🐈
» Forums » Freelancers » Is there a way we can control what type of cl...
Page options
sweetjels
Community Member

Is there a way we can control what type of client contacts us?

Hello All,

I regularly receive interview invitations (this week alone I have received 105 invitations for interviews) Initially I used to think this was good but now it's becoming super annoying. Firstly, clients that send these interview invitations are usually the ones that just signed up for an account the day before.  They have no history, no payment verification no nothing. Others are jobs that have absolutely nothing to do with my skills and services and jobs I am not interested in. Then the are the few that I am interested in and when I accept the interview, I never hear from them again.  And the one or two that do contact me for the interview, have absolutely no idea who I am (which is rude, disrespectful, and time-wasting for me) and yet they invited me to the interview. I can only conclude that they don't read my profile. They just send invitations based on recommendations from algorithms without taking the time to read our profiles. What is the point of having a profile if these SOBs don't want to read it??!!!!

 

So is there a way I can set my account to only receive invitations from serious and viable clients? Is there a way that my profile doesn't appear to these useless clients? Is there a way that makes the client read your profile before they contact you? Is there a way to track that? I am sick and tired of time-wasting useless clients! I only want those that are super serious to hire me. 

 

Can Upwork start charging clients and pay us to be sent interview requests? Because it's getting ridiculously crowded with time-wasting SOBs and I've had it. I want to work with those that are serious and are satisfied with the information I have on my profile and only contact me if I am the person they want. I will not waste my time with useless clients that just leave us hanging. 

 

Upwork, help us, freelancers! We are the ones who bring you the big bucks so protect us from useless clients! Either increase screening of new clients or protect us. Our time is money and an interview invitation is a great news to especially for those that haven't scored a project in a while!

1 REPLY 1
kinector
Community Member

We don't need Upwork for this Jasmine. You can do it yourself. Let me explain. 

 

I had a similar problem when Upwork just came about in 2015-2016. Tons of invitations that were only loosely related to my field even if I had a very specific niche from the start.

 

It happens when you have a strong profile that ranks high in many search results. It makes sense from technical perspective so we don't actually want to change how the search works. So, we just need to worry about the people (those clients spamming you) and forget the system. 

 

I found a very simple way out of the process of declining all kinds of random invitations on a daily basis. I yanked up my hourly rate project by project to 3 digits and magically (probably because my profile stands out as a useless target to Shoppers and Spammers in any search result), these kinds of invitations got reduced to almost zero. 😁

 

Additionally, when declining invitations, you can block the client. I just did this this morning... perhaps only the second one this year. ✌

Latest Articles
Featured Topics
Learning Paths