Last Viewed by client

[ian_pineda]

I have a question, i proposed to a client and i keep checking the client's last viewed. and it appeared 1 day and then suddenly after i checked again there'salready 1 hired but the last viewed by client didn't change. why is that?

[prestonhunter]

re: "and i keep checking the client's last viewed."

Don't do that.

Doing so provides you with no value.

Send your proposal, and then forget about that job. That job is NOT part of your life. It is not even something that you think about.

IF the client sends you an invitation to interview, then you will start thinking about it again.

[t_woolaver]

Don't do that???

That is pretty harsh advice.

Why does upwork post the information if it is not to be used.

I look at "last viewed" often.  I can indicate if the client is not so interested.

[versailles]

Last viewed rarely updates. I posted jobs that I monitored closely and the last viewed hardly updated. It's a misleading metric and monitoring it when you're a freelancer will do you no good.

Send your proposal and forget about it.

[tlsanders]

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@t_woolaver wrote:

Don't do that???

That is pretty harsh advice.

Why does upwork post the information if it is not to be used.

I look at "last viewed" often.  I can indicate if the client is not so interested.

You may consider it harsh, but it's also great advice. As Preston said, there is zero value in having that information (even when it's accurate, which it often is not). Looking at it tells you absolutely nothing about how interested the client is, for many reasons. One is that the most serious clients often want to consider several candidates, and so will accumulate bids for a while before going through a larger batch of them. Another is that clients get emails with information about many of the freelancers who bid on their jobs, and so can keep an eye on proposals without visiting the job. Yet another is that sometimes good clients just get busy, and that means nothing at all about how serious they are. I (and many others) have had clients who took weeks or even a few months to circle back and respond, but then ended up paying me thousands of dollars. 

Monitoring metrics like that gives freelancers a sense of action and control that is entirely false and just distracts from actually working or pursuing opportunities.

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[richard_wein]

Two days ago I received a response from a job I applied to 6 weeks ago. I looked at the job post to see how many people were being interviewed, and also noticed that it said: Last viewed by client 26 days ago!

So this is yet another misleading pieces of info we're given, to go with all the others...

Proposals: doesn't include archived and declined proposals, so gives a misleading idea of the level of competition. Two jobs with the same number of proposals submitted may show very different numbers, just based on whether this is a client who archives uninteresting proposals or one who doesn't.

Last viewed by client: often completely wrong.

Interviewing: not yet aware of any problems with this one (but given all the other problems I will no longer expect it to be accurate).

Invites sent: continues to show 0 for several hours after invites have been sent.

Unanswered invites: shows invites that have not been accepted OR declined. May be accurate, but is virtually useless.

Hired: sometimes continues to show 0 for a day or more after someone has been hired.

(Rant over.)

[nhansen]

I am reviving this because I have been observing this for a while now. "Last viewed" isn't about when the client last viewed it. It's when someone last submitted a proposal to the job. I notice that if it has been days, or just minutes since the client "last viewed" the job, whether it is 2am on Sunday morning their time, or some other hour when they are highly likely not to be viewing, it updates the last viewed time within seconds of my submitting a proposal.

I don't understand why this is mislabeled in this way. I always thought it was off for years but I only recently figured out how it was actually working.

[nhansen]

The number of applicants may not show you the amount of competition, but if the number is low, it tells you that either very few people have applied, or that the client is on top of things reviewing the proposals. Either way, at least the chances of your proposal actually getting viewed are high, and then it is up to you to apply for the jobs that are a good fit.

[wlyonsatl]

Timothy,

If I'm on the fence about sending a proposal on a project and I notice that the client has not viewed a project for more than three or four days, I will likely not send the proposal.

Upwork tells us most clients hire within three days, so I assume a client who is no longer checking for new proposals at least has all the proposal (s)he wants, even if no freelancer has yet been hired.

[tlsanders]

Because it's often wrong and/or slow to update. And also because it's a very misleading bit of data, since there are many ways a client can keep moving forward without visiting the job posting.