Typical timeline for hiring?

[fedff389]

Hi!  I am new to upwork and I'm just curious how long it typically takes for customers to hire freelancers once they post?  I have several proposals that have been sitting there for 5 days or more.  How long should I wait?  Is there no way to reach out to them?  Thanks!

[prestonhunter]

As a client, I typically hire within a few minutes.

For example, I may post a job, and then receive submissions from freelancers. And then I typically hire a freelancer within about 10 to 20 minutes after I posted the job.

This is NOT the only style of hiring.

Other clients may take many hours or many days to hire somebody.

re: "How long should I wait?"

Wait zero seconds.

You are not supposed to "wait."

Submit a job proposal and then forget about it.

That job is NOT part of your life. It doesn't matter. You don't care.

When a client actually contacts you, THAT is when you pay attention to the job again.

re: "Is there no way to reach out to them?"

No.

There is no way.

If you were able to FIGURE OUT A WAY such as by using clues in their job description to do a Google search and find contact information, and then sening them an email message (for example)... Then this is a violation of Upwork ToS and you could have your Upwork account suspended for doing that.

[wescowley]

It's best not to worry about proposals once you submit them until / if the client comes back to you. I've had people hire me almost instantly after sending a proposal, and I've had some come back days and weeks later. My record is being hired 18 months after I sent the proposal. So, just move on and keep submitting. You can work out scheduling conflicts once enough responses materialize that it's an issue.

[melaniekhenson]

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Wes C wrote:

It's best not to worry about proposals once you submit them until / if the client comes back to you. I've had people hire me almost instantly after sending a proposal, and I've had some come back days and weeks later. My record is being hired 18 months after I sent the proposal. So, just move on and keep submitting. You can work out scheduling conflicts once enough responses materialize that it's an issue.

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Agreed! Set it and forget it. 😄

[kidus_abebe]

18 months is mind blowing. 

[pgiambalvo]

I think Upwork says within 3 days is the norm, which I've found to be about right. But sometimes it happens in minutes, sometime weeks.

[moonraker]

I've been hired from 5 minutes to 6 months after making a proposal.

There's no pattern to it, there's no way of telling how quickly you'll be hired. The best method is to fire and forget.

[fedff389]

I'm not worried about it.  I was just curious if there was a norm.

Thanks for your suggestions! 

[melaniekhenson]

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Sara C wrote:

Hi!  I am new to upwork and I'm just curious how long it typically takes for customers to hire freelancers once they post?  I have several proposals that have been sitting there for 5 days or more.  How long should I wait?  Is there no way to reach out to them?  Thanks!

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I'm both a freelancer and a client. As a client, it varies, but so far I have rarely hired anyone sooner than two days after posting a job. The longest was about a week. So, a couple of days to a week-ish, for me.

However, from the freelancer's side of things, I have occasionally been approached more than a week after applying for a project. And I had one client who made me an offer two months after I'd applied. In that particular case, obviously I had forgotten about the job entirely. I checked because I was pretty surprised, and saw that nobody had been hired in the meantime; I wasn't the cleanup crew on a botched job or anything, 😄 the client just actually took that long to get back to people, for whatever reason. This was fine with me as I took the project, enjoyed it tremendously, and have a new relationship with a new client. One can never have too many of those.

But in general, I have been hired as quickly as almost immediately (within the hour) and, with the above example, as long as about a week after applying to a project.

[kfarnell]

I've found that in general the bigger the project scope, the longer it takes for it to be awarded. Also posts that are long winded or brief to the point of almost being baffling, take longer.

[848960d5]

Hi good afternoon I'm from Philippines looking for online job