HomeStars Reviews

The downsides of this job are countless. You will essentially be given lists of hundreds of contractors and be tasked with cold-calling (pestering) them non-stop (unreasonable expectation to make 100 dials a day all whilst being monitored on webcam) to sign them up for a platform that is rife with flaws. While ethical practices are mentioned in training and you go in thinking you will be helping these contractors find new business, in reality this is not the case post-training. For one, the platform cost for contractors is exorbitant for the amount of value they get from it. While you will be coached by managers to tell contractors they will see estimates of 10-20 job leads per month, many contractors upon signing often see very little, despite proper attention to their profiles and collection of reviews. They also essentially get abandoned by HomeStars following sign-up and initial profile building with customer-service being practically non-existent for them (well documented in contractor online reviews). In the chance they do get leads they will be for small jobs of little value that would not be enough to generate a worthwhile return of investment into the platform. Data on the ROI for contractors on this platform is kept very secret (even a built in ROI calculator on profiles is not functional) but only a very small percent of businesses likely actually see value and a positive ROI (larger construction companies with a big marketing spend). You will be tasked with calling many small- scale companies, sole proprietors, and even contractors whose business is a side hustle and promise the world to them, encouraged to lie about metrics and the amount of jobs they will get from HomeStars. I was even told to encourage contractors who ran their business part-time to quit their full-time jobs to join HomeStars and take their business full-time, something that would have been financially ruinous had they joined. There will be many such situations like this and you will only be successful if you have the ability to lie, pressure, and have zero respect for hard-working small business owners ( elitism is rife in this company and many look down on blue-collar entrepreneurs, ridiculing their intelligence.) Technology and organization is also a mess. The lists of businesses you are expected to call are not properly sorted and often times you will be calling defunct businesses or those not even relevant to the construction world, wasting your time throughout the day. You will be expected to call "hot leads" and get notifications for them sent to your email, with expectations to call them at all hours of the day. Oftentimes these "hot" leads are anything but (for newer employees at least) and most often are individuals that clicked on HomeStars Facebook ads looking to find employment. In terms of your chances of success in this company the odds are heavily stacked against you. Out of an estimated 60 -70 sales reps around maybe 15 actually hit target monthly ( securing about the equivalent of a $65,000 salary) with perhaps 5-7 reps doing consistently well (six-figure take home.) HomeStars lies in their job postings and during the interview process regarding compensation here. These are terrible metrics considering what you can make in other legitimate tech companies. Base salary is also exceptionally low and not worth it for the amount of calls they expect from you. They will also bribe you to hit target with silly prizes like gift-cards and "spiff" that seems very juvenile. The commission structure often changes monthly as well making predicting how much you'll actually make a difficult task. Employee turn-over here is insane, both from people quitting once they realize how bogus the product is or from being fired for not hitting target, so HomeStars just runs job ads for account executives all year round. Contractor opinions of the platform are well-documented online. All of the positive Google reviews for HomeStars are homeowners reviewing the quality work performed by contractors, so HomeStars' online reputation benefits from the work actually performed by contractors, not the platform itself. The platform can in fact be beneficial for the homeowner (non-paying users). However, for contractors, the actual customers and paying users of HomeStars, negative opinions of the platform abound. You will be tasked with calling previous paying users to sign them up again as a "win-back" and you will often hear an earful of negative sentiment about the product. There are negative contractor reviews all over the internet (on Google reviews, trust pilot, site jabber and even documented on the company's Wikipedia page!) It's head U.S company ANGI also has a similar reputation with contractors. There are even class-action lawsuits ruling in favor of contractors due to deceptive business practices by ANGI leading to charges by the FTC. HomeStars similarly engages in these practices and it wouldn't surprise me if similar lawsuits emerge in Canada.