Lionbridge – Good Job or Scam?

Is Lionbridge a scam or good job?

 Here is my experience with my Lionbridge job. I worked for Lionbridge as a Quality Rater for almost 4 months in 2010. To get accepted as a Lionbridge Quality Rater, I had to study a manual (in PDF format) and then take 2 tests. So I studied over the course of a week for approximately 25 hours. I then took the tests and passed both and was accepted as a Quality Rater.

The Lionbridge Quality Rater job consisted of many different types of rating tasks. Each type of rating task required a new PDF manual to read and study. This took much of my time, in which I did NOT get paid for but I didn’t care because I just wanted to learn and do a good job.

In the beginning I had a 30-day grace period. This grace period meant that Lionbridge allows their new Quality Raters to be less productive than experienced Quality Raters. I spent almost half of my time with Lionbridge studying the new PDF manuals and each week there were a couple more PDF manuals to study.

In the Lionbridge policies it states that each Quality Rater will receive a star-rating (out of 5 stars) each month. Any Quality Rater that receives a 2 star rating twice in a six moth period will be terminated. I did not want to be terminated so I kept studying and kept getting better at the Quality Rating process. I also kept waiting for my star-rating from the Lionbridge big-wigs. It took over 2 months before I finally got a 3-star rating. I said to myself “At least it’s not a 2-star, that would be bad”. I felt my Quality Rating skills improving over the next month and was confident that my next star rating would be at least a four but I never received another star rating. However, I received a termination notice about a month and a half later without warning.

I was very upset at this point because I wasted a lot of time reading many PDF manuals. Plus, I WAS NOT THE ONLY PERSON THIS HAPPENED TOO, I personally knew 5 other people, who are very intelligent, that had this exact same experience. We all received a termination notice without warning.

In conclusion:

Lionbridge is NOT a scam, they do pay on time BUT it is NOT a good job because they did not care about wasting my time. The job paid $14.50 per hour but after some calculation it turns out that I earned about $7 to $9 per hour. However, I knew that much of my time was going toward studying the PDF manuals but I also thought I was investing this time for long term employment with Lionbridge. BIG MISTAKE. Lionbridge is a dirty company that does not follow their own written policies and they did not care about wasting my time.