Job Success Score Update | December 2023

[#1]

Upwork's Job Success Score (or JSS, for short) is one of the key features of our platform. JSS is a measure of clients' satisfaction with the work that hired talent have completed. With JSS, talent can stand out in the marketplace, and clients can make quick, informed decisions about who to hire. 

Because JSS is so important to our customers, it’s essential that the logic behind this score is transparent and that the score accurately reflects talent's past performance on their contracts. This sometimes requires us to make modifications for the benefit of Upwork's customers and the health of the marketplace. 

Today, we've introduced a few changes to JSS that are aligned to our goals of transparency and accuracy, and are rooted in feedback that we've heard from you, our customers. These changes are:

• Now talent can earn JSS after completing 2 projects with 2 unique clients anytime within a 24 month period. Previously we required at least 4 projects with 2 unique clients.
• We are putting more emphasis on public feedback, which gives talent more transparency into the outcomes that impact their score. This also will give clients a deeper understanding of talent’s strengths and weaknesses and how they performed on previous projects.

You can read more about these changes and how we calculate JSS overall in our Help Center.

We're excited about these updates, and are committed to continuing to listen to your feedback and improve our marketplace. Thank you for your trust in our team and our products.

[#2]

Hello Brandon,

Thank you for the update. I have had a JSS score of around 80% and it has been updated every 2 weeks - the latest update was on 10. Dec, so my question is does the new policy apply to my JSS update, and if Yes then how will it affect my JSS, in which aspect?

Thank you so much and best regards,

Kieu.

[#3]

Hi Kieu, 

Yes, the Job Success Score changes were applied in the last update, which was on 10 December. 

As for how this affects you, with this change, public feedback from clients now carries more weight in your Job Success Score (JSS). This makes it easier for you to connect your JSS with the feedback you’ve seen from your clients. Check out this article to understand how your Job Success Score is calculated.

[#4]

MY JOB SUCCESS SCORE IS WRONG  @50%, AND IT IS ENTERED INCORRECTLY. HOW CAN I CHANGE THIS?

James K. Davis jndavis98@sbcglobal.net

[#5]

James. Did you ever get feedback from Upwork on how to correct your jss score? I have a similar issue.  Camille

[#6]

Hi Upwork support team in have not been updated about my jss i completed the contract of 100$ with good feedback so I'm disturbed about that kindly confirm to why my jss was not updated

[#7]

How can a freelancer access the exact numbers being accounted for calculating their JSS?

Transparency is the best way to legitimate the score being used.

Thanks,

JRO

[#8]

Hi! It is sad because my Top-Rated Plus badge was removed because of this update. You updated this JSS but did not notify us via Email about these changes. I was expecting to get paid tomorrow, but we will need to sacrifice because of this. If you were updating the rules, it would be better if we were notified or the effectivity is not instant.

It was also hard to contact your Support and talk to a live agent. From a 100% success score, it went to Unavailable and lost my Top-Rated Plus badge, so my hard-earned money will not be credited on time because of this.

[#9]

Thank you for taking the time to post on this thread, Leonidas. 

I understand how this must make you feel after losing your eligibility for faster payments as a Top Rated freelancer. I have shared your sentiments with the team and how talent like you value being informed ahead of time (preferably through email) of changes that may impact your access to certain features. 

Let us know if you have other feedback you'd wish to share. 

[#10]

This is a very unbalanced ranking system that promotes turn and burn and small short-term contracts. If the goal is to attract more DAU, it probably would make more sense to have the ranking reflect on the freelancer or agency's ability to execute and deliver on a project instead of factoring in how frequently they get new contracts. I have a 4.5 and 5 star rating but my JSS is 85%? My contracts are all long term. This makes it increasingly difficult to get new contracts. Better talent attracts better job listers and companies, which in turn generates more DAU for Upwork. The current system makes more freelancers and agencies want to leave because of how difficult it is to get a good contract with anything less than a 95% JSS. 

[#11]

I'm going through the same thing. I had a random end of contract with a client who was not all that great towards the end and gave me a 4/5 my score was at a 100 then went down 85 I feel that is completely unfair rating. Upwork is trash and will leave once I am done with a project.

[#12]

MY JOB SUCCESS JSS @ 50% IS INCORRECT. HOW CAN IT BE CORRECTED?

JAMES K. DAVIS  JNDAVIS98@SBCGLOBAL.NET

[#13]

Excuted too !

[#14]

My job success score @ 50% is wrong. How can it be corrected? 

