Work at Home Search Evaluation for iSoftStone (Now Teemwork.ai)

iSoftStone is another company that hires home-based workers for search evaluation (similar to companies like Lionbridge, etc.). They do not always have openings and I cannot confirm they are hiring for it now.

They also occasionally have other types of crowdsourcing work like transcription jobs, but this review is primarily focusing on the search engine evaluation position.

iSoftStone has been recruiting people in the US for their search evaluator positions, so this is not something that's open worldwide.

iSoftStone Online Crowd Worker Review

The company is a major IT services provider based in China, but they do have some offices in the United States as well and their clients are located around the globe. The company was founded in 2001.

About the Work

If you're doing the search evaluation, you're going to be ranking keywords and website queries and determining if the results are relevant — just like you might do with other companies like Lionbridge or Leapforce.

I have a more detailed post on search engine evaluation if you want more info on how that works.

iSoftStone Pay For Search Engine Evaluators

Search evaluators earn $13 hourly. This is paid out via direct deposit once a month.

Employee Status

You work as an independent contractor for the company. This is not an employee position.

Schedule and Hours

This is one of those jobs where you can log in and work whenever you want to work, but they do require at least 10 hours per week. You are limited at 25 hours per week total.

The work is project-based — I read on one forum that the search evaluation work for iSoftStone can last six months with possibilities for extensions.

Requirements

You need to be a US resident who is at least 18 years of age or older. No college degree is required for this one — you can get in and start working provided you are able to get through the training and pass their tests.

As far as tech requirements go, you just need high speed internet and a Windows PC running IE version 9 or higher.

Application Process

After you have sent iSoftStone your resume, you may get an email back from them with some information on the first steps which include signing an NDA (non-disclosure agreement).

Once you've sent that back, you should hear from them again with some testing materials for training. You'll need to study up and then take a test. I've read that the entire training process takes anywhere from 1-3 days once you begin it.

If you pass your final test, you should receive a contract from iSoftStone to start work. Note that training is not paid.

Feedback

When this job first started making the rounds, there were some people who were skeptical of it. But it has proved to be legit and many people have worked for the company and been paid since then.

I did find an iSoftStone Reddit discussion here that you can check out to see what some other workers have experienced.

The main complaint I am seeing with this company is slow response times. Apparently it can take a long time (sometimes weeks) when you try to communicate with them via email.

I also received the following negative feedback from an anonymous reader who emailed me, quoted for you below:

I got hired with a contract of 6 months and they terminated my contract in less than a week.

This company is iSoftStone, and the position was as a “Search Engineer Evaluator”. The company responded to my application after a long time, then they sent me an initial document that I had to sign and it says that, they will contact me again in 10 days. More than 10 days passed by and I had to emailed them again in order to follow up on my application and, in a couple of days after I received an email from the Project Manager with the instructions for the qualification process.

I passed the qualification process and signed the contract on $14/hr. for 6 months. The P.M indicated me that this was a pilot project and I will work two weeks and I will be off two weeks on each month. Was funny that he didn’t mentioned anything on how to settle my payment information so I had to emailed him with that question, so then I got an email with the instruction for it. Kind of odd.

Anyway, I started working… kind of lost at the very beginning but always with the guidance document with me and asking him questions. The communication was lacking, he either answered me back after 2-3 days or I didn’t get any answer to my questions in those couple of days. Also, an evaluator had to maintain a score of quality of 0.30 in that tool. Obviously, at the begging I wasn’t on that, and he told me that my first week will be ended today Tuesday August 14th, so I started working on last Thursday with an approximate score of 0.78, in the next day I got better to 0.62 and then on Saturday night I had it on 0.55. So I felt like, I was getting there by Tuesday (that was my goal!!) BUT, they didn’t have the opportunity to let me finish my first week and terminated my contract on Sunday basing on my bad score and saying that they need excellence since is a pilot project. Never happened this to me before with another remote company. I was like “these people are hiring people every 5 days? And not letting them to finish -at least, their first week?”.

