Upwork - Job Success Thread **title edited**

[jademilburn]

I want Community Forum Moderators to add to this thread, and really listen to what is going on.

I, like many others am sure have the same story.

I used to love Odesk, and got many job interviews each week. I had all 5 star feedback, and glowing written references from my clients. Then Odesk made alot of changes and introduced Job Success rate. I was shocked that mine was 67%. That was until I looked at other discussions and heard of other people who had five star feedback, lots of good references and yet had a very low job success rate.

This system is beyond unfair as

!)Upwork introduced new changes and a new feedback system. They should NOT include information that people believed was being entered anonymously, prior to the changes. The Job success rate includes information that clients did not think would be shown publicly. They left star feedback that would be shown publicly. You CANNOt use retroactive data for a new system.

2)Since the Job success rate has been started, I am now not getting invited to interview for ANY jobs, so how could I get my Job success rate, even if I tried?

You have made a very bad error with this.

Can every freelancer on this forum who wants to get rid of the job success rate feature, reply with 'Get rid', and lets see if they listen to us.

[rodgersmark]

Dear Support,

I thank you so much for availing to us this wonderful platform to be able to earn money from our passion and solving other people's problems. Upwork has been such a blessing to me and I can not thank you enough for the much I have gained here.

I have a disturbing issue to address to you, our esteemed support, and I know you will help me solve it. I have been on Upwork for about 5 months now and I have been a deligent worker on this platform. I have served many clents here and you can tell from my profile that they are impressed with my work ethic and productivety.

However, despite my efforts to maintain an impressive profile, I have noticed that my job success rate keeps declining every month, despite getting  very impressive reviews from my esteemed clients. I would like to understand why this is happening and stop doing anything that may be affeting my job success rate because as far as I am concerned, I have done nothing wrong to negatively affect my profile.

Kindly help me understand why this is happenning because I intend to use my account for a very long time and I cannot use it effectively if I spoil my profile because it will work against me. And also if ther is any way I han have my job success rate get back to 100%, please let me know.

I look forward to your response.

Regards,

Mark Rodgers.

[diana-arous]

I had this problem when my rate dropped from 90 to 75 without any particular reason when all my feedback were 5 out of 5, then they told me that there's something called 'Client's Private Review' which allow the aclients to leave whatever feedback they want without going public in case 'the client isn't comfortable enough to share his negative feedback with the client'.

So basically it's like highschool and you friend talked about you behind your back but a total angel in your face. so there you go.

[jmlaidlaw]

Dear "Mark Rodgers" --

You do have good feedback. I have no idea how you got it. Your profile indicates that you have a degree in Library Science from ASU. Your Profile indicates that you are a native/bilingual speaker of English. You are clearly not fluent in English, and you do not write at anywhere near the level of a person who has earned a master's degree in library science at a major, reputable American university.

Are you claiming to be an actual native of an English-speaking country? Or are you just making the inaccurate claim of being bilingual? Because it is painfully obvious from your posting above that you are absolutely NOT a native of an English-speaking country. (I do have a degree in linguistics. Both common sense and this degree qualify me to make this observation. Plus: duhhhh.)

In addition, your Profile photo looks like a stock photograph of a teenager. It does not look like the photograph of a professional adult who is of an age to have graduated with an MLS degree.

Also -- what country are you in? Your Profile claims that you live in Arizona. But your time zone is 7 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. You sure ain't in Arizona right now, buddy.

[tlbp]

http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/video/portrait-of-male-student-in-graduation-gown-holding-stock-...

[cupidmedia]

---

@Janean L wrote:

Dear "Mark Rodgers" --

...

---

You mean "Rodgers Mark". In my past experience as a fraud investigator (not on Upwork), it's very common for scammers to either choose two first names for their fake name, or get their names around the "wrong" way...

..
.

[lysis10]

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@Rodgers M wrote:

Dear Support,

I thank you so much for availing to us this wonderful platform to be able to earn money from our passion and solving other people's problems. Upwork has been such a blessing to me and I can not thank you enough for the much I have gained here.

I have a disturbing issue to address to you, our esteemed support, and I know you will help me solve it. I have been on Upwork for about 5 months now and I have been a deligent worker on this platform. I have served many clents here and you can tell from my profile that they are impressed with my work ethic and productivety.

However, despite my efforts to maintain an impressive profile, I have noticed that my job success rate keeps declining every month, despite getting  very impressive reviews from my esteemed clients. I would like to understand why this is happening and stop doing anything that may be affeting my job success rate because as far as I am concerned, I have done nothing wrong to negatively affect my profile.

