Cactus Communications Freelance Editor Reviews

Hello! Thank you for your glowing review. I am thrilled to know that your experience with CACTUS has been great thus far. We do our best to ensure that availability of work is not a problem for our editors. We know that one of the downsides of freelancing is a variation in project inflow, and we consciously try to ensure that our editors don’t have a problem with insufficient work. And if that does happen, we genuinely make efforts to fix the problem. I would also like to add that at CACTUS, we understand that remote work can make one feel isolated, and we have a few initiatives, such as the Editors' Corner in place to address this. We do realize that there’s more we can do. Please do write to me at sushmitha.s1@cactusglobal.com with any suggestions you may have on how we can improve engagement with editors :) Hope we can connect via email to discuss this further. Warm Regards, Sushmitha Srinivasan Freelance Engagement Specialist

Hello! Thank you for your review. I am glad to know that you found our payment system satisfactory. Ensuring that our freelancers and contractors are paid accurately and on time is extremely important to us, thanks for acknowledging that! As you’ll agree, a freelance association comes with its pros and cons. While freelancers are not eligible for work benefits, we hope that the flexibility that it brings, does make up for it to some extent. We do try to come up with various incentives plans to allow our top performing editors to supplement their earnings. Please do reach out to me at sushmitha.s1@cactusglobal.com if you’d like to discuss this further :) Warm Regards, Sushmitha Srinivasan Freelance Engagement Specialist

Hi! Thank you for sharing your feedback about your experience of working with us. We’re glad that you felt positively about the flexibility in time-schedule. However, we’re very disheartened to learn that you felt that your subject matter expertise in the field of Medicine was underutilized. We want you to know that we have a sizeable proportion of doctors from diverse specialities associated with us who offer Premium Editing Service (PES) to authors and provide valuable inputs from their areas of expertise. Moreover, we also engage medical practitioners with advanced degrees to offer their services in medical writing. If you like, you can explore these opportunities with us. The pay a freelancer takes home when associated with us depends on a lot of factors such as their editing speed, the working hours they are able to devote to assignments and their productivity in terms of the volume of assignments that they turn in every month. Often, there is a learning curve involved with beginners in the field of editing, but from what we have seen so far, the average freelancer adapts quickly and begins a submitting a fair number of client-ready assignments within a few months of association. We provide necessary support through swift resolution of queries along with providing access to a rich library of online editing resources. We also have an incentive system in place to reward freelancers who are consistent in terms of quality, productivity and client satisfaction. This helps them earn an attractive bonus on top of their fee. Thus, the earnings are different for every freelancer. If you would like me to answer any other queries or as mentioned before, explore opportunities in medical writing, do reach out to me at: amrita.anand@cactusglobal.com. Regards, Amrita Anand Associate, Freelancer Management

Hi! Thank you for your review and for pointing out what you like about your association with CACTUS. Regarding the concerns you’ve stated, please allow me to clarify some of the points here: As far as pay is concerned, we ensure that it is commensurate with effort and at par with industry standards. We do care about building a long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationship with our freelancers and are constantly seeking their feedback and incorporating it in our processes to improve their overall experience with us. The QI system is regularly assessed and upgraded to ensure that it continues to serve as an objective quality indicator for both the editors and the reviewers. Our aim is to ensure that review process is a standardized one with subjective differences in assessment kept at a minimum. We have internal checks in place to ensure consistency in process. Our freelancers are encouraged to contact the workflow management team, an almost round-the-clock operational help desk, to raise queries if the feel dissatisfied with a given rating. Their concerns are looked into on priority and are offered customised assistance on a case-to-case basis. Most of our freelancers report benefitting immensely from the review feedback and have reported an enhancement in their editing skills when they are able to incorporate some of this feedback into their work. Freelancers do have access to significant information about the jobs they would like to take on and, in most cases, have a choice regarding whether or not they would like to accept it. About the automatic generated emails, you can always flag them into a separate inbox and ignore them if they are coming in outside of the time frame you usually dedicate to editing. Though the orientation period may be brief for freelancers, especially those who are beginners to editing, their PoCs at CACTUS ensure that they are able to progress at a comfortable pace. The PoCs check in with them periodically and the detailed feedback they receive for assignments submitted in the initial days helps them accelerate their learning curve. All freelancers have access to a rich online library of learning resources that they can browse as per their need to develop an in-depth understanding of the CACTUS editing requirements. There is significant difference in editing scope across the different editing services that CACTUS offers and detailed guidelines on these are available as handy resources for editors to refer to while they are working on a given job to ensure that their files are client ready for submission. I hope this insight has broadened your perspective of CACTUS. I’ve made a note of your valuable suggestions too and will be passing them on to the relevant team. They will be of great help when we are introducing improvements into our processes and metrics. For any other queries, please reach out to me at amrita.anand@cactusglobal.com. Thanks, Amrita Anand Associate, Freelancer Management

Hello! Thank you for your detailed review. We’re delighted to read about the various aspects that you’ve had a positive experience with during your association with us. It’s highly encouraging for us and inspires us to do better. Thank you for stating your concern. Please know that while various parameters like editing experience, subject matter expertise and of course editing skill significantly impact an editors’ pay; we’ve observed an uptrend in their monthly earnings once they are able to achieve higher edit volumes with consistency in edit quality. This happens when editors take on jobs regularly, incorporate reviewer feedback in future edit jobs and develop an in-depth understanding of the CACTUS editing requirements upon regular study of the resources available on our in-house library. Please get in touch with me at amrita.anand@cactusglobal.com if you would like to know more about this or have any other queries. I’ll be happy to help you! Thanks, Amrita Anand Associate, Freelancer Management