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4f19aa7c
Community Manager
Community Manager

Improvements to Freelancer Search Experience for Clients

On March 20, we launched a new test feature to help clients searching for freelancers more easily view the information that’s most critical to them.


Check out the product release for Improvements to Freelancer Search Experience for Clients and let us know your thoughts about this update in the comments below.

28 REPLIES 28
christopherbudde
Community Member

How are the results sorted? Looking at your example it seems that jobs completed is the top facture. Is this true? If not, what is the main sorting criteria?

Hi Christopher, 

I can confirm that this test doesn't affect ranking in any way. Various factors go into search results. Some considerations may include freelancer skills, experience, platform ratings, and other elements to determine a potential match for the client's job.


~ Avery
Upwork
barry_pat
Community Member

Are only Community Managers able to initiate posts on this Feedback page?

AveryO
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Pat, 


That is correct. This section of the Community is where we collect feedback for tests and features we post here. Feel free to share your feedback on the Freelancer board, and if it's related to another post or thread, we'll be sure to merge it there. 


~ Avery
Upwork
celgins
Community Member

I noticed that search results no longer include the first two lines of the freelancer's profile overview/summary. This could mean clients will focus more on the freelancer's title, number of jobs, earnings, and skills categories, but only time will tell.

 

I now see the announcement here .


Clark S wrote:

I noticed that search results no longer include the first two lines of the freelancer's profile overview/summary. This could mean clients will focus more on the freelancer's title, number of jobs, earnings, and skills categories, but only time will tell.


 

It means Upwork realises that many new freelancers can't write a good profile overview to save their lives, and is trying to help them out by hiding their incompetence. Of course, this takes away any advantages for those of us who've put a lot of time and effort into our profiles, and will further decrease the number of invitations that we receive. 

Yes, the advantage is now gone.

 

I had been advising folks to review the first two lines in their profile summaries and confirm the content and its impact because the first two lines are shown in search results.

 

Oh well--no need to keep giving that advice!

40d30364
Community Member

I believe that the first 2 line of freelancers profile should be restored. It's actually a good feature that let the client check you out quickly rather than going to the main profile itself. It's also an advantage for those people that optimize the profile and put effort to be noticed. 

a48b0f4d
Community Member

they only need three pieces of information to determine if freelancers can provide high-quality services that match their needs” … hourly rate, number of completed jobs, and Job Success Score.”

 

Which means for new freelances two out of the three skill profile criteria will throw them at the bottom of the list. their chances of starting a work in the platform will get shrank.

This change is designed to benefit newbies. Are you suggesting that there shouldn't be any way at all for clients to find an experienced, highly-rated freelancer, and no advantages whatsoever for the freelancers who've worked hard to provide good service and build a good reputation here?

taihanrehmat161
Community Member

Can newcomers obtain clients and how can new accounts attract clients?

 

thewriteroftoday
Community Member

I am a Freelancer and a Client. I hire other Freelancers for clients all the time off of Upwork. This new format strips away the personality of the Freelancer by eliminating the first 2 lines of their profile's bio from showing.  I use this information to help vet whose profile I want to view in more detail. The new design, striping it away, would ultimately make the process of hiring become more labor intensive - because instead of scanning the snapshot of bios, I would have to click into profile after profile after profile after profile to see ther personality of the Freelancer to decide if I want to connect with them.  That means instead of viewing 10 preferred Freelancers profiles, I'd have to go into 30-50.

So, the current format might be a tad itty bitty bit confusing to new clients, but, once they adjust to the platform, they'll appreciate the way the searches are done to find freelancers as is.  For all new clients and Freelancers it always takes some mental adjustment to get used to a platform's design, how to use, all the benefits, etc.  I'd rather a client have to spend some time adjusting than to have the search results so heavily diminished in information that it makes the overall hiring process more labor intensive. 

Also, when I'm looking to hire Freelancers, I do like to see their past earnings.  I often hire those with no past earnings and have often been the first to hire a Freelancer on this platform.  So, earnings provide me with knowledge about the Freelancer before viewing their profile, but, it doesn't stop me from hiring someone who is new to the platform.  So, I don't particularly like the new design - it strips away the personality of the indiviudal Freelancers and makes the overall hiring process more labor intensive.

