Awesome Job Alert: Netflix Will Pay You To Watch TV And Movies All Day
If you’re looking for a job in the U.K. or Ireland, this is your lucky day: Netflix is hiring. And the main job requirement? Watching Netflix… all day long.
Netflix is currently expanding its pool of “taggers,” a group of people hired to help classify Netflix’s library of TV shows and films into different categories. After watching a particular show or film, taggers choose from a pool of about 1,000 different words to describe it. The words help to classify anything from plot and mood of the video to era and setting.
We know — it sounds like the worst way to spend your days, but somebody’s gotta do it.
“It’s a perfect job because I don’t go to an office,” says California-based tagger Greg Harty. “I work on my own time, and I get paid to watch movies, which makes me a better writer.”
Netflix currently employs about 40 taggers like Harty and says the company started the program to improve its recommendation system. A lot of users, they noticed, were watching content but were failing to leave ratings. The company needed a new way to keep funneling fresh content in front of its users, so they had something new to watch as they finished a video. Tagging using a human-based system seemed to make sense, and so was born the tagging job.
We see ourselves as a match making service, which means that we get to know our members and how they interact with our service,” Todd Yellin, VP of Product Innovation for Netflix, told TechRadar. “When I came on board Netflix 8.5 years ago, our recommendations were reliant on how people rated titles. The things is for some people it is a bit of a nice challenge to give things a star rating but for a lot of our users they considered that work. We still offer ratings but it is not as important nowadays. The core stuff for us now is paying attention to what users watch. That can tell us how many categories they like so the tagging effort started heading in that direction.”
So what else do you need to apply for a tagger position at Netflix? According to a job listing posted on Netflix’s site, technical skills like experience with Excel and content or asset management systems are preferred. You’ll also need to be detail-oriented, super organized and — of course — a movie and TV expert. An editorial background in entertainment also can’t hurt.
Currently Netflix is only recruiting in the UK and Ireland for new tagger positions. Sorry, Netflix-junkies in America — you need not apply.