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Expanding Job Search Filters

lenaellis
Community Member

We are introducing a new look to the job search page on desktops to visibly display available job filters on the left side of the job search page, instead of hidden behind a button at the top. We have found that although tucking our filters behind this icon looks clean, many were unaware of the available job filters behind it. With this change, we want to ensure freelancers are able to have easy access to all filters that are important to them when finding and searching for jobs. 

 

We are also testing out some new filters with more categories. We appreciate any feedback you have on job search filters as we continuously seek to improve your experience and help freelancers find the right jobs for them. 

 

Existing experience:


Screen Shot 2020-09-18 at 9.03.38 AM.png


New experiences you may see:


Screen Shot 2020-09-18 at 9.04.25 AM.png

 


Screen Shot 2020-09-18 at 9.04.01 AM.png

Tip: Once you have filtered your job search to your liking, click “save search” so that your filters will be saved for your next job search.

36 Comments
NikolaS
Moderator

Hi John,

 

I am sorry for the late response. You should be able to select multiple categories, please see this as an example. Could you please clear your cache and cookies or log in with another browser? After that please try and delete your saved search and add them again? If the issue persists please let us know and we will assist you further. 

 

Thank you,

robbie3999
Community Member

Hi Nikola, I'm not sure you understand the problem. First lets agree on some terminology. In your example, I would call "Accounting & Consulting" a category. I would call "Accounting", "Financial Planning", "Human Resources", etc. sub-categories under "Accounting & Consulting".

 

I agree, you can save multiple sub-categories under one category. But you cannot save multiple sub-categories under multiple categories. For example, I have a saved search from the previous filter called "General". In it, you can see I have the following categories and sub-categories:

 

category: Data Science & Analytics

  sub-category: Data Extraction/ETL

  sub-category: Data Mining and Management

category: Web, Mobile and Software Dev

  sub-category: Scripts & Utilities

  sub-category: Other - Software Development

 

In the new filter, when you select a category and sub-categories, as soon as you navigate back up to "All categories" to select more stuff, it deletes everything you just selected, as if it wants you to start over again.

 

Admittedly this is a bigger problem for some than others. If your work fits neatly into the pre assigned categories, then no problem. But computer IT is spread across multiple categories as it stands. (I could get into the question of why are you doing that?, but will leave that for another time.)

 

Regards,

John

robbie3999
Community Member

Hi, I am having a problem with the new job search filter. This has already been posted on the upwork announcement thread, the last three posts, here

 

https://community.upwork.com/t5/Announcements/Expanding-Job-Search-Filters/td-p/812085/highlight/tru...

 

Nikola tried to address it but I have not heard anything more so I thought I would move this out to the main message boards. Problem in a nutshell is the new filter won't allow you to create multiple job subcategories under multiple job categories. See the link above for all the details.

kochubei_valeria
Community Member

Hi John,

 

I merged your most recent post to the thread about the new filters just so we could help the discussion around this feature in the same place. I understand what you mean by saving a search with multiple categories selected. Let me double-check on this with the team and I'll get back to you with more information. 

 

---

John, I'm coming back with a confirmation that it's not possible to create a search across multiple categories by design. More specific filters within categories were introduced instead. That said, you can save searches for different categories separately and get more refined results for each of them. And I'll certainly be happy to share your feedback with the team!

robbie3999
Community Member

Hi Valeria, thanks for looking into this.  I will try not to shoot the messenger but I am not happy with the answer.

 

First off, why would you “design out” something that already existed and gave people greater flexibility? That makes no sense. If you wanted to add new features to control how people can select job sub-catetories and sub-sub-categories that is fine, but why are the features mutually exclusive?

 

Secondly, you do realize that computer IT work is the majority of at least three different major job categories. “Data Science & Analytics”, “IT & Networking”, and “Web, Mobile and Software Dev” are all mostly IT. I would say many people that do IT work are versatile enough to fit into more than one of these categories, so they are all going to be penalized by your design decision.

