I received the following email in my inbox yesterday evening from FlexJobs. If you missed it, you can see my original FlexJobs review. If you signed up for an account, you’ve already received the same notice…
The email I received touted that Change is good (which is true in some cases but not so true in other cases). The email also featured the catchy logo I still like (wonder who designed that?) and the pair of “Flexible” workers over there on the right that I find so darn amusing I decided to share them here. Seeing them puts me in a slap-silly good mood regardless of how my day’s going.
I’ll let you read the announcement I received for yourself for now and include a new review of FlexJobs just as soon as I can squeeze in ample time for that. So, without further ado, here’s the change they’re announcing:
Dear Lisa,
Thank you so much for being a member of FlexJobs! It’s been a year since we launched our beta site, and since then we have grown to almost 25,000 users and sent more than 200,000 job emails connecting job-seekers with opportunities.
It’s been amazing, and we plan for this next year to be even better. However, we have realized to provide the kind of top-quality, high-level of service that we aim to, we need to make another change…
The Free Days are Numbered (29, to be exact)Moving forward, FlexJobs will be charging $14.95 per month for our service. This is already the case for new users of the site. But for you, our current users, we want to extend the following special offers:
o Your current account will stay free through the month of July.
o Subscribe to FlexJobs for August, and automatically get September for free!We really hope you give it a try! A few important notes:
1. This special “Buy One Get One Free” offer is only valid for current FlexJobs users, such as yourself!
2. To take advantage of it you must subscribe during the month of July.
3. You’ll need to use this special subscription page to login and activate this offer: https://www.flexjobs.com/Login.aspx?returnurl=/members/flexers/billing.aspx
4. Also, we’ll refund you if you are not completely satisfied!More Jobs, Better Service
Hopefully you’ve noticed that we’ve recently added more jobs… lots more jobs! We now include links to “the best of the best” job postings from across the web, therefore bringing you a wider variety and more overall jobs. More of the highlights of changes over the past year:
* Over 100 new telecommuting jobs are posted every week!
* All jobs are now hand-screened by our trained staff.
* A “New Jobs For You” section on your MyFlexJobs page with the most current matching jobs.
* Email alerts are also sent out to let you know about new jobs!
* The option to upload resumes, work samples, and more to supplement your profile.
* Great related news pieces and articles are available to you.Thank You!
We have really enjoyed serving you over this past year, and hope you give us the chance to continue. If you have any thoughts, questions, or feedback for us, please feel free to contact us.
Have a great day!
The FlexJobs Team
www.flexjobs.com
This sucks! I stopped using FlexJobs ever since. Half the jobs require an insane level of experience, another quarter of them require residency in a specific geographical area, and the remaining jobs pay lousy. It would be nice to be able to at least view, say, 1 free job listing per week. I never once found a decent job on FlexJobs, though enjoyed looking. Why would I want to pay $15 a month while I’m job hunting?
Paying to job hunt is nothing new – and I hated to see FlexJobs move to a subscription based model as well, but I totally understand the move from their point of view. It takes incredible time and effort I’m sure to weed through job posting submissions and maintain the site (and they certainly can’t do that without some sort of compensation from somewhere).
Getting a subscription fee from folks who do find it helpful is one way of supporting the site and keep it up and running. It likely boiled down to either that or accepting some forms of advertising to pay the bills. But who would be willing to advertise to an audience looking for legitimate work at home opportunities? Scammers, that’s who.
Well I’m not certain it’s not a scam. I just signed up and voila, their web site has been down not only all weekend but Monday and Tuesday now too. There is nothing like the feeling of being fresh meat for someone who advertises being the tip site of its kind.
Carly –
It looks like the site is working today. I have not paid for a subscription (because I’m not currently looking for work) but there seemed to be some good postings there back when I did look around. And I believe Sara Fell is genuinely interested in helping folks find legitimate work at home jobs (though they did have to move to a subscription-based model to pay the bills).
They’ve also got some pretty nice resources there, particularly for subscription holders. I’d take advantage of everything they offer while you are a member, build your profile up nicely and include your resume. It’s definitely not enough to simply pay to view job listings or subscribe to a site and then wait for that perfect job to float in your direction. You’ve gotta sell yourself and your skills to the employers who are also there looking for the perfect telecommuter.
If you’ve had trouble on the site since becoming a member I’d try contacting them here or using whatever contact tools are available inside the members only areas.
