Questions about interviews

[cekennedy]

Hi Everyone,

My name is Caitlin, and I’m on the Upwork UX Research team. We’re currently trying to improve our users’ interviewing experience. I’d love to hear feedback on the experience from our users in the Community.

We’re exploring how to schedule and do interviews with freelancers. Please tell us about these six questions:

1. Do you typically conduct an interview before hiring on Upwork? What type of jobs do you tend to conduct interviews for?
2. What are your motivations for conducting interviews?
3. What types of interviews do you have (e.g., Email, Instant messaging, Video or Voice call, in-person meeting)?
4. Were these interviews scheduled beforehand or did you just wait until you were both online? If they were scheduled - what tools did you use to schedule them? How did you reconcile timezone issues?
5. How were these interviews conducted (e.g., through messaging on Upwork, skype, slack, hangouts or some other tool? through video conferencing, in-person meeting)?
6. Do you have any ideas that would improve the process of scheduling interviews or meetings with freelancers on Upwork?

Thank you!

[cupidmedia]

Hi Caitlyn,

I'm a translation client. I very rarely do interviews. Usually I find that I can get enough information from the freelancer's profile and proposal to determine if they are able to complete the job I'm hiring for. The only "interview" I generally need (in the loosest possible sense of the word) is an exchange through the Upwork messaging system confirming that the freelancer is available for the whole project, or happy to work long-term, or happy with the material, that kind of thing.

I do ask new freelancers to let me know what timezone they are in so I have an idea of when they might be working, in case I need something urgently, but generally it's not important.

In the nearly 4 years I've been using oDesk/Upwork I have *never* spoken to any of my freelancers. I have no idea what any of them sound like or look like (other than from their profile photos) and don't really care. The only communication tools I've ever used are the Upwork messaging system and email.

[claudiacezy]

The need to run an "interview" on Upwork derives from low confidence in stats and info available on the freelancer profile mixed with the lack of tools to verifying the identity of the freelancer.

Verify freelancer, display a badge. Limit the options to manipulate and delete feedback.

From my experience, the initial discussion is about the project requirements, availability. Not an interview in its real meaning.