 

Also, people that are new to Upwork, like me (1 month), generally have to cast a wider net to search for jobs, just because it is so hard to find jobs when you have no job history. I have a MS in computer science and 25 years of experience and I am searching data entry and internet research in addition to the above categories just to try to build a job history.

 

So, what are the alternatives. Well, I discovered that if you don’t use a filter at all, the job categories default to the “My Categories” setting where you can pick up to 10 job categories, so that is what I am doing for a workaround for now. The problem with this is you can’t use any of the other search filter features because as soon as you do my categories no longer comes into play.

 

The other alternative as you said is to create multiple searches. But then anytime I want to use another search feature, I would have to apply it separately to each search. That is an unwieldy mess.

 

All I want to do is click on “Find Work”, see the results, and start looking for a job. You are making it very hard to do that.

kochubei_valeria
Community Member

Thanks for following up, John. I'd like to clarify that you can still tailor your Job Feed to show jobs for those categories and subcategories. Moreover, you can apply more specific filters now. It just doesn't have to be in one saved search as you can save several searches to your feed.

 

So for example, you can save one search for the following:

category: Data Science & Analytics

  sub-category: Data Extraction/ETL

  sub-category: Data Mining and Management

(plus you can narrow it down further)

 

Then, you can save another search for:

category: Web, Mobile and Software Dev

  sub-category: Scripts & Utilities

  sub-category: Other - Software Development

 

You can also save another search for Web, Mobile and Software Dev. 

 

Your Job Feed will then be showing jobs that fit into all those searches you configured and saved. 

robbie3999
Community Member

Hi Valeria, yes I understand that I can have multiple searches and they will all feed into the job feed. The problem is, I often want to use other features of the filter, often temporarily.

 

For example, one search strategy I use since I am new and handicapped with not having much of a job history and other profile stats, I often check the “less than 5 proposals” box just to look for jobs that not many other people have bid on. I probably have a better chance at those. But I don’t want that to be permanent.

 

I’m pretty sure (haven’t tested it yet) that I would have to check that on each separate filter in order for it to work as I want it to. Then I would have to uncheck it on each filter to get rid of it. And the same for any other option I want to try. As I said before, an unwieldy mess. That’s why it’s preferable to have a single filter.

 

The frustrating part of all this is that I can make a guess as to why this happened, that is a feature that existed previously was removed. I have been around a long time and I have seen this before. I have probably been guilty of it myself. I call it the lazy designer/programmer syndrome.

 

What I’m guessing happened is that the previous filter was in a big box with plenty of room, so there weren’t many restrictions on space. With the new design everything was moved over to the left hand side of the search, and suddenly space became a premium. So whoever did this started looking at the mechanics of how to select job categories, they realized it was going to be difficult to navigate around and make selections in that amount of space. It wasn’t going to be a problem to make a few checkboxes in the subcategory areas, but navigating around the entire job category area would be difficult. So instead of doing the work to try and figure out how to make it happen, they just dropped the feature.

 

Anyway, I appreciate your help. I’m pretty sure whatever I say isn’t going to make any difference so I guess I will start experimenting with multiple filters and see if I can come up with something that is half way workable.

ania-barrow
Community Member

Hi - I've done this but the minimum rate can only be entered with a dot before the number so I can't type in $14 as it comes up as $0.14 which doesn't work. Can I update this so minimum is $14. Thanks

ania-barrow
Community Member

Hi - I've refreshed and was able to put in minimum hourly rate to $14 but it's still coming up with jobs under this pay rate in my search. What should I do? Thanks, Ania

petra_r
Community Member

Ania B wrote:

Hi - I've refreshed and was able to put in minimum hourly rate to $14 but it's still coming up with jobs under this pay rate in my search. 


Where do you see a filter fro hourly rate in the job search?

 

Do you see something different to what I see?

 

search criteria.png