Upwork Lying to Me

lucidwebmarketng · ‎03-04-2019

So I apply to a job posting last week. I occasionally then check the activity of the buyers. Simple enough, just click the link of the proposals I've made. This shows the job and proposal as well as some more accurate data than what you see if you just click the job posting.

For example, the posting may say a range of the number of applicants such as 5 to 10 (or 20 to 50 or whatever it is which is not informative) as well as the number of interviews being conducted. Clicking from the proposals page however shows 7 applicants. In this case however, it shows 7 interviews, just as on the job posting page.

What's the problem? If 7 out of 7 applicants are being interviewed, being one of those applicants, I should be interviewed. Yet, no messages that the poster is interested.

Anyone ever run into this? Is the system so clunky that you cannot rely on the information given? Either way, does not look good. The little faith I have left in UW is evaporating.

prestonhunter · ‎03-04-2019

Pierre:

I understand your frustration.

But Upwork is not "lying to you."

You are a looking at some things which are meant to be helpful and informative, and you are assuming more about these indicators than they claim. You may also be unaware that many components of the Upwork user interface and various pages are cached for speed purposes. There are page components that are not generted anew when you click to a page, but are generated on a schedule, such as once per day or once a week.

The advice that most of the experienced Upwork freelancers give regarding job posts is this:

Don't check back on them. Send a proposal and forget about it. If a client contacts you, then (and only then) should you start paying attention to that job again.

lucidwebmarketng · ‎03-04-2019

Thanks Preston for your response. However, I don't buy it. You have not explained why I have not got a response despite apparently the buyer contacting/interviewing all seven applicants.

I figured someone would say I'm assuming something about a piece of information provided to me. If I am assuming, educate me. I want to know if what I see is indeed, or not, what I think it is. If it's not, a better name might be in order for that information so as to not let others in error. UW could just simply provide information about what this information means. It does seem very clear: it says there's 7 applicants and 7 interviews being conducted for that job.

I don't know what the cache has anything to do with it. 7 out of 7 is 100% and yet I'm not being interviewed being one of those applicants.

As for checking, this is a kind of feedback to me. Why no response? Well, the job poster has not logged back in over a week is a common reason. I also check to see who the poster is. Before you apply, it doesn't say in the job post unless the buyer explicitly says who they are. It does after you apply which seems backwards. I might apply or not depending on who the buyer is.

richard_wein · ‎03-04-2019

Hi Pierre.

Unfortunately these figures are sometimes misleading. The number of Proposals/Applicants excludes any proposals that the client has archived or declined.

Another peculiarity is that the number of Invitations is often shown as 0, even when I've just received an invitation to the job! In my experience it usually takes a few hours before the actual number of Invitations is shown.

More rarely, I've seen cases where the job posting fails to show that a freelancer has already been hired, even though i can see a hired freelancer listed in the client's job history.

The short answer is to take these figures with a pinch of salt.

prestonhunter · ‎03-04-2019

re: "Thanks Preston for your response. However, I don't buy it. You have not explained why I have not got a response despite apparently the buyer contacting/interviewing all seven applicants."

I dont't know why.

You're looking at things that I don't regard as particluarly accurate, but you are expecting them to be accurate.

lucidwebmarketng · ‎03-05-2019

>> You're looking at things that I don't regard as particluarly accurate, but you are expecting them to be accurate.

Of course I expect them to be accurate. Don't know why you wouldn't. You are saying not to trust or believe anything on the platform. If so, I don't know what we're all doing here.

petra_r · ‎03-04-2019

Pierre L wrote:
Thanks Preston for your response. However, I don't buy it. You have not explained why I have not got a response despite apparently the buyer contacting/interviewing all seven applicants.

Nobody is "lying to you"

"Applicants" means everyone still in the running, which EXCLUDES everyone who has been either declined or archived.

If it shows 7 applicants and 7 being interviewed and you are not one of the ones being interviewed, you were archived or declined.

Say there were 25 applicants, the client declined 10 of them and archived a further 8, moving forward with interviewing 7, that would result in it showing as 7 applicants and 7 interviews.

lucidwebmarketng · ‎03-05-2019

Petra, I used that title as a bit of click-bait. Seems it worked and got responses and got a discussion going which was my intent.

Your explanation is the one that makes the most sense. If an actual employee at UW can confirm what you say, I'd be satisfied with it. Although I still find it weird that I would be one not being contacted and archived when most other applicants would be contacted. So call me sceptical.

Maybe it's something else and if so, UW should own up to problems, issues and whatever else. There was a serious issue a couple of weeks ago and they, as far as I can tell, did nothing. The only reason I know about it is in this community, which I just happened to read at the time.

petra_r · ‎03-05-2019

Pierre L wrote:
Although I still find it weird that I would be one not being contacted and archived when most other applicants would be contacted. So call me sceptical.

How would you know that "most other applicants were contacted?"

For all you know there were 120 applicants and 113 were declined or archived, leaving 7 showing as active applicants and those 7, who were not declined or archived, are being interviewed.

ssmeredith · ‎03-04-2019

Actually I've been an invite-only job with me being the only invite and I laugh because I see it says 5 people are being interviewed 🙂

mtngigi · ‎03-04-2019

Meredith S wrote:
Actually I've been an invite-only job with me being the only invite and I laugh because I see it says 5 people are being interviewed 🙂

That's simply because you are not the only one the client sent an invite to.

And to the OP's point, I believe invite only applicants do not compute in the number of people being interviewed. So that "7th" interviewee could be an "invite only" freelancer. Someone may come along and correct me on this. Preston, as a sometimes client ... do you know if this is correct?

ssmeredith · ‎03-04-2019

Yeah it kinda was. It was a repeat client. So yes, I think the numbers do get skewed every now and then.

lucidwebmarketng · ‎03-05-2019

>> Actually I've been an invite-only job with me being the only invite and I laugh because I see it says 5 people are being interviewed

Now we're getting somewhere. As Preston said, we shouldn't expect information given to us as being accurate which is a ridiculous notion. Makes me wonder what else is not accurate.

prestonhunter · ‎03-05-2019

Or maybe the information IS accurate... But it does not represent what you assumed it to mean.

The fact that people are no longer counted as applicants in that number once they have been rejected, deleted from the active candidate, or archived is something you were not considering when you first looked at these numbers.

It is just normal people who created the algorithms that present those numbers. They are not perfect and they have not created something which is perfectly clear or which perfectly represents what ever user might expect the numbers to mean.