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alanhorenstein
Community Member

Upwork removed message dialog to invite freelancers to a job with a personalized note

Upwork has removed the option to write a personal note in a job invitation when you click "Invite to Job" from the "post a job" or "saved freelancers" areas. Now, when you click "Invite to Job," it just sends the standard note and tells you they have been invited. Not sure how recently this happened.

 

This of course cripples our ability to connect with freelancers in a thoughtful way, and makes every job invite look like spam. Support explained this decision to me as a means to accelerate the invitation process. I'm sure that it does result in x% faster throughput, but it caused me to waste two invitations to top freelancers who will likely never answer me, plus 20 minutes with Support. Happily, I found this...

 

WORKAROUND: save the freelancer's profile link elsewhere and open it in a new window. From the freelancer's profile page, the "Invite to Job" button behaves as it used to, opening a message window that allows you to write your own note explaining why you selected this person, and what next steps to plan for.

ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Faced with a baffling Upwork initiative, one often finds the answer to the riddle in what is known in labor politics as a speedup. There is a dismaying correlation between Upwork's obsession with speed and its treatment of the contracting process as some kind of assembly line, to be tweaked at the whim of management. Their official position on this change is a virtual endorsement of the analogy.

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19 REPLIES 19
a_lipsey
Community Member

Well, as a freelancer who gets a number of invites, I rarely see that field actually used for a specialized message. I would really love it if it clients explain WHY they want me to submit a proposal to their job. Especially when their job posts tend to not say very much about the exact project. 


Amanda L wrote:

Well, as a freelancer who gets a number of invites, I rarely see that field actually used for a specialized message. I would really love it if it clients explain WHY they want me to submit a proposal to their job. Especially when their job posts tend to not say very much about the exact project. 


Hi Amanda,

I receive between two and four invitations per week, and I have received over a thousand invitations since 2011 when I began here. I always, always respond when someone has taken the time to single me out in an invitation. So naturally, we a hiring manager here, and when hiring with my own client account, I give myself the advantage of personalizing the invitations I send.

As a freelancer interviewing, there is a very strong correlation between that kind of client and  success in the interview and on the job. On the client side, sending a standard note to a busy freelancer squanders your opportunity to connect with him or her.

 

Wishing you continued success, Amanda,

 

-Alan

Hi Alan,

 

As a follow-up on your report and earlier conversation, I can confirm the message box within the specific invite flow you mentioned is no longer displaying by design. In the past, this process took several steps and clients were prompted to add a personalized note or use the one we provided. We removed the message box as part of the invite flow to streamline the process. I know this may not be ideal in your situation given how you structure your hiring within your team. You should still be able to send a personalized invite message from Freelancer Search or from freelancer profile. We do want and appreciate your feedback and have shared it with our product team. Thanks!

~ Valeria
Upwork

Faced with a baffling Upwork initiative, one often finds the answer to the riddle in what is known in labor politics as a speedup. There is a dismaying correlation between Upwork's obsession with speed and its treatment of the contracting process as some kind of assembly line, to be tweaked at the whim of management. Their official position on this change is a virtual endorsement of the analogy.


Douglas Michael M wrote:

Faced with a baffling Upwork initiative, one often finds the answer to the riddle in what is known in labor politics as a speedup. There is a dismaying correlation between Upwork's obsession with speed and its treatment of the contracting process as some kind of assembly line, to be tweaked at the whim of management. Their official position on this change is a virtual endorsement of the analogy.


I'd say more than a silent kudo, but having recently been reprimanded, I'll just say thanks for putting things into words in a nicer way than I would. I'm going to learn how to be critical in a more polite way. Smiley Wink

researchediting
Community Member

I assume the boilerplate message continues to use that cloyingly breezy language about a "personal" invitation?

I believe you are referring to this intriguingly vague missive, Douglas?

 

Hello!

I'd like to invite you to take a look at the job I've posted. Please submit a proposal if you're available and interested.

AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Alan, 


I wanted to check if you were trying to do it through this route? I tried it from search, and from the Saved Freelancers option, and clicked on the "Invite to Job" button, and I was redirected to this page. Are you able to access this page when you try to invite freelancers?

Create job post.png

 

 


~ Avery
Upwork

Hi Avery,

 

Thanks for stepping in. No, not I nor any of my clients use this path, to create a job based on liking one freelancer. This is not how we think or work.

 

Typically we first discuss the need, see if anyone internal can fill it and if not, we discuss scope and budget. Then we create, review and approve a job requisition. Then we search Upwork for talent that may match our need, and we save any strong profiles into our Saved Freelancers with notes. If it looks like there is a pool of viable candidates, we post the job in Upwork as invite-only, then we begin to invite candidates from among our Saved freelancers.

