For Upwork Staff: Is the Criteria for Top Rated to Become Stricter?

[Brian E]

Requirements for this exclusive program include:

• 90%+ Job Success
• $1,000+ 12-month earnings
• No policy violations
• 100% complete profile

When I think of top talent on any platform this is far from it. 2 factors of the criteria have nothing to do with the skill level of the contractor. If I was hiring a plumber and the 2 of the 4 factors of the best ones would be

1. They have an ID
2. They haven't had a speeding ticket

I'd have a guy who has low car insurance but can't stop my toilet from flooding. I'm not trying to harp and do agree a 90%+ Job Success Rate is strong but what is the criteria beyond that?

$1,001 earned in 12 months on the platform and I'm top talent? What are you top talent of if your earning less than $84 a month for your services? A little more exact math for that #:

Years worth of full time: $0.48/hr

Even at the minimum UpWork rate that's less than 1hr of day of work 

The main thing I see clients who pay $3.33 (and flipped when the min rate occurred) is that their workers aren't worth more because there's no skill in what they're doing and should be happy to get that. That doesn't sound like top talent. You couldn't pay the electric bill and internet cost for 3 months for what constitutes the top talent badge.

[Natasha R]

lol that's right

$1,001 earned in 12 months on the platform and I'm top talent? What are you top talent of if your earning less than $84 a month for your services?

[Tim H]

I completely agree... and I hope Upwork has realized the JS metric has done nothing positive. 

It's fatally flawed.

It's done nothing but cause stress, create negativity and propagate resentment between freelancers and Upwork.

Kill it. Bury it. Put it out to pasture. It's done. Stick a fork in it.

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[Brian E]

Now don't get me wrong. I think the job success rate is fine in its own right but its really too encompassing. Odesk used to weigh the feedback scores based on monetary values whereas the JS score seems a simple arithmetic formula rather than a competent algorithm.

My main issue is 2 factors in being top talent are simply to just be here and not cause an issue. In effect, me not getting arrested this year makes me halfway toward being top-talent in America. The other issue of that is that you can't have any policy violations. The top talent sticker is more a "Employee of the Month" award it seems.

What does my possibly violating a policy, which could in some cases be arguable and trivial, have to do with any bearing on my work for clients? I could be the best brain surgeon in the world but because I told a moderator here he's an idiot I'm no longer top talent to the clients?

I look at Tasha's profile :

• TOP RATED
• 100% Job Success
• 5.00 
• 11,312 hours worked
• 73 jobs

That's a clear separation from the Top Talent basic requirements. That's more in line with what should be considered top talent.

Same with Tim, PHP5, MySQL, jQuery libraries etc. etc. 7 years plus with elance. Repeated projects consulting and designing on the same CMS platform. That's top talent.

But the badge I'm looking at is achievable by my 5yr old if he quits playing on Steam all day and learns the B button is the shortcut for brush in photoshop. Then after 6 months he's top talent here too.

[Suzanne N]

Brian your 5 year working on Upwork would be a policy violation Just kidding

[Scott D]

Yes, the UpWork rating system does nothing to show a person's skills! 

[Fergus M]

"$1,001 earned in 12 months on the platform and I'm top talent?"

Yep. If I don't make more than that in 12 days on Elance it's a bad month. As a metric of success it's just embarrassing.

[Daniel C]

This seems to be an advantage for new users.  Take one or two jobs, get decent feedback, and you're a top rated!

I guess that makes sense...  

[Daniel C]

Hah, I just realized.  I took about a year hiatus from Upwork, and I came back recently.  So chances are after 1 feedback, I will jump to 100% and be top rated.  Woo!  Tech-ni-ca-lity!

[Paul M]

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@Daniel C wrote:

Hah, I just realized.  I took about a year hiatus from Upwork, and I came back recently.  So chances are after 1 feedback, I will jump to 100% and be top rated.  Woo!  Tech-ni-ca-lity!

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Ah, but here's the thing with JS. You can have all 5 star feedback, 100% recommendation level from clients and abide by every rule in the book regarding response times and other Upwork-derived nonsense, but still not break 75% and nobody can (or will) tell you why.

JS is very, very broken, but Upwork has every hat it possesses hanging on it, so don't expect it to change.