Carly,
Personally I want to say that I’m sorry you signed up and then our site was down! Our site was down intermittently over the weekend because we were switching host servers so that our site will be faster and have more room to grow. However, it is all up and running again, and have no plans to switch again soon. 🙂
Also, I’d be happy to offer you another free month on our site for the inconvenience. Please send me an email offline and we’ll get you all set up (sara@flexjobs.com).
We really appreciate your trying FlexJobs, and we absolutely understand your apprehension about scams in the work from home niche. We promise to do everything we can to assure you that are a completely legitimate site, and to help you find a great telecommuting/work at home job!
Thanks also to Lisa and her excellent TelecommutingJournal website 🙂
Best regards,
Sara Fell
co-Founder, CEO FlexJobs
Dear Lisa,
Thanks for this excellent review! It’s been three years since this discussion took place, but it’s still quite valuable to people like me who are new to FlexJobs.
I just found FlexJobs yesterday, and I’m very excited about it! I’ve already found dozens of job listings which interest me very much. I have a PhD in mathematics and am a university professor turned entrepreneur. I also have over ten years of full-time professional experience in the information technology field. I’ve spent thirty years of my life in the world of higher education and have done a considerable amount of technical and scientific writing. I have a broad and varied skill set, and I like the fact that FlexJobs has so much to offer to highly qualified personnel. To me, that’s a huge plus!
My time is valuable, and I don’t want to waste it weeding out jobs listings which are either outright scams or legitimate but exploitative. I’ve been aware of freelance websites for a few years but never pursued it seriously until now. In the past, the general consensus seemed to be that the online freelance world was a buyer’s market, and sellers were not paid anywhere near what their skills are worth. Part of the problem came from competing with highly skilled workers in places like India, where the low cost of living drives wages down in a worldwide market. I view the fact that FlexJobs focuses on American jobs for American workers as a huge plus. It levels the playing field and prevents rampant exploitation of highly skilled personnel.
Concerning the subscription fee, FlexJobs still offers the $14.95/month rate, but they’ve added a $49.95/year rate. If you pay a year at a time, it costs less than $4.17/month! Considering all FlexJobs has to offer, I’d say that’s a real bargain.
Flexible work is extremely important to me. I became a freelancer so that I would have complete freedom to set my own career goals and the opportunities I need to achieve them. If I continue to find more good online reviews of FlexJobs, I may well sign up today!
Fred Chapman
Consultant/Scientist
F.W. Chapman Solutions
@F.W. Chapman Solutions: Wow – Thank you so much for the update and your personal skew on the value of FlexJobs, I couldn’t have said it better. And I’m glad to see FlexJobs is offering an annual subscription plan.
Hi Lisa,
Thanks for your reply! After looking at half a dozen reviews, I found the consensus on FlexJobs to be overwhelmingly positive. I just signed up last night!
I have even more good news about FlexJobs. You can use the JOB30 coupon code to get 30% off the subscription fee. I signed up for a whole year of access, and it cost me only $34.95. That’s less than $3/month!
After signing up, I had a pleasant surprise. Your subscription lets you take a wide variety of ExpertRating skill tests as many times as you want at no extra charge! I’ve already taken several tests, and my scores and percentile rankings can now be viewed by prospective employers. You can earn badges of distinction for placing in the top 20% or top 10%, too. If you do badly on a test (scoring under 60%), the results won’t be visible to employers, so there’s no harm in trying.
FlexJobs just keeps getting better and better!
Fred
P.S. You can retake any ExpertRating skill test after waiting a day. FlexJobs posts your best score, so there’s no harm in retaking a test if you think you can do better!
Thank you for your comments on Flex-Jobs, everyone. It appears to be a useful resource for entrepreneurs and freelancers like myself.
I have nearly a decade of experience in the legal industry as a paralegal and legal writer drafting complaint letters and legal briefs on behalf of defrauded investors for stock fraud arbitration claims. For the last few years I have worked as an independent contractor drafting these kinds of documents on behalf of attorneys as a part of my business http://www.legalwritingfinra.com. Recently, however, I want to branch into other areas of writing, and Flex-Jobs appears to be just the site that can help me with this endeavor. From the reviews I’ve read, it sounds like it will be a powerful resource to include in my arsenal of strategies to secure new clients.
See you on the site…
Jeremy
LOL. F.W. Chapman Solutions is OBVIOUSLY Sara Fell from FlexJobs. I think it’s a terrible site with a lot of scammy job postings. The majority of the legitimate jobs on that site require you to work on site half of the time. It’s a waste of time and money to look for a job there.