Kindly help me understand why this is happenning because I intend to use my account for a very long time and I cannot use it effectively if I spoil my profile because it will work against me. And also if ther is any way I han have my job success rate get back to 100%, please let me know.

I look forward to your response.

Regards,

Mark Rodgers.

---

Your profile is fake. Nice time zone and pic. 

[vladmorar]

This is actually depressing. Even a fake profile with a lot of under 5 stars jobs has a better JSS than me.

[colettelewis]

@ Mark Rodgers

You'd better change your location too buddy, because the US (anywhere in the US) has never been one hour ahead of Paris time . . .

[vladmorar]

Yeah but those are my usual working hours as 95% of my business on and outside of upwork is related to US clients. My location is correct so is the time frame when I'm available.

[colettelewis]

Vlad - no sorry, I wasn't referring to you at all!! I've edited my post. Sorry again!

[vladmorar]

No problem.

Cheers.

[ailish_d]

I haven't had time to read through all the replies, but I am pretty sure they are all of the same ilk.

I have taken a hit to my JSS, despite doing consistently good work. The ones who have contributed to this drop are as follows:

A client suspended by upwork.

A client who refused to give me the chance to amend the rewrite she wanted.

A client who was uncommunicative, and therefore didn't answer questions I asked.

A client who kept the job open without paying me.

All out of my control, and yet I have taken a hit, a small one but still a hit. And one more bad client and it will plummet.

I have no problems being downgraded if I have done something wrong, but when a freelancer has kept his/her side of the deal and the client hasn't, it is not fair to penalise us.

It should be a transparent system, not illogical and unfathomable.

[dennis-farrell]

Hi Upwork folk!

I recently posted a problem I had regarding my feedback being down to 83% (and everyone knows that it is impossible to get any work with that score). This was due to one client with whom I had a disagreement and a rating of 1.0 ensured. This took my score down to 83%. However, you guys gave me a few options and I took them ... I got in touch with some cliens who had not left feedback and also with the original client who left poor feedback.

In fact, the actual client in question responded (to her credit) by altering my score back up to 5.0. I have also had another 2 clients give me scores of 5.0. Of all my clients only one has not given me full marks. He gave me a rating of 4.45 as I misunderstood part of the brief. So, fair enough. However, by my reckoning, one score of 4.45 out of about 20 should be at about 99%. Yet, I still have 85% (it has gone up 2% with the latest figures).

I got in touch with support (**Edited for Community Guidelines**) and and have just been fed me numerous cut-and-paste responses. The support is awful. I could write the emails better myself. He kind of stated through general email resonses that my score was accurate.

I demanded that he showed me WHY I was at 85% and he just said I should build better clients etc. 

So, after such as rant, is there anyone who I can contact about this? Not some random who has no concept of my situation. You know, a real person who can deal with my case? Otherwise, I am at a loss. 

Any help anyone?

Thanks in advance

The lost Upwork soul, Dennis

[andrie81]

Just ignore the JS if you can Dennis. You'll never get anywhere by asking here. Lots of em will just say, work hard, focus and concentrate on delivering good results bla.. bla..

It's way easier to screw the JS score than to get it up again. From my eperience, one difficult client will really hurt JS and will take a toll on new freelancer quite hard.

It's harder to land a project. Waaay harder to ramp up JS. I suspect the algorithm have its flaw and hope it will be improved. Seriously, not bidding, no closed project (the client is just fine as it's still in the process and communicating  ) reduce 1% of my JS. (????) 

[daniel-bradley]

I went down to 85% from 95% two weeks ago and had no trouble getting any work. Back up to 89% today and I suspect I'll be in the 90s again next time. Your mistake is just looking at your public feedback, when clients leave private feedback too where they tend to be more brutally honest. There are a whole host of factors that go into your Job Success Score, and none of us are privvy to all of them. The answer to why you dropped to 85% is that a few clients weren't totally happy with their experience. It's not the end of the world and it's not impossible to build it back up again. Anybody who says otherwise is refusing to take responsibility for their own success.

[andrie81]

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@Daniel B wrote:

I went down to 85% from 95% two weeks ... Back up to 89% today ...

---

10% down - easy, 1-2 clients
10% up? - double/triple number of dissastified clients?

How hard you have work to get your 4% back Daniel?

[daniel-bradley]

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@Alif Andriyanto A wrote:

---

@Daniel B wrote:

I went down to 85% from 95% two weeks ... Back up to 89% today ...

