Writing Articles - Making Money

Last weekend ChaCha popped into my head and I decided to give it a shot.  Several months ago there was a buzz about it on the eHow forum, so I knew this was not a scam.  At that time, I had checked out the website only to find all of their posititions were full.  Enter Friday evening. When you go to the ChaCha home page they say they are hiring for guides.  This is actually only half-true.  They are hiring for expeditors.  When I read the role of the expeditor it was not something I was interested in doing. But, I like doing research and learning new things, so the guide position seemed a fairly natural fit. Or, so I thought.

Here is the process:

You sign up for ChaCha giving them all of your personal information, including filling out a completely unnecessary IRS form.  After completing all of the personal information you have to watch several videos. Sprinkled throughout the videos are little tests.  Pay attention to the tests!  Although you will have a chance to go back through them, it is for some reason more difficult the second time around.  You will be evaluated before you can begin the expeditor process. 

I failed the expeditor test.  It stung.  While I am not top of the class, I am not used to failing.  I believe that I put out quality work on a consistent basis.  This being said, I do have weaknesses and one of them is quick decision-making under pressure when the information is not clear.  ChaCha is all about answering questions very fast and they have a pretty fantastic system in place to accomplish that mission.  The videos don't answer all of the questions.  I think it would be more effective if they specifically showed the process of a question coming in and how long it takes to answer it and so on. 

In the video prep for the expeditor training they slowly show you the possibilities of each question.  Slow is not at all what you will deal with when you take the ChaCha.com expeditor test.  Because of that I can only assume that doing the real thing is much faster. After watching all of the videos, it is only toward the very end that you hear you will only have one shot at the expeditor test.  You will have a time limit for individual questions on this expeditor test. 

Taking the expeditor test for ChaCha

• Stop after the first question if it times out or you think you get it wrong.  You can set your status to away.  Do this and go back through the videos.
• Do not apply if you do not want to give ChaCha all of your personal information without being sure that you are going to be working with them.
• Pay specific attention to how to "succinct" or clean up a question. 
• For the first timed test you must read through the beginning information because you'll be asked pertinent business questions.  If you fail this first timed test then you will not move on to any of the process above.
• Pay attention to the steps.  You only have one shot at taking the test.

Good luck.  If you have more questions, leave 'em in the comments and I'll try to answer them.  I emailed ChaCha after the test to ask them what they do with our personal information and inquired into why they get our information without telling us the expeditor work is an unsure thing.  I have not heard back from them yet.  Maybe I will hear from them at a later time regarding working for them as a guide. That's the position I wanted anyhow.