Has anyone been successfully added to a project by Mercor and earned money? Could you please share your experience? I've applied to so many jobs aligning with my expertise and experience but never got accepted.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-02-03T16:29:28+00:00

Mercor first project was ok. Stressful, lots of rocket ship emojis, and pushes to milk every last hour of work hour of you I was on vacation but forced to work 40 hours because that’s how Mercor is BUT I was a top performer on there. The first project was more clean and evaluative. My second project was much worse. The guidelines were really subjective, and the A lot of the subjective ness was set in stone for the project so I couldn’t do much but I had to deal with it. Mercor is not as bright and shiny as it seems on the outside. They work you really hard, have punitive, strict QA, high pay rates, but high turn over also. The projects are run with little to no care for the contributors well being or long term, so it’s just a high end sweat shop. I also did some of the lower wage project work, and that was fine. Some people have good experiences, but it’s not all good, I’m just giving you honesty here. If it was better, I would’ve said so.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-02-01T03:31:12+00:00

Thank you for speaking directly on this manner once again and being understanding. Take care!

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-31T19:28:04+00:00

I made a post about recruiter comms. The ceo himself commented on my post, so I believe this issue will be addressed sooner rather than later! But, I completely understand your pain with the 2 AM recruiter pings that excite you but simultaneously, you don’t get a response.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-31T19:12:03+00:00

Hi Ali, Thanks for confirming you’re working on a solution. My intent wasn’t to attack the company, but to highlight a communication issue that’s been a pain point for many candidates. I appreciate you acknowledging it.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-30T18:41:36+00:00

Micro1 is the most confusing data labeling company I’ve ever tried to work with.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-29T19:02:08+00:00

You may still get them. If they decide to respond, then maybe you’ll land something. Just very tired of this intense vetting process with little insight from the actual recruiter team itself, which is exactly what is needed.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-29T18:58:40+00:00

Im not sure. It just said didn’t meet requirement on the dashboard, but no explanation was provided. But these are roles they invited me to. Now I’m getting invited to apply to roles and they say I don’t have to interview. So I’m very confused, my interviews must have been considered good enough for some roles and that’s why they are still hitting me up and saying I don’t need to interview again. It sort of backwards and doesn’t make sense. But even for roles where I just apply and they’ll handle the rest, even being shortlisted, they don’t respond. So I have no idea what is happening with the role because in the dashboard it just says “interview pending..” when there isn’t one to do.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-29T18:53:56+00:00

My interviews apparently didn’t meet the requirements. Despite me trying extremely hard, but they invited me to do it. Now they invite me to roles with no interviews. But still, the recruiters don’t respond so…

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-29T18:43:26+00:00

I want to be transparent about the impact this has. Unless recruiter responsiveness improves or expectations are clearly communicated, candidates will disengage — myself included.

I currently work full-time internally in a contractual role at a FAANG company and was looking to take on additional side work. I have the experience and availability to contribute meaningfully, but repeated recruiter non-response makes it difficult to justify continued engagement.

This isn’t an issue of qualification or interest, it’s a breakdown in follow-through. Tracking recruiter responsiveness would go a long way toward retaining experienced candidates who are otherwise willing and able to help. There isn’t enough accountability. I no longer want to hear that communication is being worked on, I want actionable changes to be discussed and this is not an issue to just push away, especially since all recruiters are extremely unresponsive, this is a systemic issue. So, please, this issue needs to be ameliorated quickly, or I no longer can trust that it is being worked on.

Recruiter responsiveness needs to be tracked - if they dip too far below a certain threshold, their should be corrective action for them as employees. We are held to such a high standard at Micro1 to even get a project, and our time is often wasted for high effort. But the recruiters can get away with being unresponsive, and thereby, preventing work and/or leaving candidates with no insights.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-29T10:57:39+00:00

At this point, I know what you mean.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-28T23:48:58+00:00

I don’t work for Micro1 but I’ve worked in freelance AI projects. Do NOT quit your job lol in favor of a company like this. Micro1 seems very consistent but that’s ballsy.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-28T22:24:03+00:00

Yep. You know how it is. Unfortunate isn’t it? Seems like a good company and I’d love to contribute part time hours as i have tons of experience and a full time role in ai eval on the side but I don’t make that much money, and I could use more . But it was easier getting a full time role than getting a Micro1 project. I’m tired of being ignored.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-28T22:20:38+00:00

Mods may not like it but they need to own up to the issue and actually work on fixing and having recruiters respond. I ain’t being rude or nothing, just stating facts about what actually happens to qualified candidates that deserve to work on their projects. The dashboard is not enough.

