Lacks desired skills or qualifications

[bgranat]

How is it possible for a person to say "Lacks desired skills or qualifications" when I have 30 years of experience and submitted a list of books I've edited?

I am stunned.

[quijibo · Accepted solution]

You lacked the most important qualification that 99% of the clients are looking for here: willing to work for 2 bucks an hour. 

[bgranat]

I never mentioned money at all. 

[tlsanders]

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@Bonnie G wrote:

How is it possible for a person to say "Lacks desired skills or qualifications" when I have 30 years of experience and submitted a list of books I've edited?

I am stunned.

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 Well, first, a person can say anything--it doesn't have to be factually demonstrable.

Many of the handful of clients who bother to check a reason just use the same one for everyone, so it could be completely random. Or a mistake.

Or, the person had some specific qualification like "has worked at least 1,000 hours on Upwork" that you didn't have.

Probably being "stunned" over this is an overreaction and in no way good for your career here. Who cares which radio button a random stranger who posted a job here clicked?

[bgranat]

I have no way of knowing that the person didn't type the words. How am I supposed to know it's a radio button that spits out text?

[petra_r]

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@Bonnie G wrote:

How is it possible for a person to say "Lacks desired skills or qualifications" when I have 30 years of experience and submitted a list of books I've edited?

I am stunned.

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 Clients do not always, or even too often, check every single proposal. In fact in many cases the majority of proposals are not even looked at.

In most cases, clients do not decline proposals, they just fade away. Sometimes they decline with one of the multiple choice reasons, of which  "Lacks desired skills or qualifications" is one. The client did not type this out.

Chances are the client chose one freelancer, never even saw your profile, and mass declined everyone else with the same button.

You can't take this personally...

[bgranat]

If a client finds a freelancer, does he or she remove the job from the list of jobs? I applied to jobs that were still listed, even though they may have shown doublt-digit applicants already.

[aiyana-ward]

Wait a second, you can see why someone didn't accept your proposal? Where is this information? I've never been given a reason, though to be fair I don't put out many proposals. 

[petra_r]

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@Aiyana W wrote:

Wait a second, you can see why someone didn't accept your proposal? Where is this information?

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 Go to your archived proposals page

Click on a proposal you were not hired for.

The "decline reason" chosen by the client (if any) shows at the top right, next to "Declined by client / you:"

 

[yitwail]

And as Petra implied, most of the time clients do not bother to decline proposals, let alone accept a proposal. So there's no reason given to the freelancer for a declined proposal unless the client chooses to decline it. Unlike freelancers, whose "response time" will be affected by not declining or accepting an invitation, there's no penalty to a client who doesn't decline a proposal. For what it's worth, I've completed almost 300 jobs and have a large number of active jobs, but rarely do I receive a reason for declining, and when I do, it's almost always "hired another freelancer."

[bgranat]

Thanks to everyone who responded. I don't take it personally now that I know it wasn't meant personally. I do appreciate the advice. As is obvious, I'm new here.

[kat303]

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@Bonnie G wrote:

Thanks to everyone who responded. I don't take it personally now that I know it wasn't meant personally. I do appreciate the advice. As is obvious, I'm new here.

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Bonnie, since you're new here I Strongly suggest that you read up on the scams that happen here. Because, if you don't the next post that you type here will certainly be concerning that.