Have you noticed invites consistently sent to inactive accounts, hire rates disastrously low?

[7ba56d1a]

In my line of work, voice over, projects are always fixed-price and most often need to be delivered within a day or two.

I opt to have Upwork send me periodic 'job opportunity' emails, and I've been investigating the interaction with these job posts for a while now. By the time they send me these emails, the jobs on the list are 5 - 7 days old. When I click on most of them, those that have sent invitations only have roughly 50% of them replied to that have become 'interviews'. In addition, most--sometimes all--of the job listing posters have not hired anyone after 5 - 7 days.

To me, this indicates that even with the profile boosting, inactive accounts are topping boosted accounts. Or, at the very least, inactive accounts are appearing very frequently in search results. Either way, it doesn't make profile boosting seem like a wise decision. (Plus, I still can't figure out how to keep track of the amount of connects taken per interaction from boosting; it doesn't show up in "connects history.")

Has anyone else noticed a similar pattern? Or, have you investigated and found otherwise?

[celgins]

Hire rates fluctuate, but I think they have been quite low over the past year.

An inactive account should not appear in search results. Established freelancer profiles that haven't earned money for two years or more, and new freelancer profiles that don't earn money within 90 days of their first proposal are changed to Private. When a profile is set to private, it is not shown in search results.

A good example is my account/profile. I haven't been active on Upwork and my last earnings came 1.5 years ago. During that time, my profile has remained "active" and still shows in search results. I suspect there are millions of similar established accounts/profiles with very little activity, and probably millions more new freelancer accounts/profiles that haven't earned anything in their first 90 days. All of these will continue to appear in search results, but I'm not not sure how frequently they appear.

[7ba56d1a]

I guess I consider an account inactive if they cannot reply within 48 hours max. I know Upwork keeps track of response rates and don't think the profiles that cannot tend to things within this very liberal timeframe should be anywhere on the first few pages of search results.

Then again, an increasing number of job posts provide as little information as possible as to what their needs are, so maybe freelancers do see them but ignore rather than decline the invitations.

But, here I am on top of everything and see less attentive freelancers getting the exposure. It's pretty doodoo-ey.

[celgins]

Yes--I suspect many freelancers, especially new ones, do not know that Upwork tracks response time when an invite is received.