like the applied part of the qualification exam.  Occasionally when there isn’t much work available, you will see some odd tasks in your Evaluation platform.  These tasks will have their own instructions to follow.  If the task is not very complicated the instructions will appear above the task itself.  If it is a complex task there will be a link to a pdf document that you can read to learn how to complete the task.  I recommend leaving the pdf open on your computer while you do the task, that way you can quickly refer to it when needed.

How to get good review scores

Leapforce reviews its agents’ performance monthly.  Most novice agents worry about getting good reviews.  There is a good chance that your first reviews won’t be very good.  Leapforce is aware of this and they will give you time to improve, but they do expect to see improvement in the first few months.  Leapforce will provide detailed explanations of their reviews of your evaluations.  When you get your review read the explanations carefully and learn from them.  There are also simulations on your rater home page that you can do to improve your skills.

You may occasionally disagree with the reviewer on how they interpreted the intent of the query, but you can’t argue about it so just learn from it and move on.  To be successful you have to learn how to think the way Leapforce thinks.  In order to get consistent ratings from all their workers they need us to all be thinking the same way, they aren’t looking for individuality.

How to monitor your speed

Another issue of concern to new workers is how to be sure that you are working fast enough.  Leapforce will have you change the time on your invoice if you work slower than their average time estimate.  But they don’t measure the time spent on each task individually, rather it is an average of all the tasks you’ve done in a month divided by the estimated time that should have been spent on all of those tasks.  So if you go too slow on some tasks it will even out as long as you work fast on others. 

It is difficult to keep track of your time while also trying to research and rate the webpages in your task. So it is best to not try to keep track of your time, but just be sure you are working efficiently. 

Some tips for working efficiently


  •   Have everything you need nearby before you login to start work
  •  Minimize distractions, turn off the phone, make sure everyone else in the house knows you are not to be disturbed when you are working
  • If you find a fascinating website or video that you must spend more time on – bookmark it and come back later when you are not working
  •  If something happens and you have to stop working for more than a few minutes, log out and log back in later
  • If a particular type of task takes you consistently longer to do than their estimate, don’t do that type of task unless there is no other choice, or at least don’t do those very often

What to do if there isn’t enough work for you on Leapforce

Leapforce does have slow periods when there isn’t much work available.  We agents have no control over that, but there are things you can do to maximize the amount of work you are offered.

  • Keep your review scores above average
  •  Always try to qualify for any new project they announce.  Leapforce will often give agents the opportunity to qualify for new projects.  Qualifying means learning new instructions and guidelines and doing some tasks that are evaluated to see if you can follow the guidelines.  Although this can result in time spent reading the guidelines without pay, if you qualify you will have more work available to you than if you didn’t try to qualify.  The more tasks you are qualified to do, the more work will be offered to you.
  •  Have a back-up plan like Mechanical Turk, Clickworker or freelancing to supplement your income when Leapforce work is not available.

Keeping in mind that I can’t discuss the specifics of how to complete particular tasks, is there anything that you would like me to discuss on the blog?

Thanks for reading Leaving Low Wages!