A very great idea to fix Upwork current status

[hamdyahmed90]

Hi, i've been on upwork for a long time like 2 Years+ i've seen very good days of upwork but it didnt last long because of unserious clients.

i did some statistics on how many job actualy a freelancer get hired from and guess what its 10%. for every 10 job posts of payment verified clients only 1 of them someone get hired , i checked that all over months and its very bad rate as its leading to unnecessarily competition also make us ( the freelancers ) lose connects on a jobs that had no intentions to hire someone on

so i was thinking that upwork must do something to fix that endless loop, what about making a penalty for clients for example 

- if you created 2 job posts without any1 gets hired then the 3rd one you do so u will have money deducted from your account as a penalty for wasting others time and connects

OR

- if you created 3 job posts without any1 gets hired then u r fired from upwork.

i've seen so much clients with 15% hire rate or even less, like 0% with 200 job posts, why do u even keep people like this on your platform.

idk if im in the right section or not but its a recommendation to upwork to take a serious action towards this

[tjmisny]

I like this concept, Ahmed.

How about this: If a client's hire percentage drops below a certain percentage maybe 40%... you no longer get to post jobs for free?  $3 charge per job post. 

I agree that the people with low hire rates are exploiting the platform -- they should not get to post jobs for free.   

[mwiggenhorn]

Sorry, but that's really awful.  Upwork needs to encourage quality clients to come to the table, not drive them away.  If you look at the thousands of freelancers with no skills and no experience, terrible profiles, and awful proposals, it isn't surprising that they don't get hired.  Clients can hire through Upwork, another platform, from within their organization, locally, and/or drop the job due to budget or other reasons.  As long as I've been here, (back to ODesk days), there have been thousands of freelancers who never earn a penny - not because of the clients but because of their own inadequacies. 

[hamdyahmed90]

id like to comment on 2 points you raised here which are the quality clients , bad freelancers

for the quality clients

if a client who usualy post a job without any1 get hired , thats definitely not a quality client and even upwork dont need them

quality clients pay good amount for top notch freelancers and usualy after 1 day maximum someone get hired and they are afew on upwork compared to the ones we are taking about

as for the bad freelancers

its easy, clients dont have to hire them , but most of them prefer to  because

- they can get job done in a very cheap price compared to its actual price

- they can get job done and request refund / threat newbies of bad reviews and say that they got a terrible job compared to what they really wanted. 

[2297e2bc]

Id make it 2 jobs or your out - 3rd strike like baseball.

Anyway - Very good information. Why WOULD else a client keep writing proposals and not hireing anyone?

Also -Upworks could flaf their phone number and NOT accept it for verification for like 12 months. That would keep the users with burner phones at bay too!

UPWORKS developers could make a color coded F:AG   (lol another "badge") that makes this clearly stand out to all  - even on the daily job mailer!!

[hamdyahmed90]

i like the idea of Badges , but alot of freelancers are so desperate to get their first job so that wont fix the problem i think but anyways its better than nothing 

[kfarnell]

---

 wrote:

Id make it 2 jobs or your out - 3rd strike like baseball.

No.  I've had a number of projects from clients who didn't award their first couple of projects listed. 

[kfarnell]

---

 wrote:

i did some statistics on how many job actualy a freelancer get hired from and guess what its 10%. for every 10 job posts of payment verified clients only 1 of them someone get hired , i checked that all over months and its very bad rate as its leading to unnecessarily competition also make us ( the freelancers ) lose connects on a jobs that had no intentions to hire someone on

Your numbers are flawed. Often, a hire is made on a different project, especially when there's a change from fixed price to hourly or vice versa, or if the client hires more than one freelancer. So although a project shows no one is hired, that doesn't mean the client didn't hire someone. They simply didn't hire them on that particular project post.

[tjmisny]

I think the scenario you are describing happens on occasion - certainly not "often" and not to the extent that it invalides the point that Ahmed is making.  

[kfarnell]

I assume you mean 'invalidate'? It may be category dependent, but it's happened to me frequently. But what also isn't taken into account is direct hires by clients via DM or private listings.

[hamdyahmed90]

you are totally right, what she mentioned happens rarely and not the norm

[atlinguist]

I see a lot of job posts for "hourly" or a placeholder budget (e.g. $5) where it then says in the text, "Let me know your per-word rate".  Assuming that the client then hires based on the cheapest per-word offer by making a direct offer to the freelancer, it is clear why the posting will simply disappear down the drain without leading to a hire. That is why we need to differentiate on this point -- has this client hired anyone at all or not? -- before acting to sanction the client. This is where the algorithm should come in and provide some real answers. Us wasting connects and never knowing what happened after the proposal is just as awful as putting up barriers. 

