Hi All ,
We’ve been testing the functionality of one-off pauses over the last 6 weeks, and believe that this change will improve your experience on the platform. We also believe that this will improve communications and help speed up the application process, and help more of you become successful.
We fully understand the concerns expressed by sitters applying to popular international sits and assure you we will monitor the situation closely. This new functionality will only affect a very small percentage of sits. There are now more amazing sit opportunities than ever before, giving sitters many more choice options. However, as we have said, we will monitor this closely, together with your feedback.
Members have suggested that we increase the application threshold but after a full evaluation, the data shows that 5 applications give sufficient opportunity for member success, so we will keep the limit at 5 for the time being and evaluate in the future. Owners will be able to unpause their applications if they are not happy with their applicants at any point.
One additional concern owner members had is whether they could unpause their applications without declining the first 5 sitters (so that they could compare new applications to the first 5 they had received). Owners will now have to decline previous sitters to get more than 5 applications. This has been done to help speed up the application process, and avoid uncertainty or any time wasting for sitter members. However, nothing prevents owners from messaging the first 5 sitters they previously declined and inviting them back, if they wish so.
We want to thank members for your invaluable feedback, particularly about visibility and clarity on how owners will know when their applications have been paused, so that they are able to manage their applications in the best possible way to help improve the selection process for themselves and our sitter members.
We have created a document here, showing how this will be communicated.
You can also find other relevant FAQs here.
We are now launching phase 2 of the test which is continuous pausing. This means that as soon as an owner reaches the limit (5 open applications), all new applications will be paused. I want to emphasise that this is still a test and will run for 6-8 weeks.
We will update everyone on the findings and next steps as and when they become available.
Many Thanks,
Ben
Product Manager