Boosted Proposals Negatively Impacting My Ability to Filter and Vet Freelancers

[#1]

As a client this feature is not helping me find the most qualified freelancers. It is really just negatively impacting my ability to adjust the filtering to show me the most recent applicants or to sort by other categories. When I try to filter by newest so I can see and respond to the most recent ones, it keeps the boosted proposals on top, even though I've already both shortlisted those two and responded, and so I have to scroll down even further to see new proposals. I don't care who has boosted their post. I am looking for the best fit, not who paid to annoy me in my filtering ability. 

I understand why freelancers would think this would be useful, but whether or not the proposal is boosted is not going to impact my vetting and selection of a consultant. I look at each of the proposals and vet them based on specific criteria. And where they show up in the list is not part of that criteria. I think most discerning clients would agree. When you force these boosted proposals on top, it means I have to scroll more and makes it harder for me to organize who I've looked at and who I haven't.

Please remove this feature and just let me select freelancers based on how I want to select them. Also, the best match is ridiculous still. I posted for a health coach, and I didn't select any skills related to business coaching, but none of the health coaches are best matches, and all of the business coaches are best matches. 

[#2]

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Tauseef A wrote:

I view this 'boosted proposal' as kind of purchasing your job. The one who pays the most gets the job. 

For instance, I haven't boosted any of my proposals in last like 7 months and out of 22 proposals that I sent, only two were viewed and I was hired on both of them. 

I'm 100% sure that my tailored, manually written, relevant proposals are better than most of other proposals yet I lose a chance to get hired because someone else's purchased the job which sounds a vicious idea. 

I'm a top-rated freelancer with 100 percent job success score yet my proposals aren't opened because I might end up sending my proposals to the last row of the juxtaposition.  

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Hi Tauseef, that is not actually the case. Boosting supposedly will increase your chances of having a proposal opened. What I can say from my experiences with this as a client is that most freelancers use it foolishly. It only truly helps you when you are really the best of the best and have the best proposal and profile. If you boost with a mediocre profile and proposal (which I'm sorry to say is what many freelancers have, and survive quite well on currently) or worse (which even even more freelancers have just outright bad proposals and profiles) all it does is call out how the client should not hire you. 

But I want to draw attention back to the point of this thread. From the client perspective, boosted proposals make it harder for me to go through my hiring process. Upwork needs to attract and keep clients by making it as easy as possible to find the talent they want to hire. Boosting proposals, in my experience, did the opposite. They made it harder. My concern is that boosting will actually drive clients away. The bottom line is revenue. We lose clients, we lose revenue. If you lose clients because you've made it more difficult to hire, then you lose revenue. Upwork should not be doing things that negatively impact the client experience. 

[#3]

That's extremely silly. You actually believe that if a freelancer with no relevant skills and a poorly written proposal bids the most, the client (who somehow has managed to establish a business and have need for freelancers) will be so hopelessly stupid as to hire them simply because they are listed first?

[#4]

Amanda, it's amazing that you came forward with this as a client. I completely agree with you. With this new change by Upwork, our expertise and experience are now based on who outbids the most or who spends all of their connects and gets no reply for an interview!

I totally agree that this makes the process of choosing a suitable freelancer a nightmare because as you said yourself, you are unable to organize anything and your selection is influenced by something unimportant like a boost. 

Upwork, this is unreasonable: we apply for jobs in order to earn money. But, we spend all of our connects and then have to pay for more. But, how can we pay for more, when we don't have money in the first place? No one is replying to our proposals since the bid has been introduced.

I wish that the old Upwork is back-these changes aren't helping the freelancers in any way, but rather helping Upwork earn. In the beginning, Upwork was for the freelancers and supporting them 100%, Now, it's just profit, profit, profit. 

Where's the quality from before? -We supported this platform because it understood what we needed as freelancers but now, it's just dragging us down.

[#5]

I totally agree. 

I had been getting consistent works/replies before the 'boosted proposal' technique was introduced. Now I no longer even get my proposals opened by the clients. 

Being a full-time freelancer whose more than 70 percent income depends upon doing work on Upwork, I'm one of the victims who despite his hard work, 100 percent job success score and top-rated badge doesn't get a reply on any of his proposals. 

