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maborak
Community Member

Testing phase in the Interview

Hello Community, I would like to ask you if "testing skills" is valid in the interview process.

 

I have applied for a job and I received:

 

Job description:

----------

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

--------------

 

Chat reply:

----

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

------------

 

Well, I did the 'introduction task' and send it to customer but after that. Customer is gone.

So, my question is: Are these type of 'tests' valid in Upwork? or should I report/ignore  in the future?

 

Thank you.

 

 

ACCEPTED SOLUTION
gina-herrera
Community Member

Rookie mistake, always tell them no unless you are being compensated - if they want to test you, they need to pay you an hourly rate.

 

You should definitely report them, but in general if someone asks for free work, even to "test your skills", it is a HUGE red flag. Not to mention investing that type of time in it just cost you time you could be applying to non-scumbag posters that actually have a sense of ethics and will pay you properly.

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11 REPLIES 11
gilbert-phyllis
Community Member

You gave away the work for free. Don't do that -- you cheat yourself while training bottom-feeding clients to expect it. If a client needs a sample of your work beyond what you offer in your profile, have them set up a small test contract and pay you for it. It is a ToS violation for clients to ask for free work, as that one did, so in the future you can and should report any that do. And do yourself a favor by spending more time familiarizing yourself with how the platform works and how to work safely and profitably here. Good luck!

Thank you for your suggestions, i will do that in the future.

gina-herrera
Community Member

Rookie mistake, always tell them no unless you are being compensated - if they want to test you, they need to pay you an hourly rate.

 

You should definitely report them, but in general if someone asks for free work, even to "test your skills", it is a HUGE red flag. Not to mention investing that type of time in it just cost you time you could be applying to non-scumbag posters that actually have a sense of ethics and will pay you properly.

AleksandarD
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Wilmer,

 

I'm sorry to hear about what happened. It's important to note that you should never start working without an active contract, which would show on your My Jobs page.

 

I sent the report to our team for investigation and appropriate actions will be taken according to our internal processes.

 

Please check out this post for more tips on how to avoid questionable jobs and use the flag option found on each job post or message anytime you’d like to report a violation.

 

Thank you.

~ Aleksandar
Upwork

Hi,

I am in a similar situation. I have been asked to test as part of 4 level of interview process.. Had a brief intro by HR and then recieved an assignment which i am supposed to finish ,based on which i will be informed if i cleared this level and then would have the next round of interview.  How do i approach/handle this , 


Chaissy D wrote:

Hi,

I am in a similar situation. I have been asked to test as part of 4 level of interview process.. Had a brief intro by HR and then recieved an assignment which i am supposed to finish ,based on which i will be informed if i cleared this level and then would have the next round of interview.  How do i approach/handle this , 


If they aren't paying you they are scamming you.

Oh..Thanks for the heads up

Chaissy:
Here's something to think about:

 

If YOU were the client, or a project manager working on a large project, and you wanted freelancers to go through a four-part interview process AND do test work so that you can better evaluate them, what would YOU do?

 

I am sure that YOU would want the freelancers to be compensated for their time. I am sure that YOU would set up hourly contracts so that freelancers can log the time participating in the lengthy process of interviewing them and testing their skills. You would do this partially because it is the right and moral thing to do, and partially because you know that it is a violation of Upwork ToS for clients to ask freelancers to work for free.

 

But ALSO, you would do this because you want to obtain the best results for your project, whether it is a project you personally own, or a project you are working for as a manager. You would know that you can't get the best freelancers recruited to your project if you are simply trying to trick people into work for free for you. Ultimately, it will save you time and money to hire high-quality freelancers to actually do work that you pay them to do, rather than trying to trick large numbers of random desperate people to work for you for free.

I wonder: wouldn't a paid test be a risky business as well? What happens if you fail to be the candidate of choice? Negative feedback on the contract? 

re: "wouldn't a paid test be a risky business as well? What happens if you fail to be the candidate of choice? Negative feedback on the contract?"

 

This is a valid question.

The purpose of a test job is NOT to give negative feedback to freelancers who participate in the process in an honest, straightforward manner. The purpose of a test job is to evalute whether freelancers will be a good fit for continued participation in the project. A client can hire freelancers on a test basis, evalute them, and then close the contract WITHOUT written feedback, and WITHOUT taking time to evaluate each freelancer in each of the six star ranking categories. A client can simply click 5 stars for each category without thinking about it. This IS an honest, acceptable practice. This is the moral equivalent of "not providing feedback."

 

If the client desires to be even more transparent and helpful to possible future clients, she may type "test job only" as her written feedback.

 

If I am a freelancer who has been asked to take part in paid testing, I can look at the client's feedback history.

 

If it is clear that this client hires freelancers for fairly small, short jobs (which I can see are test jobs) and gives them all good feedback... Then I don't think I would be worried at all.

 

But to address Deborah's specific question about whether or not is risky for a freelancer to get hired to do a test job, because the feedback could be negative?

IF there is no prior feedback history to look at for that client... Then yes, I suppose this could be a risk. But if the freelancer is confident in her abilities to do this type of work, I think there is very little risk. If the freelancer is not confident that she can do this type of work, then she should not accept a contract of any type (test or otherwise) for the project.

BojanS
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi Chaissy,

 

Could you please click on my name and send me a PM with more information about your report? I'll check it and escalate accordingly.

 

Make sure to check our Stay Safe series and learn more on how to work safe online:

If you see a violation of the Upwork Terms of Service, we encourage you to use Report Suspicious User Activity feature.

 

Thank you.

~ Bojan
Upwork
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