On the other hand, they want that the evaluator get “judged” 45-50 queries per hour, and that’s kind of impossible to achieve because that means the evaluator has to get almost like a query done by minute and you have to understand the intention of the searcher, analyze the two sides in competition with a bunch of searching results and decide which side is better in order to resolve the query – all of that based on the instruction of the guidance; and besides that, you need to make a comment with an explanation of your decision, that comment varies by each query so you need to write it that every time, like is not like you copy and paste. So, in my experience I got all of that kind of well done in about 3:30 min … and, I consider myself a productive worker.

When I was waking up on Sunday to start working I received the email and the news …

How to Apply

You can go here to apply for the crowd worker positions at iSoftStone.

BONUS – Get My Work at Home E-Book Bundle For Just $5 Right Now (8 E-Books Total)

If you are wanting even MORE links to jobs across a ton of categories (virtual assisting, data entry, transcription, and more), you may want to download my work at home e-book bundle.

work at home ebook bundle

It includes the following e-books ($1 each if you buy them individually):

DOWNLOAD IT HERE.

You will get an email with a link to download the PDF files after your purchase.

Thank you!

72 thoughts on “Work at Home Search Evaluation for iSoftStone (Now Teemwork.ai)”

  1. Last week I went to the iSoftstone website and saw 2 jobs advertised that I would be eligible for – Online Rater and Online Crowd Worker. I applied for both. Yesterday I received an email telling me that I passed the first phase of the app and that phase 2 would be a phone call where I would have to answer 3 questions. I got the call 10 mins ago and all it did was verify my name, current address and time zone to “match it to the info on my application”. I was told all the next steps would be included in an email and from this point out, email was the way to contact should I have questions. Where I’m a little wary is that she said PayPal was no longer an option and would direct deposit be acceptable. I said that would be OK. I assume that at some point in the near future I’m going to receive paperwork via email that will require me to give my bank details for the direct deposit – and that has me a little nervous. Can anyone assuage my concern over sharing these details with this company?

    • Did you put your social security number in? I am on the last page with the W-9 form, and just not feeling comfortable doing that yet. I don’t see very many good things about this one. I don’t like to hear that PayPal is no longer an option either. Did they ever get back to you Justine?

      • Have you thought about getting a EIN? When I started to freelance for companies that requested this information, I used that in place of my SSN with no issues. Just do a search for “IRS EIN”. Most freelancers use this method to safe guard their SSN.

  2. Before You Bite This Bait: Can I save someone time and effort that will undoubtedly be stolen or severely undervalued at best by the spoiled robots over at iSoftStone? I may also spare you some potentially dangerous, bogus emails that threw up some red flags for me and initially got me to reveal more information than they needed to know. Yea remind me that it’s my fault. Don’t thank me, just go ahead and apply. Communication ranges from very professional to very odd. Before being invited to waste hours of my life on the crowd source program, (no way to preview before giving away… I’ll earn just over a dollar for todays work on a single task, including the TWENTY SIX pages of instruction that demanded VERY careful reading and re- reviewing. It appears that my careful work will not be approved. (Note that I have experience as an internet research analyst. I live within the very source of our ever widening income gap – the IT world that is destroying quality of life for so many of us and I also live on the internet) FIRST CONTACT: I received an email asking me if I’d like to participate in a local project. (I live not far from their US office)- an odd sort of random activity at a yet undisclosed location. My details were requested- the ones they already have like email, full name but now asking for my phone number. I missed that email but got the one sent a while later with “(correct email)” added to the subject line. The only edit to the original was an extra field added- asking HOW OLD I AM. They asked my age (very bad form from any sort of legitmate company besides a modeling agency perhaps) for a task that amounts to just being somewhere to occupy space (not to look pretty but they don’t know what their missing :). This didn’t sound too bizarre as technology was purportedly involved but it dawned on me later.. No legitimate employer asks your age. They may need to ask about functionality, skills and possibly even health in some cases if relevant to the task / job but not your age. It’s unprofessional and while the email looks legitimate, it smells of scam spam. I’m near mid life btw and you might guess- no further contact from that “recruiter”. That aside, these people jumped on the borderline criminal crowd source bandwagon with intent to milk any worker stupid enough to bite the bait. Damned if I didn’t do it, but I bite back. I’ve done work on Amazon Turk for years and compared to that chump change this was absolutely abusive of my time and effort. Tha’ts four hours of my life – Murdered. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Hope this helps.

