Not a good freelance business - Recensione dipendente - Freelancer presso Enago

I have had a positive experience with Enago so far. The instructions provided have been kind and informative, making it easy to understand the tasks and expectations. The interview process was smooth and well-organized, which left a good impression on me from the start. Enago also has good incentive mechanisms in place, which is motivating. Overall, I am satisfied with my experience at Enago and would recommend it to others.

Although the SME assignment system has not been fully functional yet, the team has promised to resolve this issue and provide more opportunities related to my expertise in the near future. I appreciate their commitment to improving and look forward to seeing these enhancements.

This company pays PhD and MD with high statuses well but pays only $5 per 1,000 words for proofreaders to provide the same level of extensive editing, which they then falsely rate as poor quality so they can deny all payment while obtaining your revisions of their experts' inadequate revisions to offset the complaints made of someone else's previous poor work.

I did not present my other distinctions for other companies, working as a reviewer for a prestigious journal and earning $62/1,000 words and was shocked that I was offered a $5/1,000 rate when I know that I am one of the top-performing editors in my field. So I experimented with communicating that this was an unfair rate and attempted to see if there was any mistake on their part in failing to assess my actual skill level. I found it pretty amusing to learn that this company cannot adequately appraise editors. I also was disheartened by another unethical practice of requiring new hires to submit a positive review before they could receive their first assignment, so the positive reviews for this company were made before many of the reviewers had a chance to decide for themselves how this company treats them. I suspect they pay some editors well but when their main editing pool is full, they recruit additional "third eye" checks that they expect to do an excellent job for a very low rate to catch the errors made by the PhD and MD level editors. This was an unfortunate waste of my time, other than to learn that this is one of the least accurate and least ethical editing companies I attempted to work for. I prefer to be paid in the range of $42 to $62 for the extent of editing and rate of accuracy Enago requires. For the proofreading rate, I would not accept that rate and take the job seriously. It's exploiting labor and I am sad to learn that there must be some desperate editors in this competitive field who work for almost nothing. What I can say is that the work is legitimate scientific research, so it's a pretty good job for gaining some experience and training in editing. I know this is the Cons section, but for a true balance, I do not believe in separating these sections for a cohesive overview. There's no separation of the experience into "pros" and "cons." It is a company that does not have the ability to accurately assess editor skill level and which hires not only a core team of editors who are paid well but also some additional editors to serve as proofreaders. They are paid very poorly but expected to maintain excellent editing standards--to catch all the errors that the core team (who is paid more) could not themselves catch. And so the only advice I can give to editors being exploited is to consider it an unpaid internship where you will receive good training and exposure to research documents. The quality assurance assessments are very inaccurate regarding the editor's skill level--these are geared toward justifying cutting costs in the event a client complains. Clients sometimes have valid complaints and other times do not recognize that their expectations do not align with what the service actually provides. The reality is that most journals reject submissions upon first submission and require revisions. Editors often do not know what the target journal is so cannot advise on how to meet those standards. Enago's quality assurance rating is based on their own metrics--not what each individual client demands nor what each target journal demands. I scored high on quality assurance but was still not offered a fair rate, so I eventually prioritized my work for companies that paid fairly--not just fairly but every well, reflective of my more than 10 years of experience as medical field. What they are doing may fool entry level proofreaders with zero industry experience, but I am warning these are exploitive tactics to optimize their revenue and are deeply disrespectful of the talent pool. I will revisit the fact that there is considerable value to be gained for entry level editors who need rigorous training. The training documentation has some inconsistencies but overall gives an adequate training on good editing practices. The articles worked on are legitimate research papers to hone your skills as an editor, and the content can be very interesting to read. So, if you can value these aspects as the reward while understanding you are not being paid a fair rate for your time, then you might attempt to satisfy doing the minimum work load (so as not to waste too much of your time on work that is not compensated well) and acquire the ability to list the job experience on your resume. Attempt to satisfy the unfair QA completed by QA reviewers who are not producing high-quality work in their own QA assessments (ironic, isn't it?) to hang on to the job for whatever experience helps to boost your resume and gain a comprehensive training on editing. Then, when you can secure a job that offers fair compensation, reduce your editing load to almost zero for Enago while doing enough to maintain your status as a Freelancer. That way, you can list a long-term freelance experience on your resume and acquire positive references. Unfortunately, this company never paid me fairly while I was being paid 10x more per 1,000 words by a more reputable editing company. Thus, I analyzed the company out of curiosity, wondering why they were offering a low rate, and discovered these issues and motivations for hiring this subset of workers who are mistreated and exploited by this company. They use them to polish up the sloppy work of higher paid editors who write glowing reviews, so the company can then appear to be an excellent employer. It is not--it uses unfair employment practices that I feel are concerningly exploitive and abusive of editors who deserve fair compensation. All people deserve fair compensation for their time. I would never give my best quality work to a company that is not paying me appropriately--you get what you pay for.