---

10% down - easy, 1-2 clients
10% up? - double/triple number of dissastified clients?

How hard you have work to get your 4% back Daniel?

---

 As hard as I work for any client. Nothing out of the ordinary.

[katrinabeaver]

I don't think you can blame support. They probably recieve hundreds of tickets a day on JSS and they are probably not privy to all of goes into the JSS as it's not transparent.  They are trained to give the answers that are already in the help section. They're doing their job, that's all. They can't answer a question that they don't have the answer to. 

[petra_r]

Dennis, the problem is that getting a client t change the public feedback after the event only has a cosmetic impact on your profile. The damage to your JSS has been done, and can not be undone, the internal private feedback can not be changed.

So you do not have one out of 20, but 2 out of 14 (I can only see 14 completed contracts on your profile) plus maybe more which could affect you (Anything that closed without payment or you refunded?)

85% of 14 is 11.9 - so it looks about right. 85% or 12 of your 14 closed contracts resulted in really happy clients, 2 didn't.

You also have some contracts which look to be in a coma (inactive) and are not closed. If they don't hurt your JSS yet, they will eventually.

Keep going, a few more good ones, and eventually the two bad ones falling out of the window, and you'll get there!

[vladmorar]

Dennis consider yourself lucky. I lost 13% last calculation while only having great ongoing contracts (none of them closed in those 2 weeks) and only recovered 3℅ this one. There is no logic behind it. The best thing you can do is to build enough work relationships, on your own, outside upwork. You never want your monthly income to be 100% dependent to such an uncertain environment. As you grow use upwork more as a bonus to your monthly income and things can change in the future.

[atlinguist]

Dennis,

I'm not so sure that it really is "impossible to get any work" with a score below 90. There are clients (like me) who value a well-written application/cover letter and portfolio text as well as a strong portfolio above a few lower feedback scores, especially if they are familiar with the workings of platforms. What clients (like me) hate -- absolutely hate -- is when UW "recommends" a freelancer who then turns out to be a complete and utter fake. So fear not, you will get your score back to where you want it to be. Best of luck.

[carolincw]

Hey!

I am realtivly new to Upwork . I always had a 90% Job Success Score. Clients very alway very satisfied. NO my Job Success Socre DROPPED because I had to many (like 4) Jobs with no recent activity. Now I am scarred. I immediatly contacted all of them to close the contract.

How long do you think it will take me to get out of the deadly 70% ??

Did this ever happen to one of you?

Thanks for advice!

[kswms2015]

Dear Admin,

I am completely frustrated.  I have worked extremely hard to develop good quality and professional name for myself on Elance and I converted my account over to Upwork.  I had a stellar rating on Elance and since I have moved to Upwork, it has been some weird things going on with my rating.  I contacted customer support and I was told that I had too many opened jobs which clients asked me to keep the jobs open for ongoing services.  The problem I found out that if you do not do any work on any transactions, you score is affected.  I also found out that if no one gives you feedback, that affects your score as well.  If you look at my profile, I don't have hardly any feedback lower than 4.40 out of 5.  Once your score goes below 90% it is difficult to get clients.  I have done great work with my clients and have been given great feedback, but my score reflects that I am a subpar professional. 

I am highly upset with how this is going.  This does not make sense to me.  I will be limited to the Human Resources work I can now do because of my 87% rating.  I have to now explain to my clients every time I apply for jobs the circumstances.  I did close out the open jobs and my rating went from 89% to 87% mine you I received good ratings within the past 4 to 5 weeks.  I am being punished for doing great work whether a client provides feedback or not.  I have asked clients to provide feedback, but  a lot of clients don't want to provide feedback when they are done with the project as they feel they have other stuff they need to focus on in their businesses.  They barely have time to evaluate their employees at their businesses let alone a freelancer.

Customer service keeps telling me they can't tell me the algorithm for ratings.  I don't need the algorithm, I just need my ratings to reflect MY ACTUAL FEEDBACK without negatively affecting me if clients want to keep open their jobs.  Every time a client comes back to you to work on a new project we will be charged a high fee.  I thought Upwork wants us to build longer relationships.  I was also told that clients don't like it when a freelancer has several open jobs, they may think you have too much work.  All these answers are not good enough to me when my 100% rating went to 87%.  

Can someone please help me and have IT to review my score and see what is going on with my score.  I have never had anything lower than 90% from Elance to now Upwork. 

Highly frustrated freelancer,

Katrina

[carpenter-will]

Part of the ratings is the private rating the client gives, or so said TPTB. Beyond that, it's a mystery. I kept going, got it up to 86%, got into a dispute with a client and BOOM. Down to 75%.