[2297e2bc]

Note:

I found $5 was qouted from Pakistan and needed conversion to U.S. to be accurate. caught me off guard once!

[celgins]

what about making a penalty for clients for example - if you created 2 job posts without any1 gets hired then the 3rd one you do so u will have money deducted from your account as a penalty for wasting others time and connects
OR
- if you created 3 job posts without any1 gets hired then u r fired from upwork.

What is the timeframe for applying your penalty (i.e., no hires after 5 days, 10 days 30 days)?

What happens when a client--who just won a $3 million USD contract to provide services to a state school system--needs 14 freelancers, and posts 14 different jobs across six or seven different labor categories (e.g., Administrative Assistant, IT Specialist, Network Technician, etc.) and doesn't hire for 5 days, 10 days, or 30 days? Maybe the client got delayed or haven't found suitable candidates.

I understand your idea to penalize clients who post jobs recklessly or those who are only testing the market and gauging interest with no intent to hire, or even those who abandon their jobs for other reasons. But the absolute, across-the-board penalty you suggest would harm many quality clients, and Upwork can't afford that.

Besides, Upwork needs to fire unskilled freelancers before it fires clients who fail to hire.

[tjmisny]

Clark - that example might seem like it shows the kind of client that Upwork should be giving carte blanche to.  However... when these seemingly big ticket clients don't hire, these are the ones Freelancers lose the most money trying to apply to.  If this client just won a $3M contract, they can certainly afford to pay $10 or even $20 per job posting.  And if they don't hire within 30 or even 50 days, the Freelancers who paid their Connects to stand out should be reimbursed.... or Client should have to pay in some form for wasting everyone's time and money.  

But I do agree that Upwork needs to fire unskilled Freelancers before firing delinquent Clients.  

[celgins]

Ahmed's idea is to penalize clients based on the number of jobs they post without a hire. My example is just one client, but many clients posts multiple jobs because they need help from different skill sets.

Plus, Ahmed didn't specifiy a timeframe for this penalty. I can post three jobs and don't hire within 10 days for a variety of reasons. If Upwork wants to reimburse freelancers during that time--great. But I don't think it makes sense to levy a penalty or fee against clients when Upwork nor freelancers know why the client didn't hire within those 10 days.

I don't have a problem with freelancers being reimbursed if a client fails to hire after 30 days. That's not a penalty for clients; rather, that's taking money out of Upwork's pockets, and I doubt they're in the mood for that.

[tjmisny]

Nobody is suggesting 10 days.  I think 30 is extremely reasonable for the client to have some kind of penalty in their accesss to the site, if there are no hires and posting is not renewed (perhaps with a small renewal fee).   In the 1,600+ projects I've applied to, I don't think I've ever been interviewed off a post that was over 30 days old.  But I have lost thousands of dollars in Connects money for these neglected/abandoned postings from unserious clients.  

[2297e2bc]

FL ratings are calculated quarterly, so whu not CL's

Or, Like Tweeter - a bad comment gets you booted for  XXX hours.  I say DAYS though for these people,

Write a good RFP and actually hire. Like a real HR department does!

[hamdyahmed90]

No1 is saying that bad freelancers should be banned, we are all with that , lets say the time frame would be the normal which is 30 days, after its gone and you havent hired any1 in the last 3 job posts it ends up punishing for that

[celgins]

Applying a penalty to a 30-day old job doesn't benefit Upwork. Upwork runs the risk of alienating clients by punishing them for posting a job--even if the job exists for 30 days without a hire.

And, returning Connects to freelancers just empties Upwork's pockets. Upwork is not interested in this scenario.

[kfarnell]

I think this approach is upside-down thinking. Instead of focusing on penalising clients who *don't* hire, it would make much more sense to reward those who do. 

[2297e2bc]

That would but how?

Discount on quantity or price point maybe!

Discount on high feedback to FL's?

The problem still remains, the scammers have an incentive to get us!!!

[hamdyahmed90]

How rewarding clients makes a difference ? if the client is unserious about the job means he isnt going to pay for the job he posted no matter what benifits or rewards you give to them.

[tjmisny]

I agree Ahmed - I think removing the unserious/abusive clients is the primary goal.  Deter them from posting so freelancers can spend our money only on legitmate jobs with an intent to hire.  

[kfarnell]

If the client has hired someone and paid them, they are clearly serious. I said those who do hire.