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lchristensen
Community Member

Change to Paid Connects for Freelancer having negative consequences

A couple of days ago, I posted a job - visible on Upwork only - to the job boards. And for the past few days, I've had a lot of freelancers try to reach out to me personally via email and phone to snag the job rather than submit a proposal through the job posting. I'm wondering whether anyone else has noticed an uptick in this behaviour, and whether we'll be seeing it a lot more now that freelancers have to pay for the priviledge of submitting proposals? If so, I'm not a fan. At all. In fact, I feel a little stalked when someone managed to track down my personal cell #. 

7 REPLIES 7
g_vasilevski
Retired Team Member
Retired Team Member

Hi Lorenda,

I`m sorry about the incovience this had caused you.
One of our team members will review your job and reach out to you via ticket to assist you further.
I would also like to confirm that asking to get paid outside of Upwork is a violation of our TOS. Feel free to share the evidence on your ticket and our team will investigate the freelancers further and take proper actions. Thank you.

~ Goran
Upwork
versailles
Community Member


Lorenda C wrote:

A couple of days ago, I posted a job - visible on Upwork only - to the job boards. And for the past few days, I've had a lot of freelancers try to reach out to me personally via email and phone to snag the job rather than submit a proposal through the job posting. I'm wondering whether anyone else has noticed an uptick in this behaviour, and whether we'll be seeing it a lot more now that freelancers have to pay for the priviledge of submitting proposals? If so, I'm not a fan. At all. In fact, I feel a little stalked when someone managed to track down my personal cell #. 


This has nothing to do with the new connects system, some idiots have been doing this before. Try to never leave anything in your post that can help them track you. 

 

The new connects system is an attempt to get rid of these idjits on the long run and to avoid them to spam clients' job posts.

 

 

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"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless
prestonhunter
Community Member

re: " I've had a lot of freelancers try to reach out to me personally via email and phone to snag the job rather than submit a proposal through the job posting."

 

Lorenda:

Ugh! Those people are the worst. They are absolute pests. I'm very sorry you experienced that.

But Rene is right. They were doing this before the advent of paid connects. It is quite possible they aren't even Upwork freelancers.

 

Obviously you would never ACTUALLY hire somebody who so horrendously violated decorum and the protocol of the site you were posting jobs on. So I'm not sure what they're thinking.

Oh yeah, I've always received these type of things in the past, I was just surprised at the large uptick in occurances. They got my normal response...I wrote down their name, informed them that I do not accept proposals outside of Upwork, then immediately marked their proposal as a hard "pass" if they actually took my advice and applied. 🙂

I should probably stop being lazy and go ahead and gather information to forward to Upwork and get them banned. Thanks, all!
tlsanders
Community Member


Lorenda C wrote:

A couple of days ago, I posted a job - visible on Upwork only - to the job boards. And for the past few days, I've had a lot of freelancers try to reach out to me personally via email and phone to snag the job rather than submit a proposal through the job posting. I'm wondering whether anyone else has noticed an uptick in this behaviour, and whether we'll be seeing it a lot more now that freelancers have to pay for the priviledge of submitting proposals? If so, I'm not a fan. At all. In fact, I feel a little stalked when someone managed to track down my personal cell #. 


While this is annoying, it may actually become a good weed-out tool from a client perspective. It's hard to imagine a situation in which I'd want to hire someone who decided to break the platform rules and pester me outside of appropriate channels to save a few cents.

tta192
Community Member

You could make it clear in the job description that you want all applicants to submit a proposal and not contact you in any other way. It won't be 100% effective, but still an improvement.

Make sure to not include any information in the job post that would allow them to contact you directly.

Another preventive measure is to ask freelancers not to include your personal details in the feedback they leave you at the end of the contracts. 

tlsanders
Community Member


Andrei T wrote:

You could make it clear in the job description that you want all applicants to submit a proposal and not contact you in any other way. It won't be 100% effective, but still an improvement.

Make sure to not include any information in the job post that would allow them to contact you directly.

Another preventive measure is to ask freelancers not to include your personal details in the feedback they leave you at the end of the contracts. 


Why should she have to "make it clear" that she wants freelancers to follow the system and refrain from violating the terms of service they agreed to?

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