  3. Hello I am trying to apply in the sign up at the end it is requiring a @live.com, @hotmail.com, @outlook,com ID / Email address.. I am having a problem with this as my msn.com email are linked to my outlook / live. Also I thought that LIVE and hotmail all merged with outlook did they not? It will not allow my msn email. How do I get around this issue?

  4. I signed and sent back the NDA, it’s been 5 days now and I haven’t heard anything? Is this common? I emailed the original sender of the NDA and got the response that the project manager would contact me, but couldn’t say when or if they would?

  5. They don’t pay hourly and have poor communication it’s like amazon turk where you have “HITS” that are about 15-20 cents. Waste of time.

  6. I’ve worked on my first project as a crowdworker with Isoftstone this january, but I still haven’t been paid. They are no longer answering my emails. My last answer from them was: you will be paid next week. That was three weeks ago. I am starting to consider them as a scam.

  7. I had a disappointing experience with iSoftStone. After seeing the info on this website, I found job postings for online search engine evaluator and online ad evaluator. I applied for both jobs, attaching my resume. That was in January 2016. Five days later they sent me the non-disclosure agreement for the ad evaluator job. They explained that it’s not a contract of employment; after they get the NDA they send you a training and tasks that should take one to three days to complete, and if you do that successfully, you may be hired. I signed the NDA electronically and returned it. A couple of weeks later I got an e-mail from someone named Glory with iSoftStone who said that I hadn’t filled out all the fields in the form. I had been confused because some of the fields looked like they referred only to a corporation or company, and I’m an individual. I realized it’s just worded that way because it’s a standard NDA form. I completed the form that was attached to that e-mail and returned it. A couple of weeks went by and I never heard from them. (They said it would take a week to 10 days to process the NDA). So I e-mailed Glory again to follow up. I got an autoreply saying my e-mail was undeliverable because there’s no such e-mail address. Glory must have left the company. So I found the original e-mail address that I sent my application to, and explained the situation. I NEVER heard from them. I would not recommend anyone wasting their time applying to iSoftStone!

    • Tell me about it !! same with me , i was dealing with Kathy , I actually was hired for a task year ago and completed it and got paid . so they sent me a email before i started with amazon last fall saying would i be interested in doing ad search for them in January . I emailed back saying yes . jan came and nothing .. then i emailed Kathy and never heard anything . these company’s are a joke . even the job i did do i put in like 40 hours and made 90 dollars .

  8. I can’t install the toolbar required for training….keep getting an error message saying file cannot be opened. It’s a zip file, so that’s probably why? I’d love to start training, but I’ve tried everything to get the toolbar installed. Anyone have suggestions?

    • To open zip files most pcs comes with that program needed now a days its called usually winrar cause its a .rar file .if its already factory installed which most are from windows XP and above , just right click on the file thats zipped .when you right click you see all that menu show with options . it should say “unzip or extract this file , just hit that and it will start the unzip of the zipped file , for now unzip location to desktop to find it easy ” extract here ” . what I do is make a new folder on my desktop because some files have a number of files that will come out and clutter the desktop , so this eliminates that and keeps them together . and thats it .

      Now if you don’t have that option when you right click it , then you are missing that program , don’t worry they are free to download , just find a reliable site like Microsoft, and look for winrar or 7-zip programs you only need one . install it , now that option to extract should show now when you right click any zipped file . good luck

      • I’ve downloaded it and supposedly installed it, but the toolbar is not showing up when I open Internet Explorer or Google Chrome. Ugh So frustrating!

        • I am not sure what toolbar , I am not with this project , is it a toolbar for the work with isoftstone ? they did approach me a few months ago to join them for this task , but then they never got back to me . I have done tasks for them before and never used a toolbar , you may have to email them , they don’t respond till next day cause they are in china .

        • Inn y case I have to open the hrs toolbar from the start menu only, then log in from there. By opening it from your start menu it will open your browser automatically. I’m just about to start my first set of test queries, but my computer crashed just as I had dug into the training, I’m hoping this will all be worth it in the end 😉

  9. Hi. I applied recently and I received a confirmation email the same day. A couple of days later, a NDA was sent & then a few days later ( after signing that ) I received a lengthy email with plenty of info from a Project Manager. I was told that I was set up to start testing. I upgraded my IE 7 to IE 11 and I am going to begin studying for the tests tonight. Yay. I hope this works for me.