I'd rather spend a week learning the platform as a new client, than have to go through 30-50 profiles when I could have glanced at the mini bios in the search and gone into the 10 profiles I like the most. Long-term, it's less labor intensive for me with the current platform search design as someone who hires other Freelancers.

Sherry,

 

I think it's important to show the Earnings otherwise a Profile with $5,000 could appear the same as a $1,000,000 Profile on the surface until a client starts clicking around. New clients don't know about clicking around.

 

Showing Earnings doesn't take an extra line and would fit perfectly with the proposed new design.

 

I agree with you also that clients that already know how to use the site will have to spend many times the effort to locate the freelancer of choice. A new client if the searches are poor results will think that is all Upwork has to offer. New clients frequently don't know how or don't use the left navigation bar.

 

Why not keep things as is and consider a button to click for a short form? The tech team would know within a week if clients wanted the short form.


William T C wrote:

Sherry,

 

I think it's important to show the Earnings otherwise a Profile with $5,000 could appear the same as a $1,000,000 Profile on the surface until a client starts clicking around. New clients don't know about clicking around.

 


A profile showing $5k in UW earnings could easily be much more qualified and a much better fit for a project than one showing $1,000,000, especially if a client wants to be sure the work is not being farmed out. Many of the most successful professionals on the platform obtain only a portion of their clients and income through Upwork.

 

In any case, UW might have unwittingly created another self-filter for prospective clients, i.e., I'd be less interested in discussing opportunities with one who doesn't know any better than to rely primarily on these metrics rather than scanning the provile overview thumbnails as Sherry described. Unfortunately, they've also -- as usual -- created yet another obstacle for best-match clients, for at least soem of us.

Phyllis,

 

I am in agreement with Sherry.

 

If the information is too surface, it can make the freelancers look identical when they are not which causes clients to waste time searching the site even more.

andr0s
Community Member

Earnings are important. Feedback they have, even success rate, aren't the same thing if it's 20 quick jobs (few months of work) or 20 big projects (many years). 

Just remove those badges, they are useless. As an employer I don't care about "rising talent" (for example) at all, what's the point of that badge? It's just too easy to earn them and it tells me nothing. "Top rated" was nice but now you have pretty much two duplicated things, job success rate and top rated, and I don't see why. Just keep one

a48b0f4d
Community Member

Agreed.

As a new freelancer I don't give a **edited for Community Guidelines** about those badges either.

It feels like a game, and I don't play. 

I don't have time to waste checking five notifications a day because I liked someone's comment, or replied on a comment.

I want to know if someone replied on my proposal, my message, or invited me on an interview. That's all.

alex-nemchyn
Community Member

I think you should take a break and stop improving the lives of freelancers and clients. You have already improved this platform so much. All the clients are running away, and now the freelancers are too. I also wonder if the exchange is working or is it some kind of glitch in the system. I see jobs that were posted 3, 6, 8 hours ago. Is it really that bad, or is it still a technical glitch.

I've thought the same thing about, "you have already improved this platform so much." Sometimes businesses, like Upwork, have a great platform where everything has been successfully improved.  Then, they keep making changes and end up going backwards because the yet, "newer and improved" versions are actually done more to make a change to the site to make the site look new and modern because it's different but it is no longer an actual improvement.  For me, this is one of those instances. For me, this doesn't look like an improvement. It looks like they're going backwards and just trying to make changes to make the platform seem modern. Everyone is always trying to improve things, yet, things are pretty great as they are because they've already been successfully improved in the past.

For example, putting a pink, blue or green badge next to our photos.  That's not an improvement. Clients will have no clue what the Pink badge means, nor the blue, nor the green - unless they take time to research it.  It makes the search more streamlined looking. But, is that an actual improvement? No. 

Like taking out our country of origin.  Does that improve things? Clients sometimes want only talent from the Philippines.  How are they supposed to see at a glance who is from the Philippines and who is not? They can't. Instead, they have to enter the profiles, look, exit the profiles. Enter the next profile, look, exit.  Or, they have take the time to learn how to do Advanced search where they choose to do a search where only Freelancers from the Philippines show.