If a client wants 90%, I say fine. Look at all the genuine talent you're passing up.

[kswms2015]

When I talked to customer service, she checked my account and said that I did not have any private low ratings either.  She said most of my rating was affected by the open jobs I had with no money transactions or any activity and they had been opened fover 90 days.  Anyway, what is the use of allowing clients to give you a private rating and they rate you good on the feedback but give you bad reviews privately..that doesn't seem to make sense to me. All I know is I contacted customer service twice and I got the same answer, too many open jobs, no transactions, no activity on the jobs, they have been opened more than 90 days without activity.  They did say that private ratings can affect a freelance writer, but the CSR said I didn't have any bad private ratings. She reviewed my account.  

[VladimirG]

Hi Katrina,

I see our agent shared yesterday all the details about how Job Success Score is calculated and advised you regarding your open contracts. They also stated that we can't share details about the exact calculation of your score and I didn't find any reference in your ticket about the private feedback you mentioned. 

I don't have any other information since your Job Success Score is based on the outcome of the contracts you've had in the past two years.

[Anonymous-User]

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@Katrina W wrote:

When I talked to customer service, she checked my account and said that I did not have any private low ratings either.  She said most of my rating was affected by the open jobs I had with no money transactions or any activity and they had been opened fover 90 days.  Anyway, what is the use of allowing clients to give you a private rating and they rate you good on the feedback but give you bad reviews privately..that doesn't seem to make sense to me. All I know is I contacted customer service twice and I got the same answer, too many open jobs, no transactions, no activity on the jobs, they have been opened more than 90 days without activity.  They did say that private ratings can affect a freelance writer, but the CSR said I didn't have any bad private ratings. She reviewed my account.  

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Katrina W from ...? First of all you should use a real photo instead of a stock photo for your profile. 

[jmlaidlaw]

Going with Margarete's theme:  I was also going to comment on the obviously fake photo. (Margarete got there first.)

If Katrina's Profile were public, I wonder what else we might see that would inform the discussion on her problems with JSS. Hard to tell, though, when she has hidden her Profile. For her own reasons.

[oquintela]

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@Katrina W wrote:

When I talked to customer service, she checked my account and said that I did not have any private low ratings either.  She said most of my rating was affected by the open jobs I had with no money transactions or any activity and they had been opened fover 90 days.  Anyway, what is the use of allowing clients to give you a private rating and they rate you good on the feedback but give you bad reviews privately..that doesn't seem to make sense to me. All I know is I contacted customer service twice and I got the same answer, too many open jobs, no transactions, no activity on the jobs, they have been opened more than 90 days without activity.  They did say that private ratings can affect a freelance writer, but the CSR said I didn't have any bad private ratings. She reviewed my account.  

---

 Well, I'm sure CS didn't tell you about your private feedbacks...

[kswms2015]

You could be right, this platform is just completely weird now.  I just liked Elance better.  Thanks anyway.

[karthickk4]

I've just completed 4 jobs in Upwork and ensured that every single client is happy.

See my feedback, it reads as

1. 5 stars
2. 5 stars
3. 5 stars
4. 4.8 stars

The Client who has given me the 4.8stars is someone who kept the job open for long without communicating anything. I've sent him regular messages, but no reply. Yet, no problem with me or the client, as it usually happens. But is that the reason my JSS is 88%? other clients were quick, communicative and appreciated my work throughout the work journey.

I provided the best service despite charging low as I'm just starting my Upwork profile and this is really not justified with my JSS.

Can anyone throw some light?

[VladimirG]

Hi Karthic,

Please note that private feedback and contracts with no money paid are also included in the Job Success Score calculation. You can find more information in this Help article.

[karthickk4]

Hi Vladmir, yes, I already had a chat session with Upwork team and that's what I heard.

But if you see, there is no logic in it.

If you Upwork guys are serious about this, I'd recommend you to take my case and make a study.

Why mine? I believe it will easy for you guys to come to a conclusion that JSS is illogical by reading my case, because:

• I've done only 4 jobs which would make the study easy for your team.
• Almost all the jobs are straghtforward simple jobs.
• Very active communication from my end and detailed documentation for every job.

I'd sincerely request you guys to have a look at it. Although you say there are various factors, ask yourself, does it all justify the JSS? make a study.

[VladimirG]

Hi Karthic,

I had a look before I followed up on your post and can reiterate the information I've shared. Your Job Success Score is calculated correctly.