    • Does anyone have a contact number or email for these guys .I created a account previously but i cannot login and not getting password change email confirmation link either

  10. Ok so I have been invited to take the test quite a few times to qualify for the Search Engine Evaluation position but never hear back after I complete it so has anyone done any crowd sourcing for them. If so how much did you manage to make an hour and was there plenty work?

  11. Seeing the website evaluation didn’t work out for me , and I have done another project for them , they have emailed me a week ago asking me if i would be interested in a new opening for Search Evaluation that starts in few months . I do admire this company for the fact that they still give you chances with other projects even if you did poorly on tests etc from other positions , most jobs don’t do this and let you go.

    Does anyone know If this is easier to obtain and pass compared to the website evaluation ..I realize that’s a iffy question seeing we all take certain tests and projects differently .. what may be hard for me might a breeze for someone else etc ..but its the only lead i have now and just looking for some insight ..

    Thanks
    Ray

  12. I’ve signed my NDA and sent it back but I haven’t heard from them since. There were no further instructions other than to verify that I was able to meet their technical requirements. The only problem is that emailing them doesn’t seem readily available, as there is no direct “contact us” option, just in case I’ve missed a step.

  13. Is anyone currently working with ISoftStone? I just got contracted and want to make sure people are being paid and in a timely manner.

  14. Can anybody explain how is the procedure to withdraw earnings from UHRS website given by isoftstone?

    • I didn’t use the UHRS website to get my earnings , they paid me via PayPal and then i just used my PayPal debit card to make atm actions such as withdrawals.I think it works the same for whatever bank system you use .I realize this post is a few months ago , but hope that shed some light for you ..

  15. could someone that has gone through training for the website evaluation please tell me for Isoftstone , I did end up getting invited to partake in the hiring for this position , but i am rather confused at the actual training steps , I watched the video and read the guidelines , I then went to the portal and when I click on training it comes up dry .the email told me to click ‘start judging ‘ but i am afraid that it is the actual test they go by to hire . I have goggled this and most was saying they were doing training sets ,but i know things change as time goes on to procedure and how things are done .I don’t see anything for training sets or a training simulation .Just the training link that comes up with no results at this time .i emailed them to make sure but i heard they take time getting back , so to break down my question , is the ‘start judging ‘ training modules , or is it the actual test ?

    any feedback would be great thanks

    • they ended up reaching out to me and within 12 hours ..so i did get my answer 🙂 it wasn’t the test just training, I would like to update info for this company for the website evaluation job , but i do not want to break any NDA laws , but i noticed many here mentioned the version of IE that wouldn’t let them continue.. I am using IE 11 and now they accept and actually require version 9 or above .. so sofar i am able to access everything in there portal with IE 11..and no need to downgrade .the pay is increased also then the above original post a year ago , I do not want to quote the pay seeing this project may be different then other projects you may get , it is hourly for this and not cents per tasks for website evaluation .I started training yesterday so i am still learning more about this job myself .the manager was awesome at getting back to me ..hope some of this updated Info helps .

      • Thank you Ray, I just applied and am waiting to hear back. Per hour pay is good news. I’m done with the cents per task stuff.

  16. I did not get accepted to the web search evaluation project , But just today they invited me to a short term project , that pays steady and decent for about 1-2 months , So i will see how that goes 🙂 good luck all.

  17. Does anyone know how long it takes for isoftstone to send you the qualification test after you have completed the training set for an online search evaluator? I emailed the project manager after I completed the training like he asked me to, however, it has been a week and there still isn’t a test available in my marketplace. And the project manager hasn’t responded.

  18. Can anyone verify that you’re paid a flat $12 an hour or do they pay you in cents per task?? Has anyone started working for them recently and received pay?

  19. I have applied to soooo many online jobs my head is spinning .seeing they are strong on NDA which I have not seen that step except from what i seen here .. this said it was a fit for me for a short project , that requires up to 20 hrs per week .so I just replied saying i am interested , can someone least shine some light w/o breaking nda guidelines , for projects , this isn’t like some company s is it , were you get a project that pays 2 dollars and they hardly have tasks {like one per month } i am hoping not.. seeing it did say required 10-20 hrs per week.
    I need a steady income not just chewing gum income lol.

