This is a guest post, written by Flash, a member of MysteryShopForum.com. Thank you Flash!
When you see a posting on a job board, you need to follow the directions. Those directions may be to contact the scheduler or they may be an invitation to sign up with a particular company. Or they may be to sign up with both the scheduler’s company and with a particular company. You need to follow these directions or you have no chance of being offered the job.
In this business there are the companies that are putting the shops together for shoppers to perform. These are usually referred to as the MSPs or “companies”. There are also scheduling companies that rarely if ever have shops that they have put together but rather are scheduling jobs for the companies did put together the shops. Most frequently you will be reporting a completed job on the MSP’s website, but again, you must follow instructions because there is variation in how reporting is handled.
You will not be assigned shops unless you either assign them to yourself (“self-assign” shops) or you request them and they are assigned to you.
For some MSPs you can self-assign at least some shops even if you are a beginner. For some MSPs you can self-assign some or all shops after you have completed a number of acceptable jobs for the company. For some MSPs you not only cannot self-assign or request shops, but they may not even post what shops are available on their website. These will contact you and generally do so based on the application that you have provided and their current need for shoppers in your area.
The quickest way to find who shops in your area is to sign up at Jobslinger.com. This website is free and has jobs from many of the companies that use the SASSIE reporting system, jobs that are posted to the MSPA job board and jobs that are posted at Volition.com and a few other places. Once you have signed up, put in your zip code and the distance you are willing to travel one way for a job and see what companies have posted jobs in your area. Most of these jobs will be gone already, but sign up with the companies you see listed because they are shopping in your area.
Mostly you have to be in the driver’s seat, getting yourself signed up with companies that may have jobs in your area, checking their specific job boards and doing what you need to do to take or request the jobs you want. Sitting and waiting for schedulers to call you is not going to work generally until you have done some jobs for the company. Emails are likely to be sent out to hundreds of shoppers and expecting to get to the website first to claim a nice job is not realistic. Often once you get to the website you still need to request the job, so even if it is still open, you are going to be in competition with other shoppers who may be better known to the company. Going to the website to try to snag a job only to discover you need to go through some training before you can self-assign or request the shop is also going to slow you down and by the time you finish the training, you are likely to find the job is gone. So wherever possible, do the training in your spare time for shops you see that you might like so you are ready when the job becomes available.
And of course the most important is that once you have been assigned a job, always do it to the best of your ability so it reflects well on you, on your ability to follow instructions, on your professionalism and on your reliability. That, in the long run, is what will make you a cherished asset of an MSP or a scheduler.