[karthickk4]

Hi Vladmir, no arguements on that part. I understand that my JSS is automatically calculated with all the parameters and no chance of it's going wrong according to the system. But whether that system is good enough?

To give you a precise examples, sometimes if you watch football games, there would be certain scenarios:

Player #1. A player who played beautifully but unfortunately missed to make any goals due to some uncertain weather/external conditions that is not under his control.

Player #2. A player who plays stupid, but luckily, made a couple of goals that was completely fluke.

Without watching a match, if you just see the score, you'll obviously root for Player#2 because that's how system is built, in score card- you'll only see the score and not the stories. No arguements can be made here as it's all according to the system. Can we judge a best player based on only this figure?

My case is such. In Upwork, it goes beyond that. JSS is not working right, I'm saying it not because I've only 88% JSS, but because, this doesn't justfy the work done.

No compulsion for you guys to make any study. But if at all you think it will help freelancers to make a study on JSS one more time, it wouldn't hurt.

[louistaylor424]

Recently I have got bad experience with bad client.Since he has so bad client history in upwork he is using a proxy guy to post a job and interview, which the proxy guy is "so kind and detail". They planned to deceive and let one talent work hardly in their project.

After interview the proxy guy said me "I will discuss with my boss and after 10min you can get job offer from my company boss". 

In that time my job success was 93% and Top Rated.

They sent offer with fixed 2000USD job offer and I don't like fixed job but I accepted it without any doubting because when that time I have a part-time long term client contracted with hourly based job.

I was so hardly working from first milestone every day with 10hours chatting. I had taken only 4~5hours sleeping everyday. But they changed every time their requirements because they didn't know at all about their project. I teached them and planned next work and updated it to them. If they accept it I have been coded.

Eventually I could completed first milestone for 10 days and showed them. But they asked me added some functions to the result. But I couldn't accepted it because it was needed so much working efforts.

So I negotiated with them after I got first milestone payment I will do it. But they didn't accept it. So I have completed first additional function after 13days from starting the project and showed it. But they never negotiated with me and asked second additional function also.

Finally I decided. I couldn't wasted my effort any more without get any payment from them, so forgave it. So the fixed job was ended without any feedback and any transaction.

After ended the job I could found their bad histories in upwork. So many developers remained bad feedbacks.

My Upwork history was good in that time. over 1000hours history and benefit over 35,000USD in 12months.

But after this work my job sucess was starting to decrease rapidly every cycle.

93% -> 89% -> 83% -> 77% -> 75% -> ...

I am so worry how much would the job success also decrease next cycle.

Is it right calculation algorithm for job success?

Why upwork don't puish bad clients?

....

[versailles]

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@Mike P wrote:

(...) 

....

---

Who are you?

Is your name really Mike Parsons? Like the surfer? Why do your clients sometimes call you Louis and sometimes Mike?

How comes your English sounds foreign and you're Canadian?

[reichstephen]

Mike Parsons. Funny.

I think his nickname was "Snips."

Mike is old school now, miss him.

OH yes The JSS score makes no sense, but i have mentioned that already.

Im back to 95% after a downward skid to 89%.

I have no idea what i did to make it go up.

[ramkumarr]

What I take objection to is the fact that the JSS appears under the Stats section titled "Client Satisfaction"  I do not claim that the JSS code has a bug or that the mathematical formula has an error.  It may even be argued that it measures client satisfaction "most of the time." However to clam it is *always* a measure of client satisfaction, and to claim that a *higher* JSS is  measure of *more* client satisfaction is clearly - and I'd claim provably - nonsense.  Mathematicians would say it is a nonmonotonic function. I would have been happier if it appeared under a Stats section that says "Upwork floobydust rating" rather than "Client satisfaction". I'd be at peace then. At least I'd know clients would not be asking for a 90% JSS not knowing it is not a monotonic measure of client satisfaction.

In fact it is 48 hours since I pointed out a contradiction in what a Support agent told me about my JSS. My request was escalated after it could not be answered by him. I am still awaiting a reply.

I'd like to challenge Upwork to either (i) invite a few freelancers to review the JSS under NDA, or (ii) perform a correlation study between JSS and other measures of client satisfaction such as feedback (public or public plus private). That would lead to an objective conclusion.

[zehra_abidi]

Hi, I just wondered why a lack of feedback has slashed my job success score? I joined about four months ago and succesfully landed a score of 100% but before I could even hope to work for the top rated status, it dropped to 86%. My stats tell me that I'll be recommended by all my clients and yet I'm ineligible for most of the jobs posted here. Please tell me how I can improve my situation.