  20. Okay I got my hopes up just now sent the NDA to them and am hoping they have made changing in the 3 months since someone posted about them on here. The last thing I need is someone getting free labor from me. I guess I will wait and see. I am not patient with nonsense. I keep all emails from these people, work at home stuff.

  21. I think this company uses their many test to get free labor. They have you do lots of work that they call test for free and they never hire.

  22. Hi, thank you for this awesome site! I found some great job opportunities here.
    You can find the available jobs from iSoftstone on
    http://issworld.isoftstone.com/en-us/crowdjoblistings.aspx
    Greetings from Germany!

  23. I applied for this position, but unfortunately they were not accepting any more new hires. The good news is that they said I could apply to be an online web evaluator. It pays the same as this position (source: flex jobs). It took about a week to get a response after I sent in all of the required info, but now I am awaiting further instructions. Can’t wait to start.

    • Monica – when you say it took about a week to hear back after you sent in the required info, does that mean after you sent in your NDA agreement and your Windows Live email address? I sent those in and now I am waiting to hear back

      • Yeah, this is after I signed the NDA, got a outlook email, and verified that my computer met all of the technical requirements.

  24. If the person who runs this page can see this, you have a problem with your page if someone makes a long post. The text field extends in such a way that the “post comment” button goes off screen and there’s no way to scroll to see it again, at least for Firefox 34 anyway. So I’ll break this post up into sections.

    They finally got back to me about two months ago saying my application was incomplete. Now that I’m back here, I can confirm from my previous post that that was because of the site having website issues. ( I wasn’t sure at first, since I was applying to so many jobs in July)

    • So anyway, they let me finish the process and sign the NDA and I took the training course for the ad evaluator. Let me tell you first off, I personally think the guidelines make little to no less and are contradictory at times but I followed them as best I could. Furthermore, there were technical issues with part of the page not loading. I submitted my test and sent a followup email saying I was done. By the way, I don’t know where this 1-3 day stuff comes in, as the test was maybe an hour or two long and I couldn’t pause it at any time.

      No response, I assume I did miserably and didn’t get the job. Another month or so goes by and they ask me if I got the email regarding taking their test and to get in touch with tech support if I’m having an issue. Great, I think, something went wrong and my test was never submitted and they think Ive been dilly dallying all this time. I contact tech support and retake the test in the meantime. No response again.

      • I see an ad for a different position in the company and I apply. They treat me as if I’m new and have me sign an NDA etc again. I watch their hour and a half training video, download the toolbar I need and then I cant login to actually train. I contact tech support, get a response asking me about my Java and .Net versions which I already had updated and then haven’t heard from them since with an answer.

        I’m extremely disappointed at the lack of communication here and now I see that this toolbar seems to be a known issue with Windows 8. How does tech not know this by now? I see two other people here with the same issue. I say don’t waste your time or at least don’t get your hopes up like me.

  25. I am supposed to start training with them but when I log in to the UHRS website that was provided in the e mail, there is nothing for me to download or click on. It just says no HITapps available. I am reading about some sort of tool bar…what is this? I was never told to download a tool bar. I have e mailed my “project manager” twice and have not received a response in 2 weeks. Any advice?

  26. Hi! I applied a week ago and now I got the email that tells me about the training and qualification test. The thing is I cant seem to log in to the training video even though the password was provided. Is anyone else having this problem? Their quite slow about emailing back

  27. Toolbar is worthless for Windows 8 Internet Explorer. It keeps showing error messages denied recognizing email.

  28. They recently contacted me, saying that all I had to do was sign an NDA to become an “Online Crowd Worker.” It sounds like this is very similar to mTurk, though. I was hoping to get into their search engine evaluation jobs.

    All I did was submit my resume and fill out their paperwork, and they e-mailed me and told me I had passed the qualification test. Sign an NDA, give a “Live” e-mail address, and you’re ready to start working, no minimum or maximums every week. No information on pay, though. :/

      • Yes, it is exactly the same as MTurk. I was suppose to start with them as an ad evaluator but they couldn’t get the logins right. I ended up giving up on them and have no desire to do anything for them after the experience I had. It was a total waste of my time and they don’t seem to know what they are doing.

