The work
You receive artifacts an AI model produced in response to a professional brief: a discounted cash flow for a mixed-use acquisition, a STAR report interpretation, a hotel RevPAR forecast, a venue capacity and F&B budget, a broker's offering memorandum, a sponsorship deck. Your job is to judge whether the output would survive contact with a real client, lender, or investment committee — then explain exactly where it breaks.
Most tasks combine a rubric score with structured written comments. Typical failure modes you'll be flagging include:
- Cap rate, NOI, or debt-service math that is internally inconsistent
- Invented comps, fabricated absorption rates, or misused market data
- Lease structures, CAM charges, or escalation clauses described incorrectly
- Event budgets missing labor, rigging, insurance, or realistic contingency
- Slides that are technically accurate but unusable — dense tables, broken hierarchy, charts that misrepresent the underlying numbers
What the screen looks for
Mercor's process is AI-led: a resume parse, then a conversational interview that probes the specifics behind your claimed experience. Expect follow-ups. Saying you "worked on acquisitions" invites a question about your underwriting assumptions on a specific deal, and vague answers score poorly. The screen also tests whether you can separate a genuine domain error from a stylistic preference — evaluators who mark everything wrong are as unhelpful as those who wave things through. Slide craft matters more than candidates expect; be ready to describe how you'd rebuild a bad deck page.
Logistics
Remote, hourly, asynchronous. Work is drawn from a queue and volume fluctuates with project demand — some weeks offer steady hours, others little. Observed rates for this band run $80–120/hr, set by the platform based on domain and assessed depth; nothing is guaranteed, and there is no minimum commitment. Most contributors treat it as supplemental to existing consulting or operating work.