 

This is where we hit the snag. I went to my Saved Freelancers to invite our top choice. Where previously, that opened the dialog to message the candidate, yesterday there was nothing. The system just sent an invite. There has never been a way to send an invitee a follow up message before they accept, so we were stuck having sent an impersonal, turn-off invitation.

 

I let this happen once that way, then once from another screen, before I contacted Support. They transferred me to a client specialist who told me Upwork took away ALL means to write an invitation message to any freelancer and offered the dubious explanation that it was in my interest. Fortunately, he was mistaken, as I found out by chance because I had not saved every top candidate into Saved Freelancers.

 

I had saved all freelancer profile URLs in Slack, where the client and I had been discussing them. Pasting the freelancer profile URL into a browser resulted in the old expected invitation window becoming available, so I wrote the remaining freelancers personal notes.

 

Let me share how this played out, within the first hour: 

  • the two freelancers who were invited with the standard message immediately declined the invitation
  • two out of three who received the personal invitations immediately accepted

Our two top choices gave us no consideration, and we correlate this experience with Upwork having crippled our ability to message them thoughtfully.

 

My client also uses a competing talent service that operates on a different business model, so he has choices. He spends less than half his contractor budget with Upwork.

 

I can understand that the analytics team told Upwork management that removing the option would result in a 1% increase in profits due to accelerating the hiring cycle, but client satisfaction in a world of choice also impacts the bottom line. I would appreciate you escalating my concern to someone who can revert this decision, Avery.

 

Thanks! -Alan

Hi Alan,

 

Thanks for following-up and sharing more details.

 

I can confirm I tried to replicate and do see the message box doesn't appear when using the invite button for saved freelancers within the job post and when opting to invite a freelancer while posting a new job post. I followed up with our team with your report and my findings and will share an update here as soon as I receive more information.

 

Thanks for the report!

~ Vladimir
Upwork

IF the ability for buyers to write a personalized message has been removed (vs. a system glitch) it might be the dumbest move by U to date.

 

Unless, of course, U does not want to make their % on completed jobs.

 

What in the name of .... y'all can fill in whatever word works best .... is the logic behind denying buyers the ability to research profiles and then write a few personalized words indicating they actually looked at a profile?

 

I, for one, would like to know the reason(s) behind this.  And the logic .... if any.

Why on earth would Upwork remove this functionality? As someone who has worked as  a freelancer on this platform for many years, I can't tell you how much difference it makes to see a custom message explaining why someone is inviting, versus the boiler plate generic message from Upwork.

 

Taking this away makes future prospects think we're just quickly inviting people and not putting any thought in, when the reality couldn't be further from the truth in regards to people I choose to invite.  

 

What a shortsighted decision from Upwork, taking away core functionality for absolutely no reason at all.

24 + hours later and Upwork's dead silence speaks volumes.   😞

Hi Wendy,

 

As I mentioned in my previous post on this thread the message box was removed from the Invite Freelancers tab of the job posting (pictured in the screenshot below) to streamline the process.

Screenshot_2.png

 

Once the freelancer accepts the invite, a message room is created where the project can be further discussed. I'd also like to reiterate that the message box is still available when inviting freelancers from Freelancer Search or from freelancer profile.

 

I'd also like to add that since we started testing it, we saw increase in not only invites by clients in this new experience but also hire rates for these jobs. That's why it's been rolled out to all clients now.

~ Valeria
Upwork

Valeria, with all due respect ... have you read the comments by both Clients and Freelances as to why this is a bad idea?  If so, please address / explain Upwork's rationale in light of the same comments.

 

It would be nice if U would back up sweeping statements like "I'd also like to add that since we started testing it, we saw increase in not only invites by clients in this new experience but also hire rates for these jobs. That's why it's been rolled out to all clients now" with facts and figures ... or at least a % increase that included an averaged dollar value of jobs.

 

BTW, we all appreciate the fact that the ability to personalize the actual invite, if from Search or Profile, has been retained

 

 

 

Hi Valeria,

 

I appreciate your reply to this, even if it is an unpopular feature. Thanks for sharing our feedback to management. 

 

-Alan

Thanks for testing this, Vlad, and thanks for escalating these informal comments to management.

 

As a hiring manager, this was a brief but frustrating speedbump, and knowing the workaround now gives me an advantage over every other client who just scratched his head for a minute and said to himself, "oh well, I guess that's how it works now."

 

-Alan

Now someone from U. please inform us how many clients frequent the forums to discover the work-around.  I think not many.

 

This continues to be the dumbest and most inexplicable move to date.

 

Upwork seems to think that speed dating works. It doesn't continue down that road to see that for however many fun, but transient,  moments there may be in bed, the marriage ends in tears due to ignoring that old-fashioned notion of getting to know one another first. 

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