[#6]

 It's affecting all of us, unfortunately. As a Top Rated freelancer myself with 100% success score, I've been struggling to be seen, noticed, and interviewed. I spent all my connects and nothing. I started wondering is it me, so I turned to this forum. Now I see both clients and freelancers being negatively affected by this unreasonable change. I'm really wondering where is this taking us? Should we use other platforms?

[#7]

Well, I doubt if no one is collecting data from the community forum. Almost everyone that I have ever interacted with has negative remarks about this 'boosted proposal' thingy. 

Even, I'm not sure about the correlation but I no longer get regular works through my project catalogs as well. 

It is good not to put your eggs in one basket though. 

I'm seriously worried about what's going next. 

Upwork would currently be making a few extra bucks but purchasing a job would never be a great idea instead of 'earning a job'.

[#8]

BTW,  I thought to create an agency to see if things get flared up. I dunno if that's a good idea but we can't sit down calmly instead of ameliorating our techniques to sneak in to the lot of freelancers who keep winning jobs through paying for them. 

[#9]

I totally agree.

[#10]

As freelancers here I am not happy about these features, it makes us spend more money on connections and make it more difficult for newbies to stand a chance an offer / Invite. These features only benefit the company (Upwork) without them looking out on how to solve the problem of a fake job posting.

[#11]

Completely agreed, as a freelancer I feel that it is unfair because a lot of times the deserving people don't even get the opportunity to show their offer and profile to the client because their offer was outbid by someone.

[#12]

I agree with these. I am a freelancer.

[#13]

yes this Feature is kind of irritatng for those people who want to filter freelancers based on true ablties  also they lost their ability to listen somewhere along the way. Upwork was wonderful and supportive before this terrible change. I miss those times and I wish they could listen to those who make this platform what it really is: the freelancers.

[#14]

thanks

[#15]

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Amanda L wrote:

I understand why freelancers would think this would be useful..

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As a freelenacer I can assure you that most of us don't see the boost useful but rather as another bad Upwork feature. This boost feature has been present also on some other freelancing sites for a long time and not having this is one of the reasons I've always preferred Upwork to those other platforms. I've been using Upwork for over 10 years and I can tell you that all features introduced in the past 5 years have had a negative impact, Upwork today is way less attractive to me than it was 5 years ago. Every feature introduced in the last 5 years was purely intended at giving Upwork more revenue, with no consideration as to the real benefit to clients and freelancers. And it's not about the extra fees, I would gladly pay more fees to get back the Upwork of 5 years ago, and I would gladly pay even further fees to get the oDesk of 10 years ago. The tons of useless features they have been adding have just been adding layers upon layers of complexity and confusion for an application that should really have just 2 features: client job listings and freelancer proposals. Not only there is confusion about ratings, feeback and job sucess scores, but now there is the added bias of paid boosts. A while ago when they intoduced connects Upwork claimed that this was to reduce the amount of bids on jobs to prevent freelancers from just blinding bidding on all jobs hence making the bids that reach the client more relevant. Now, adding the boost feature they are doing just the opposite of this! ...now those freelancers that are less relevant to a job post will be the ones most likely to use boosts thinking they would get a chance over the other more relevant bids! We're here to offer a service because we are good at what we do, I don't see why I should need to boost my proposal beyond presenting my skills and experience relevant to the job rquirements.

[#16]

Boosted proposals is simply a form of advertising/lobbying. Those are normal business practices.

[#17]

Hi Amanda L,

As a freelancer I am just as annoyed by this new feature. 

It seems to muddy the waters with regards to getting the best fit for both freelancer and client.

[#18]

Thanks Amanda for take this issue on board.
I am also against the boost feature as it's costly. Also not all clients are like you who checks all the profiles, they start from top and mostly send interviews as they find suitable candidate. Spending on connects is just a waste of money for most of the freelancers. It's helpful for BDM's to submit proposals and show on top. I have read many discussions on not getting interviews or profile views since few months for many freelancers and it may be due to this boost feature.

[#19]

Thanks for highlighting this,  on the freelancers' discussion board as well there is a thread going on on this topic.  I also wasted most of my credits last month,  I have stopped boosting my proposals now,  interview invites will be based on who is most suitable not based on who had more money / credits.   bye bye boosting...

[#20]

I'll chime in. As a freelancer who started this year, I also find this auctioning feature terrible. Like Kim above me just said, it muddies the waters and I'm just like - "What's going on?" Which is why I came to these forums today. 