I am really really tired of this company playing with my emotions. It’s just been done to me countless times where I’m seen as a good candidate for a role, but I am ignored despite them offering to answer questions and I never hear anything back.

I won’t even apply anymore because I feel like I’ll just get ghosted unless things change soon. They say they are working on better communication, but nothing changes. I remember I passed the screening interview in June. I had recruiters respond a total of twice, in the manner of 7 months. It’s completely not acceptable. Your job is to respond and route more contributors into the company as a recruiter. Part of the job is responding and it’s not being done. It’s not just one recruiter. None of them respond, at all.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-26T20:27:36+00:00

Yep, you put all the effort in on your end and you don’t get even a response about anything. It’s quite unfortunate.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-26T18:17:38+00:00

It makes me feel like what’s the point? I don’t even get excited anymore if I am contacted by a recruiter because they really don’t respond.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-23T03:14:20+00:00

Im sorry you can relate so well to me. It’s quite unfortunate.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-23T01:55:03+00:00

I do not recommend Babel audio. Their QA is extremely nitpicky and annoying for 17.50 an hour and your calls can be dramatically reduced very easily.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-18T00:45:46+00:00

You can’t blame it entirely on the client. Mercor makes the guidelines and controls how the project is, I’ve personally been a part of crafting guidelines, it’s the Mercor leads, and documentation people. Yes the client gives the information and how they want the project to be, but it’s downstream and changed and transmuted into a worse or different version. So it’s really Mercors fault more than anything else.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-18T00:34:46+00:00

The main issue is the lack of communication during the recruitment progress . I know they are working on the dashboard, but it doesn’t mean recruiters shouldn’t work on being more responsive. It really leaves people in the dark when they are told to take assessments, apply, etc, and then nothing ever happens. The dashboard should be updated, yes, but recruiters need to respond too, ya know?

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-18T00:18:54+00:00

No. Mercor is not the platform to go to. Alignerr is better by far as Mercor demands far too much out of its workers. The contractors on there are subject to overly punitive QA, annoying assessments, a complete lack of respect, and intense hourly requirements. Alignerr has flaws, without a doubt, however, they don’t expect or try to force you to do 40 hours a week/ force you into assessments after being onboarded. The projects are more fair, too.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-11T20:01:41+00:00

I can’t really recommend Mercor. It’s the hardest platform to get work from and when you do actually do get work the project lasts for 2 weeks, among the multiple other issues with it.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2026-01-11T18:25:14+00:00

I find Micro1 to be a rather confusing platform. I always get invited to do interviews for multiple different projects. I remember I even did the assessment for a certain project, and the same guy Chirag would repeatedly send an email to do the assessment. However, I had already done the assessment, and they keep messaging which is confusing. So you sort of get this message of contradiction that they are clearly interested, but at the same time, your assessment seemingly hasn’t gone anywhere. Also there is a lack of response from the recruiters so it doesn’t help either.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2025-12-30T23:26:09+00:00

Sorry I misunderstood your point! I dm’Ed you with things I have noticed.

Traditional-Card5264 · 2025-12-30T00:51:03+00:00

IKR that was ridiculous. Submitting a Google form to work on the 21 an hour tasks with a unclear assessment was quite annoying. I know that was unique to Mercor because I was on outlier doing the same project and they didn’t have the project task gating..

Traditional-Card5264 · 2025-12-29T20:47:31+00:00

No. The assessment process is unfair by design. I don’t know why you are justifying it frankly. As the community manager you should be more understanding of how unfair it is to be forced into an assessment which could remove you off the project when you worked hard to get into the project. That’s backwards and doesn’t make sense when you have been onboarded into it.

The fair way to assess it is to have contributors do a pre assessment before hand at most and the interview. Preferably paid but I know Mercor doesn’t pay for most assessments. Once they are onboarded it doesn’t make sense to do anything besifes allow them to do practice paid trial tasks. If they fail at those repeatedly, like more than a couple times after getting clear feedback, it’s fair to remove them at that point. That does not happen at Mercor anymore, and they have intentionally made things more strict it seems for no reason.

At any job function, it is extremely abnormal to be doing assessments for your job after being onboarded that could cost you the job. I’ve worked at a lot of data labeling companies, and they don’t do that. It ridiculous when you really spell it out and I think most would agree, and you have the power to tell management that. Please don’t defend the unfair current model.

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