James k. davis jndavis98@sbcglobal.net

[#15]

Hi Bardon,

Well in my personal experience, there's still some untraspernacy regarding factors affecting calculating JSS, and i would kindly appreciate a real investigation regarding my profile, I've made tracking my JSS in the past two months,  and calculations and notes on my JSS were like following:

1 - i was 91% two months ago, and I won big contracts with direct messages or invitations (not even with applying to jobs), i did great 5 stars on those contracts, so it does make sense to go up to 100% which what happened

2 - after I've been 100% I started to get hired into higher paying jobs, also with direct messages and proposals even with a higher hourly rate, and still received 5 starts feedback on those new contracts, and even extremely happy clients with excellent private and public feedback

If that's the case after this update and as you already say public feedback has more impact, I need someone to explain how on earth JSS went down to 92% despite i did not get even one bad feedback whether it's public or private (I'm sure on this as clients tend to hire me on more other projects but maybe he wants another category so he opens new contract !!!!)

- Things I did which I don't know does it affects JSS or not (as I mentioned earlier not enough transparency), which naturally would happen if i started getting more hires and with long-term clients and higher hourly rates, things like :

1. not applying for jobs for like two or three weeks straight, which is normal as some clients already reach out to me directly via messages.
2. less hours worked / week as I focus more on quality which is what normally would happen when I increase my rate, by the way, it's totally 100% normal for the client if his work is done with the required quality, he even might appreciate the speed some times.
3. decline low-budget, low-quality job invitations, clients with spam jobs, or clients with no experience, etc..(which is up to me to decide).

and here's my question and my concern Do those three points affect my JSS calculation or not?

[#16]

Hi Brandon, I meet all the criteria and I am not a top rated talent yet. Do you know why?

[#17]

Thanks for this Update 😊

[#18]

Hi Brandon, thank you for the update. I have one doubt - My profile was Top Rated Plus a few days ago. I have not received a single negative review recently, infact I have only received positive feedbacks from my clients. Yet, my profile got demoted from Top Rated Plus to Top Rated Only. Why?

[#19]

Thanks for this actualizacion

[#20]

Hello, 

Recently my upwork agency got JSS status of 100%, I was very happy because I am a newbie and I am trying very hard to do everything well to earn a good reputation and build a career on Upwork.

 Yesterday I was very upset because my JSS dropped dramatically from 100% to 33%, I'm trying to understand what I did wrong? 

In my agency, we have closed 1 contract recently with an excellent score of 5, we have not had any bad reviews or disputes with clients. 

It's a big blow to my reputation and career and I think there was some kind of mistake. I'm a specialist and I do my job very well and such a low rating is a big blow to my reputation and a negative impact on my success on the platform. 

Please check my scores and advise me what happened to cause such a big drop, I think it's a mistake. 

[#21]

My JSS has been gradually dropping from 98% to 95% over the past 2-3 weeks.. the contracts that I've completed were given 5-star feedback and I have a few open contracts still ongoing. Are clients able to respond negatively to a milestone on an open contract? Trying to figure out why my JSS is dropping.

[#22]

I have the same sentiment. I have 100% JSS and my Top Rated badge has been removed. 

[#23]

I just noticed that my JSS is 50%!! Since i was working on longer term projects outside of Upwork recently, i did shorter and smaller projects here mostly, but all of them with basically 5star reviews only. Maybe two of them were like 95% instead of 100% happy. It is also true that i was not continuously on Upwork looking for jobs the past 3 years, but why does this affect a success score? 

I also would like to ask about private comments? What are these exactly for? I would strongly prefer the client to tell me directly if he was not happy with something, so i can learn from it. What it is useful for, if I don't even know if someone was unhappy with something, just pulling my scores down unknowingly? This looks terrible on my profile and i totally get it that at first glance it probably creates a negative view.

So my question is - how can i improve this? Like, literally if i don't win top jobs, only smaller ones (which i thought first that could be good do collect good reviews with!), my score gets automatically worse?

[#24]

Brandon,

I think this was a much needed feature and thanks for making the improvement.

Too many clients don't understand Upwork's rating system nor how to review freelancers so this is a helpful change.

Another change to consider is the three month rule that allows freelancers to remove inappropriate reviews once every three months provided they have 10 clients during that period of time.

Bascially that is a 10% removal rate. However for more active freelancers that have 100 clients every three months that is a removal rate of 1%. A ratio that is the same for all freelancers should be used versus giving favor to lower activity freelancers and a penalty to more productive freelancers.

[#25]

Hello! I just want to confirm that if client added bad feedback and all amount of the  contract refunded to client then his feedback will effect the Jss?