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bundie702
Community Member

Venting...Job Postings that leave out pertinent information

This morning an editing job caught my eye. The client said that familiarity with the topic of the manuscript would be helpful. I read the ad again, thinking I must have missed the topic.

It wasn't there.

 

This evening I saw a job for medical editing, temporary, on site (I'm not even sure this is allowed on Upwork?). But I looked anyway to see where the client was located.

The only location given was "United States."

 

There's something seriously wrong with this picture...I see many other ads that don't give basic information..."I've written a book I need edited..." with no information about whether it's fiction or nonfiction, what genre of fiction or the subject matter for nonfiction. 

 

Isn't this even more important now that people have to pay for their connects? 

6 REPLIES 6
prestonhunter
Community Member

re: "This evening I saw a job for medical editing, temporary, on site (I'm not even sure this is allowed on Upwork?)"

 

Upwork allows both medical editing jobs.

Upwork allows temporary jobs.

Upwork allows on-site jobs.

Preston,

I was actually referring only to the on-site job, as I've done the other two, but thank you for being so thorough.

hodgesh
Community Member


Bettye U wrote:

 

Isn't this even more important now that people have to pay for their connects? 


It is for people who are willing to work with such clients. If they are even legit clients. Lately I'm seeing more of such unusually poorly described jobs and job posts that are literally nothing but a template: "We are {name of company} in {name of industry}." I suspect people are playing with the system.

gilbert-phyllis
Community Member

Generally speaking, I choose to assume that clients who cannot get it together to write reasonably informative job posts would be giant PITAs to work with, and keep scrolling. I agree with you it's even less tolerable now that connects aren't free. When I feel particularly aggravated by one, I click "flag as inappropriate" and select the reason "there is no clearly defined deliverable". I'd like to think UW relays that to the client so they can clean up their act, but who knows?

 

Presumably, charging for connects will encourage the lower tiers of FLs to self-select off the platform. Maybe the same thing will happen for the lower tiers of clients as their posts get ignored.

Obviously post a job to do on-site work, without specifying the location, is senseless.

 

But this isn't Upwork's fault.

 

Clients are not perfect, and often their job postings are not perfect.

A client may very much want to hire somebody to on-site work, but forget to specify what city she is in.

 

She might assume that because she entered the name of her city at one point, Upwork will display that as part of her job posting.

 

More experienced and more serious clients create better job postings.

Anonymous-User
Not applicable

I think I saw the same post. I usually pass them over and mark them as budget is too low, vague description, unrealistic expectations, etc. When the post is a little more in-depth, I ask more questions in the proposal. What I have discovered is that if someone is vague abut their manuscript - they hired a ghostwriter for some generic topic for an ebook that's already been written a million times. When the client is the original author, the post is more personal and reflects their concern over having their "baby" put in the hands of an experienced Editor. Clients are going to have to be very clear in their posts from now on, because with the new changes, I'm not going to waste too much time reading after the first 3 sentences (you can usually tell after the first if it's worth a bother).
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