How to adress applicants that the position has been occupied?

[Julien B]

Hi, I would like to know if you have find a way to inform aplicants that hve not been selected for the job that the position has been occupied, other than just letting them see the job has been closed. I mean is it possible to send a collective message to all aplicant that is personnalise (or not) sayin, "I am sorry butt the position for which you applied is now occupied." just to be polite Thanks ju

[Gillian Michele N]

I've seen a few clients requesting the same thing. I thought that it would have been common sense to create the option of 'contacting all applicants'. Maybe it would be a good idea to add this to the feedback section. As you say, we only know the role has been filled if the client decides to close the job.

[Valeria K]

Hi Julien, Thank you for your question. Unfortunately, there is no way to message all the applicants at once at this point. I will forward your suggestion to our Product Team. However, when you close a job, all the applicants and candidates are notified about it automatically, except for those that you have hired. Thank you very much for being a polite and considerate client!

[Gillian Michele N]

Well, this is the point he was making, Valeria. He doesn't want to have to close the job in order to let freelancers know that he's hired someone else. This would also be a useful feature for freelancers. There are many times when I've waited for a response to my application and I only find out that the client has already hired when they close the job or if I happen to look at the job details again.

[Aaron O]

I'm assuming that closing a job is the same as completing it? Notifying the applicants at the completion of a larger project makes no sense if the job is completed 2-3months from the start date. The notification system should trigger when you hit the "hire" button and have checked the button that says you're only looking to hire one freelancer. That way if you have 20-30 applicants, you're not stuck trying to copy pasta a response into a stupid amount of DMs. 

[Rene K]

When you close a job, no one can apply anymore. Non-hired applicants are not directly informed, but they can browse their sent application page and see what was closed and what wasn't.

Once you close a job because you have found and hired the freelancer(s) that you needed, you don't need to notify other applicants. Most of them won't even check the job status. Bidding on Upwork is a fire and forget process. When a freelancer sends out a proposal they are done with it, unless the client messages back.

[Randall S]

I'm with Rene on this. As a freelancer, I honestly don't cling to every audition / bid I send out. I don't have TIME to do so. 

When a potential client DOES respond to let me know they went another direction, it's usually a way to maintain a level of contact for future potential work, which I appreciate... but I don't need to be inundated with messages for every client who's chosen another vendor. Honestly, THAT would be a waste of my time. 

If they don't make contact, I assume they went another direction or closed the job. I don't need to know why or who or where. When I send a bid, the ball is in the client's court. What he or she does with it only matters if they choose to hire me. 

One quick caveat to that, though: if we've taken the next step and have actually initiated an interview, I definitely appreciate a quick word from the potential client if they've decided on a different direction. 

[Irena C]

This is a really interesting perspective. As a client, I would have tried to lean on letting the bidders know (hence me reading this discussion, as I was trying to figure out how to properly finish the selection process with those who have not been chosen). And of course, what you are saying makes sense, given you probably bid on several projects each day.