Dear Upwork Community,
About 15 days ago, I applied to a post by a client with "Verified Payment Method". The requirements of that post seemed to be 100% in-line with my portfolio due to which I was quite confident that I would be hired and hence, applied to it. The client has a website on which he sells pre-built PLC code snippets to customers around the world and wanted a PLC programmer for developing those modules.
Few days after applying, I received an invite from the client for an 15-min Skype interview. The status of my proposal at that point changed to "Active Candidacy". After the interview, I was told that I would be required to submit "sample" modules (related to PLC programming) for review first, and only if he was satisfied with the "sample" work would he be in a position to hire me as a PLC Developer.
I spent 06 hours developing the sample software module and writing the PLC code for it from scratch. After submitting my sample work to him and waiting 2-3 days for his response, I received an e-mail from him in which he claimed to have reviewed the code I sent him and was very happy with that. Then he asked me to share "some more modules or code snippets" upon which I politely replied to him that I had already spent a fair amount of time in completing what I submitted to him and as per him, if he was satisfied with that (which he was), then he would hire me to do further development. I even mentioned to him respectfully that in order for me to spend more time, it would perhaps be much better if he hires me officially and starts the Upwork contract so I can be sure that the hours I spend are justified, logged, billed to and paid for by him. He did not respond to that e-mail of mine.
Just now, I have noticed that on the same job-post that he published 14+ days ago, he had sent 50+ more invites, making a total number of invites to 116. This makes me believe that this client is really not interested in hiring any feelancer at all and is just luring them into false comittments by saying what he said to me. He asks them to develop free modules for him so as to "evaluate them as potential hires" but instead, uses those modules without their permission to put them for sale on his website. In reality, he never hires anyone and is just gathering the data and free-stuff on the cost of hardwork and time-spent by the freelancers who get drawn away by the hopes of getting hired by him.
I request Upwork to please take strict action on such clients, who stoop to this level of inconsideration that they fearlessly ask the freelancers to do "free work" for them in order to "evaluate" them but instead, exploit them and use their work to their own benefit without even taking permission!
Regards,
Adnan