Strangely, the other day I bid 1 connect (unboosted) on a job that hadn't even listed the pay rate and I saw there was someone who'd already spent 50 connects for the top spot. Who is that person and what are they thinking? 

So, yeah. For the record, I hate this proposal boosting system and I hope it's scrapped. Like the rest of you, I understand Upwork is making more money in the short term, but I agree that in the long term - they may end up driving people away from the platform if word starts getting around that it's not a reliable place for either clients or freelancers to find what they need. 

[#21]

I'm brand new here as a client and when I saw boosted proposals on my first job posting my immediate reaction was "what the eff is this?" I do not like this feature and I do not want freelancers paying money just for me to consider their proposal. Apply, and I'll consider your proposal. 🙂 Thanks for the info, I will start adding "please do not boost" to my job posts! 

[#22]

I'm new on Upwork, and I'm almost at the verge of being discourage by this boosting of proposals. Upwork kindly look into this.

[#23]

Sounds like you're one of those rare clients who actually plows through all of the proposals. That's great. Unfortunately, it's not the rule. 

I agree that best match is rarely on point and more of an annoyance than anything. But, when there are 50 proposals and half of them are auto-generated or random cut and pastes from freelancers who send hundreds of proposals at a time, boosting can help quickly identify freelancers who are actually investing in the job search and presumably focused on jobs that are a good match for their skills. 

[#24]

Amanda,

You're awesome. Thanks for sharing such kind of important issue which is torturing all of us. Since being TOP RATED on Upwork I applied for several job posts but didn't get many replies let alone get hired. It's a curse for us. 

Sirajul

[#25]

Let me preface this by stating that I rarely boost any of my proposals and that I preferred the boost system when it was blind.

I see a lot of comments about how "unfair" boosted proposals are. As if it isn't simply a form of advertising/lobbying which is a normal business practice. Some people even claim that it is equivalent to purchasing the job! It is simply to ensure that you get eyeballs on your proposal - nothing more, nothing less. The only "unfairness" is that the price of Connects are not adjusted to the power of the dollar in each country, such that they are much more expensive, relatively, for some than others.

There are those who claim that it is nonsensical to spend 50 Connects on a proposal. But that is up to the freelancer to decide. If paying $7.50 to advertise/lobby your bid increases your chances of getting a job that will pay more than that after both fees and taxes, then it could result in a net gain. The value of visibility increases when the job has a sea of proposals for the client to wade through.

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Amanda L wrote:

As a client this feature is not helping me find the most qualified freelancers. It is really just negatively impacting my ability to adjust the filtering to show me the most recent applicants or to sort by other categories. When I try to filter by newest so I can see and respond to the most recent ones, it keeps the boosted proposals on top, even though I've already both shortlisted those two and responded, and so I have to scroll down even further to see new proposals.

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Amanda, your example here relies on the fact that it only had 2 boosted proposals. Commonly, a job will get more than 3 boosted proposals, such that the specific proposals in the boosted slots change. Especially in the early hours/days.

All of that said,

I have seen a suggestion for improvement with which I agree: allow clients to turn off boosted proposals when they post a job. This can be a paid feature, or simply one that is obscure and defaults to "on". Realistically, it will be a paid feature, if implemented, because that will satisfy both the client demand to not bother with the boosts and Upwork's very real need to turn a profit.

And since boosting is almost certainly not going to be removed, I would prefer to see that it return to the "blind bid" state, which accurately reflected advertising/lobbying everywhere else - where you don't know how much your competition paid to take the customer out to lunch.

ETA: Another common refrain is some variant of "the purpose of Upwork is to allow/enable the best qualified freelancers to get the job". That is wrong. The purpose of Upwork is to provide a marketplace for clients and freelancers, not a concierge matchmaking service. (Except for Enterprise Clients, who pay extra for that). Markets have advertising. Markets have reviews. Freelancers, including Top Rated, who are having increasing difficulty getting jobs are suffering not from boosted connects, but a bloated marketplace. Simply, the freelancer:client ratio has swollen. And from the little that I have seen, Upwork's advertising campaign is more effective for attracting new freelancers than it is for attracting new clients.

[#26]

Your assumption is wrong. There were 3 boosted proposals. Please don't speak for me or try to hijack my thread. If you want to make a thread about your assumptions, go for it. 

I'm very familiar with how boosting works.