Proposal Stats Not Updating and UW comparing me to completely irrelevant freelancer categories

[ericaandrews]

My proposal status in 'My Stats' haven't been updated in over 2 months, and for some reason, Upwork keeps giving me statistics that compare me to completely IRRELEVANT freelancer categories.  This week, it's 'Administrative Support', in other weeks, I've seen generic catch-all categories like 'Consulting' or 'Writing'.     I work strictly in IT related capacities, so I have no idea why UW is comparing my 'performance' to freelancers that do Administrative Support.  Apples and Oranges, and completely irrelevant.     How about comparing my statistics to the job category I have specified on my profile (and specialized profiles) so that the statistics are actually relevant?

[ericaandrews]

I am wondering why the Upwork Moderators BURIED my post under a completely unrelated topic.  What I posted is a bug in my freelancer Stats page and has nothing to do with the Search algorithm, which this thread is about.  How about Upwork actually addressing some of these reported bugs instead of just hiding/burying them down in other threads so people don't see them?  I would open a ticket, but ever time I do, nobody resolves the issue and the ticket just gets declared 'a complex issue' and put 'on hold' indefinitely, never being fixed.

[pgiambalvo]

Agreed, they need to fix this immediatley, if not sooner.

[kochubei_valeria]

Hi CJ,
Apologies for the post being moved incorrectly. This has now been corrected.

Regarding the observations you shared about the Proposals Analytics, it should be working as designed.

I'll double check this with the team but it looks like the metrics will only update if there is new data to display. So if there haven't been any new proposals sent since the last update, there will be no new data to display.

The "Compared to freelancers like you" section will reflect the category of the jobs you've submitted most proposals to during the selected time range. And then it compares your activity to the activity of other freelancers sending proposals to similar jobs. It doesn't reflect the category the freelancers selected in their profile settings. So if during the selected time period, the freelancer sent proposals to jobs in Project Management (which is in Admin Support category,) that category will be shown. That is now new, that metric has always been calculated that way in My Stats, but I'll be happy to share your feedback about this with the product team.

[ericaandrews]

That's the problem: I looked and confirmed that I have sent new proposals since that time. So, it's definitely incorrect if the system is  saying  I have not sent any proposals in over 2 months. I can SEE my 'archived' proposals, remember. 

As for the category stats, I think the problem is that your algorithm doesn't distinguish between different types of 'consulting', 'business analysis', and 'project management'.  IT project management and IT Business Analysis are not  'administrative support' , like writing memos, processing payroll,  or answering phones, it's IT, which is why it has IT in the name. Those roles perform an information technology (IT) - specific function, not a general purpose 'administrative' function. I'd also assume a freelancer that works as a Construction Project Manager (on-site, wearing a hard hat at a contruction site all day) wouldn't consider themselves to be working an 'administrative' role: It's construction.  The 'categories' the 'algorithms' compare freelancers to appear to miss the meaning and important nuance in certain terms.  IT Business Analysis will sometimes show me stats on how I compare to people in Accounting.   IT Business Analysis has absolutely nothing to do with accounting , crunching numbers, or balancing anybody's books. So again, another irrelevant stat comparison.  I don't work in accounting, so why do I care how I 'stack up' to CPAs? 

Even if you consider project management 'administrative support', the stats should be comparing to other people in project management - at the very least, not 'administrative support' in general, which could include everything from HR specialists, to payroll processing people, to folks proofreading company memos and taking dictation from the boss.  Most freelancers don't care how they 'stack up' to others in fields they aren't competing in.    When you compare the stats to categories that aren't related or relevant to the work the freelancer performs, the stats are of little to no value to the freelancer.   If the point of those stats is to provide the freelancer with useful information they can use to improve their performance on the platform and win more jobs, it's failing at that objective currently.

[kochubei_valeria]

CJ, 

Please, note that Proposals Analytics would only include proposals initiated by the freelancer, not proposals sent in response to invites. So you can also check in your Connects History filtered by Debits when you sent the last one of those.