About New Non-competent freelancers joining Upwork

[shibajyoti]

Dear Upwork Moderation Team,

Can you PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE put a restriction on the new Freelancers that are joining Upwork on a daily basis?

90% of them have no professional skills, and they are killing our job opportunities with utterly poor performances. The clients don't trust us the way they use to do before.

In addition, for non-native freelancers, this pain is much higher.

Thanks

[kinector]

If that is true, professionals like you shouldn't worry. 

They'll get no work, and if they do it's for the worst clients. That is, if they don't get banned first. 

I think this ecosystem is quite self-regulatory. 😉

But if you feel that you're losing business because completely green newbies beat you to it, perhaps you can try to think why a person with your skills cannot stand out in a good way.

There is no competition between true professionals and amateurs, in my view.

What change are you actually hoping to see here, Shibajyoti?

[colettelewis]

What it does is to encourage bottom feeders so that the professional freelancers are expected to match the lowest budgets. I have noticed this in the translation, and particularly editing fields. Far too many wannabe freelance editors think this is an easy option and it encourages clients to think that editing and proofreading is a doddle - it isn't. 

[shibajyoti]

I am not sure, but your reply makes me feel like the Upwork community is only concerned about making that 20 % commission, and whatever it makes out of selling connects or additional services.

They are least bothered about raising its standards for clients to have a more positive experience. Also, this gives me an idea of why clients aren't willing to spend more nowadays.

Anyway, I am accepting this reply as a solution, and I don't want to elongate this issue further.

Cheers!

[roberty1y]

In fact, the freelancers who do make it on to the site are the pick of the crop. Thousands are rejected. 

[petra_r]

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Robert Y wrote:

In fact, the freelancers who do make it on to the site are the pick of the crop. 

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Your trust in an algorithm, especially on Upwork, would be touching if it wasn't so funny...

[roberty1y]

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Petra R wrote:

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Robert Y wrote:

In fact, the freelancers who do make it on to the site are the pick of the crop. 

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Your trust in an algorithm, especially on Upwork, would be touching if it wasn't so funny...

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I mean the pick of the crop compared to those rejected, of course!

[petra_r]

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Robert Y wrote:

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Petra R wrote:

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Robert Y wrote:

In fact, the freelancers who do make it on to the site are the pick of the crop. 

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Your trust in an algorithm, especially on Upwork, would be touching if it wasn't so funny...

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I mean the pick of the crop compared to those rejected, of course!

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I repeat my statement, but turn it around, Your trust in an algorithm, especially on Upwork, would be funny if it wasn't so touching...

[researchediting · Accepted solution]

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Robert Y wrote:

In fact, the freelancers who do make it on to the site are the pick of the crop. Thousands are rejected. 

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I'm not sure we even know that about rejection any more. I don't believe Upwork has touted its rejection rate since a CEO ago. What it has done is shift its attention, both via policy and in the numbers it publishes, to "earning" freelancers. It seems to accept a large quantity of deadwood as too expensive to clear out, or filter out.

[richardrader]

Yea there is no algorithm in the world that can filter out bad freelancers in a consistent and accurate way. You would need to hire more people to vet freelancers but that would cost a ton of money and lead to higher platform fees which would make the cost of UpWork much more expensive. I think UpWork provides a lot of info about each freelancer so that they can vet them themselves. The ones that are no good, simply won't be able to get any jobs. 

[prestonhunter]

I remember when new policies were put in place that meant that Upwork wasn't accepting every freelancer. There was a massive effort to increase the quality of freelancers. We saw tons of posts in the Forum from people who didn't get accepted. Or from people whose "friends" were not accepted.

Later, Upwork introduced connects, and then paid connects.

Since the introduction of paid connects, I don't see all of these posts and threads about new freelancers not getting accepted.

My assumption is that Upwork eased way back on its efforts to block freelancers "whose skills are not in demand", or freelancers which it deemed to be "low quality."

I have no inside information. I have not seen any official announcements to this effect. But that is the assumption I'm making: Upwork now gets paid for connects, so Upwork decided to let most people join as freelancers if they want to, calculating that the money they pay for connects will be worth the sacrifice involved in having lower-quality freelancers on the platform.

[kinector]

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Preston H wrote: 

I have no inside information. I have not seen any official announcements to this effect. But that is the assumption I'm making: Upwork now gets paid for connects, so Upwork decided to let most people join as freelancers if they want to, calculating that the money they pay for connects will be worth the sacrifice involved in having lower-quality freelancers on the platform.

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I have no inside information either, but your deduction sounds perfectly logical for the platform from a business perspective. Maybe selling Connects makes so much profit that allowing anyone to join as a freelancer pays off. 🤑

I do wonder if the client-side customer experience is factored in those profitability calculations somehow as I think more about what Shibajyoti was originally saying: more and more amateurism from the freelancers' side. I haven't been very active here as a client this year so I'm not sure if there's been a negative change. 🤔

But I would still argue as opposed to Shibajyoti's opinion that any amount of amateurs over here has little if any impact on good Upworkers. Not in terms of competition, at least. I'm only seeing an increase in my coconuts (in terms of rates). 😉:desert_island:️😎

[jr-translation]

Well, I could point out a freelancer who translated over 1 million words in 2021. Of cause all human translation at a rate that is 1/5 of the regular market rate in the field. The only competence of this freelancer is selling free machine translation to clients at a price that makes it impossible for professional translators to compete with.

This brings a new aspect to the 20% Upwork makes with the freelancer.

[nyirosamuel]

I'm a freelancer but I once posted a job post and I can tell you it's pretty much easier to filter out competent and non-competent applicants. So, I'd say the proliferation of amateur freelancers shouldn't be a matter of concern, at least based on my experience.