Are Lionbridge Work At Home Internet Assessor Jobs Legit?

If you’ve been researching ways to make money at home, you may have stumbled across Lionbridge work at home jobs (most commonly being internet assessors of some type). The question is, is this company offering legitimate positions that actually pay, or will you just be wasting your time?

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So what’s the truth about Lionbridge Internet Assessors?

These are in fact real jobs! They actually hire a variety of at home positions, but the web content assessor (aka internet assessor, search engine evaluator, etc) are most popular. Even Flexjobs posts work at home positions for Lionbridge, and they guarantee their job postings to be legitimate (they sort through all the scams and shady at home jobs so you don’t have to).

(Leapforce is another company that commonly hires for this type of work)

However, technically they aren’t traditional “jobs” – you are hired as an independent contractor for Lionbridge. There are also many downsides you’ll want to be aware of before you decide to work for this company, though. I’ll explain in more detail within this review.

You are an Independent Contractor, not an employee

As an independent contractor, you are:

• Are responsible for your own taxes – they do not deduct them from your paychecks. You may be asked to prove to Lionbridge that you paid them to the government.

• Not guaranteed a certain number of paid hours or any amount of income per month – you are asked to work at a minimum of 10, but no more than 20 hours per week. However, work isn’t always available and you may not even be able to get in the full 10 hours.

• Not paid for all the time you actually spend working – here’s another huge downfall of working in this type of position. Due to the nature of the work, you have to spend not only a tremendous amount of time studying to pass a test to be an official “search assessor”, but because guidelines are constantly changing, you have to spend additional time studying each week. You are NOT paid for any of this time.

• Have NO job security – they make it pretty clear you can be let go at any time for any reason.

How do you get hired?

You can check Lionbridge’s website for current openings. Applying is relatively simple – you fill out their online application and attach your resume if needed. Depending on the position a resume most likely isn’t necessary (they contacted me back and I didn’t attach one to my application).  You also don’t need a college degree to be an internet assessor.

They say they take a few weeks to contact you, but they contacted me in a couple of days. After you agree to certain conditions, you are sent the training materials and instructions for taking the exam.

The training booklet is almost a few hundred pages. You have to memorize the entire thing, which is followed by a series of 3 exams.

You must pass all the exams to officially be hired in.

The problem is the amount of time it takes to study the materials and take the exams is ridiculous and you aren’t paid for any of it. They say it can take around 8 hours but I know it will take some people much longer.

So what exactly does an “internet assessor” do?

You are helping to rate the quality of search results that show up when users type in specific search queries. Depending on the exact job you were hired for, you may focus on different results – for example, video, social media, ads or websites.

You are given tasks, which are independent search queries people may enter in the search box when looking up information on a certain topic. Example, say you’re given the term “Chinese restaurants Lakewood, Virginia”

Your job is to assess the front page results and see if they are relevant to the search. You may need to rate the quality of the top 10 results as to how relevant and helpful each are, as well as fill out open-ended questions to explain why you rated things the way you did.

Your work is evaluated by higher ups in the company and if they disagree with you, you’ll take the hit. If this happens too often you will get fired.

The major problem with Internet Assessor jobs

The problem with this type of work is it is so subjective, and not everyone is an expert on every topic. Aside from identifying obvious spam pages or irrelevant results the algorithm missed, there’s going to be a lot of disagreement. There is so much gray area it makes trying to assess it with any type of accuracy or standardized rules rather difficult.

Think of the range of questions someone could type into a search engine (literally ANYTHING!!!!) – would you know all about every single topic they asked? Would you be able to assess the top 10 results and explain which ones should be first, second, third etc? And not only that, but deciding it on a set of strict rules and agreeing with others, and getting penalized if you don’t?

It’s difficult.

How much does it pay?

The advertised pay rate is $13.50/hour. It may sound pretty darn good, but it is definitely very misleading.

Like stated previously, there are things to take into account. Your actual rate of pay will NOT be as high as $13.50/hour for a few reasons.

• First, they really pay you by the task, not the hour. They just figured out how many tasks someone should be able to do in an hour, and calculated it out to $13.50. However, if you work slower you will make less.

• Second, the training they put you through before you are officially hired in as a search assessor is long and grueling, and can take several hours – all unpaid. The manual is pretty close to 200 pages and you have to basically memorize the entire thing!

• Last, there’s ongoing training you’ll have to do on a daily/weekly basis, and you’ll probably have to spend time each day refreshing your memory and studying the material. You will not get paid for any of it.

Final Opinion – Should you work at home with Lionbridge?

While these are legit positions, they are definitely not for most people. If you’re just looking for an extra income stream and not relying on the money, it may be OK to try out. But keep in mind you have to be willing to put in a lot of unpaid time, and it will be hard to keep up to quality standards. Your job is also not permanent and you could be let go at any time.

Being an internet assessor with Lionbridge (or similar companies like Leapforce) isn’t any type of scam, but it isn’t the best option for many people.

If you aren’t sure if being an internet assessor (or search evaluator) is a good fit for you, you could consider learning how to build your own business online. I’ve been making money online since 2013  doing something called affiliate marketing, and it’s always the recommendation I give people who are just starting out. You can check my top training program for building your business with affiliate marketing here.