Knowing the job skills they selected is nice, but, it doesn't really tell me if they're any good at it or not. Having the 2 liner from the bio helps to give me an idea if they might be. With that gone, I would have to go into the profile, look, exit. go to the next profile, look, exit. Go to the next profile, look, exit. Very time consuming and labor intensive.  It would get physically and mentally exhausting looking through every single profile just to find out if they are actually as experienced as I need. Or, on the flip side, when I look to hire people new to the platform.  If I have to go through 100 profiles just to get the information I need rather than glancing through the searches and picking the 20 best ones that stand out - that would just get mentally and physically exhausting.

a48b0f4d
Community Member

It is sad.
I thought to check the profiles(3) of the Community Blog article providers, and although it says they were last seen 2–3 days ago, their profiles are gone.

As a new freelancer hearing that clients are leaving is not very encouraging. 

 

Do I check Fiverr? or is it the same ...

 

I understand that every lesson, every improvement on my profile, or BIO, I learn to do is a plus; no matter if I get hired in this platform or not. But I don't have the time to go through 200 articles (to only collect badges).

 

Asides, I can get those lessons from other places, and improve my existing profile there.

 

I worked about 350 hours helping a “friend” set up her website, during the crazy period we went through, knowing that I will not get fully compensated. But, when she was in a better position she made the working experience unbearable.  

 

I joined Upwork so I can boost my income, while building my confidence, and business, not to spend 10 hours a day reading articles, or find a job that pays $3.


“Work On It, Not Just In It”.

dreamingfilms
Community Member

I totally agree with this, the number of jobs should be highlighted. But the amount earned should be kept as well, it's all four of them, in my opinion.

vinci-_-
Community Member

It is suggested that at least the number of jobs completed and earnings shall be shown in the search page.

It seems like Upwork recently updated the design of search results but isn't showing the freelancer location in the search results (the previous version did).  This is vital information to see on the search results page for context. Is this an oversight or a permanent change?

 

 

 

 

decodistny
Community Member

Why not give clients the ability to customize the data they wish to see (i.e. "most critical to them")? Job done. 

 

garrinevan
Community Member

Shannon, what would really be helpful for freelancers - ability to search *most recent* jobs AND *jobs in our specific niche*. For example, I only care about *Google Ads* jobs. Yet 90% of my feed is Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, social media manager jobs, and other aspects of digital marketing I couldn't care less about. In this niche, Paid Search and Paid Social are very different animals. Oftentimes, the two don't talk with one another....the paid search people don't do paid social and vice versa. Many of us have niched down, so spending hours scrolling on irrelvant job postings is a complete waste of time. Thanks! 

kbadeau
Community Member

I'll tell you something that drive me bonkers... when I'm searching, and I want to go forward or back to someone I saw and liked, I have to scroll to the BOTTOM of the search page, and I can only go forward or back ONE page. At a minimum I should be able to skip over a few pages, so for example I should be able to see <Previous ... 4, 5, 6, 7, ... Next> for page choices, but in reality, like a thousand other pages on the web, there should be a BOX so I can type in the page number. Even if I don't remember the exact page number, if I'm on page 20, I know it was in the first five pages, etc. The navigation is so tedious now, and I want to have the option to change pages both at the top and at the bottom of the search results. There's no reason for it to even say "Previous" or "Next" in a system where those are your only choices anyway.

 

☝️I support that. It's the same everywhere, seeing portfolios, jobs, forum pages, etc...
Yes, a way to be able to write where to go would be nice. 

kbadeau
Community Member

I don't know if this feature is still being tested, but I searched for myself today, and even though I tried refining my search to make myself as findable as possible, I didn't don't show up until the 8th page of results.

 

There are 19 people ahead of me who have made 10K+ but less than 100K.

 

When I don't put in any other filters, just my job niche, earnings (10K+), and a reasonably specific skill I'm searching for, I don't come up in the first 20 pages of results. I stopped there, so who knows where (or if) I actually ever show up. There are 118 freelancers listed with earnings of 10K+ but less than 100K. If you're going to let clients choose earnings as a filter, you need to add more options. For me just adding 100K+ would make a big difference; I don't know if it needs to be something like 10K, 50K, 100K, 500K, but 10K is definitely not enough of a separator. You could have three big jobs and earn 10K, but 10K, for those of us with higher hourly rates, doesn't really tell the story of how long and hard we've worked on the platform to build a solid reputation.

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