Providing Feedback on Job Listings

[Lena E]

We've read comments from many of you requesting the ability to provide feedback on the job postings you come across when searching or in your Job Feeds.

In the coming days we're going to start introducing the option for freelancers to provide us specific reasons why a job post isn't a great fit for them. This feature will be introduced on a limited basis but we expect to make it available for all freelancers in the coming weeks. 

Based on information gathered from all of you we have built a list of reasons why freelancers may not be interested in jobs shown to them in search and in the Job Feed.  Making a selection is completely optional, but our hope is that by providing this information to us, you'll help us in refining our systems to present you with the best, most relevant job posts in the future. 

An image of the feature is displayed below. As always if you have any questions or comments about this new feature let us know. 

 

[Setu M]

A step in the right direction Lena. Good to know management is listening and willing.

[Stephen B]

Nice idea, but I'm very wary of stating which jobs don't suit my budget, because I really don't trust the robots to work out why I think they don't fit my budget.Tthere's no way they can work on subtleties like type of document, size of document etc. If I flag a fixed job for $50 as "doesn't suit my budge" (because it's for editing a novel) I'd be afraid it would block me from all $50 jobs, including the three-page resumes.

One thing that I'm not really surprised at is the sheer number I've just plodded through and ticked "doesn't fit my skills". I'm hoping the robots may work out that although I necessarily have "editing" ticked as a filtering variable, I don't want photo or video editing jobs. If that worked out it would be a big plus. It seems to me it's all down to the robots - so I'll give them a chance but I'll be watching them like a hawk, given their past effectiveness and efficiency record.

[Pandora H]

Thank you Lena, for the announcement about this.

I tested it this morning, and it worked (in that allowed me to rate). Beyond that, I am not sure what else might have been happening behind the scenes.

I totally applaud this new feature. However, I do have this concern:

I have a few feeds that are rather open ended, that I use only to ID certain kinds of clients who might have OTHER jobs (like the niche I support).  I don't actually click those feeds if jobs that I do want are coming into the main My Job Feed page.

Having said this, because of those misc. feeds, I get a fair amount of "not my skill" jobs. I'd not want to rate those, because clearly, they are not related to my skill set.

I would however, want to rate jobs that at least appear to be in my niche. Is this the approach we are all expected to take, with this new feature?

[Darrin O]

Echoing what some of the others have said, my issues with bad job posts is only indirect.  The largest complaint I have about many jobs listed here is not that they're a bad fit for me, but simply that they're bad jobs posted by bad clients.  I want to tag/flag/filter on clients far more than I want to exclude jobs based on attributes.  When a job comes to my attention looking for $1000 of work but only paying $100, the main problem is not the posted job, it is the posting client.

I would appreciate new "feedback" features like these if Upwork actually responded to the existing feedback features like flagging.  Please, please stop introducing new things until you get a handle on the old things that remain problematic.  If you want me to believe you're sincerely looking to better filter bad job posts out, let us know what actions you're actually going to start taking to prevent bad clients from posting them in the first place.  Until that happens, I don't see the point in either flagging or rating individual posts.

[Julie T]

Is part of testing this new feedback feature deliberately putting jobs I am not remotely qualified to do, such a app building and software engineering? Recently, I have seen A LOT of these in my feed ...I'm a writer, editor and research professional. 

[Preston H]

Um... this is actually really awesome.

[Ela K]

I have been trying to use this feature for the last couple of days.

One thing I have said in another thread: the amount of jobs I am not qualified for has increased. I think Julie mentioned the same problem. I am seeing an increase of web/app developer and similar jobs - why?

It all has to do with way jobs are filtered against skills; which is obviously not working here or when searching for jobs/freelancers. Others and I have asked numerous times in various threads how the search algorithm works - nobody wants to explain that.

Secondly, I have taken the time to rate the jobs in an attempt to feed the new algorithm with info - but every time I leave the page and refresh it the ratings are gone. Or the symbol is gone completely.

[David G]

I've mentioned this a number of times but never got a reply. Maybe I should contact support.

It is silly to not be able to designate the category when I want to save my job feed.

I want to  search for the keyword "editing" in the writing category but when I try to save the search, I can't limit the categories. The saved search covers all categories and as a result I get jobs for photo editing, website editing and computer program editing in my job feed. Unfortunately, there are a lot more of these jobs so any jobs that are appropriate for my skills gets lost.

Simply fixing this issue would go a long way to being able to find appropriate jobs.

[Valeria K]

Hi David,

I see what you mean, the category displays as "Any" when saving a search. I will eascalate this to the team so they can check.

Thank you for reporting.