      • Same thing here, the same exact thing happened to me and all I can say is I am VERY disappointed at this moment. This particular job was not what I was looking for at all. I can’t pay any bills with that.

  29. i am able to get to the training, and see the place where I can rate the ads, but when I click on a rating it says to finish the query before continuing. Does anyone know how to do the actual training?

    • I Joie Dierenfield. I am in NJ in the US. I had the same problem. My contact at iSoftStone told me that if I was running a Version of Internet Explorer that was Version 11 – I couldn’t use it. I had to downgrade to Version 10 of IE in order to get the special Bing Toolbar for this particular Project to work correctly. Well, I reached out to a Tech. Support Company to help with my Computer and unfortunately I am running Windows 8.1 and IE Version 11 is the default Browser for IE for that Version of Windows. So I had to reach out to the contact at iSoftStone to let him know that I couldn’t go on Training for that particular position. Which was very disappointing because I spent a lot of time reading the Guidelines, loading on the special Bing Toolbar and trying to downgrade my Version of Internet Explorer. But anyway, after that – the contact at iSoftStone reached back out to me and asked me to train for a possible opportunity to work on an entirely different Project which didn’t involve the special Bing Toolbar. I let him know that I was certainly interested. He sent me the information; I read the Guidelines; took the Training Set yesterday; and just completed the 3 Qualifying Test Sets a little while ago. I am now waiting to hear back to see if I “passed” and if they will offer me opportunity to work for them part-time. Good Luck to you and take care!

        • Hi Candace, Sorry – I just saw your question. I did NOT downgrade back to Version 10 of I.E. As I say in my comment above – I couldn’t do the particular Project where I needed to use Version 10 of Internet Explorer because apparently once you upgrade to Version 11 you can’t “go back.” So I had to get back in touch with my Contact at iSoftStone and he gave me the opportunity to work on another Project. Actually, not to “work” on another Project but to read the Guidelines for another Project, as well as perform a set of “trial” Projects and then take the actual Test. Well, after all of the time that I spent working on the Project and then not being able to test for it was frustrating enough but then I went thru a whole bunch of other things and a lot of my own, unpaid time – in order to try to be “hired” so that I could work on this new Project and in spite of all that I did and all of the time that I spent – I was told that I “failed” the Test and I was never offered any actual, paid Projects. So for me it was a total waste of time. Be your own judge though and Good Luck. Take care and God Bless!

          • That’s okay, thanks for taking the time to respond. Sorry, I misunderstood your previous post. I wasted more time last night trying to downgrade only to learn I can’t, like you said. (Which I’m surprised at with Microsoft but that’s another story.)

            The real kicker is that I never use IE and I’m pretty sure I DID have 10 but upgraded everything when I applied for this job. Ironic -__-

            Hope you find work if you haven’t already. Good luck and happy holidays.

    • Try opening another browser tab, and refresh the Bing toolbar, not the browser page, also if that doesn’t work log out and log back in…cleared it up for me…the training video spoke very briefly about this issue…hope that helps

  30. Hi, I am in the testing phase for the ad evaluator position. It seems interesting so far and everyone seems very nice. I hope I’m able to complete the tests to their standards. I have heard they are very difficult but most say worth it. 🙂 Good luck to anyone trying to get on with them.

  31. Hi, just wanted to inform anyone else interested, I’m getting 505 errors and cannot complete the application process.

    • Hi Christy, I don’t think you can work for both but I’m not a hundred percent sure on that. Lionbridge is pretty strict on working for someone else and I think iSoftStone is too.

  32. Thanks to one of your posts a month or so ago, Anna, I was hired for an iSoftStone contractor position a few weeks ago. The training seemed to take 2-3 weeks right during a time my other company was offering extra hours, so I lost a potential few hundred dollars because of that. The practice sets they give you take about 10 hours each, and I was required to complete almost two of them. Things will sometimes get delayed due to technical glitches.

    Not only that, after I received a high score on the first qualification test, I was made to pass another. The job itself requires very quick speeds I am almost surprised I can do, but I am grateful to have obtained a much-needed second job to hopefully tide me over the summer. They seem to keep a fairly strict protocol and are not as laid-back as the other major search company one can work for as a contractor. The project directors do seem to take a courteous and professional attitude though. I receive almost daily update and reminder emails. Thanks again for the job lead!!

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