Recently, I wrote an introduction to TaskRabbit, an online community for odd job posting. Today, I’ll cover some subtleties.

Photo credit: Photologue NP. Used under Creative Commons license.

(1) Rabbits post public comments to help each other. In particular, if a senior Rabbit posts a lot of details that are missing on your original post, more junior Rabbits will see that the task might be more complex than it appears. Revisit your post to make it more clear. Also, there are tags that Rabbits can assign; that are seen only by us. Some are positive – “heartwarming”; and some are not – “pay too low.”

(2) Public vs private posting. It’s not well explained, currently. The advantage of posting privately is that your task can’t be indexed by a search engine. The disadvantage is that your written endorsement will not be visible after the task is completed.

(3) Do not “bait and switch.” Task Rabbits are bidding for the job you describe. You are not buying a blanket number of hours for us to do whatever you need to have accomplished, unless you specifically phrase your task that way. There are many, many reasons for this.

(4) Hourly and recurring tasks. If you have an ongoing task, by all means use TaskRabbit’s ability to post “hourly rate” bids or ongoing recurrence.

(5) Giving carrots to Rabbits. Be careful about using TaskRabbit as a way of trying people out for longer-term assignments. Chances are, if you are really looking for someone who will work with you on an ongoing basis, the listing should be for a Recurring Task. If it doesn’t work out, you can cancel the Recurring Task. If you are using TaskRabbit as a mechanism for hiring, contact the company, because they have a new initiative!

Have a great time with TaskRabbit! Be a job creator, and lower your stress level to improve your health.