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demtron
Community Member

What are the top three reasons that a job post from a new client is expired with no hire?

About 80% jobs that appear in my searches are place by clients who are new to Upwork and appear to have signed up and posted a job right away.  Of those, I would say that at least 30% of them never result in at least one interview and show no "last seen by client" date, and most (maybe 80-90%) end up expiring with nobody being hired.  So, I end up getting a ton of "A job you submitted a proposal to was closed or expired" notices.

 

Let's assume that these clients have actual projects for which they would pay if they found the right resource.  10, 15, 20 or more freelancers will apply.  I asked a friend of mine to share the types of proposals he receives on the jobs he posts.  The freelancers' profiles are decent, their proposals are decently-written, and they're either priced appropriately or asking for an interview to seek clarification on the project.  So, I'm also going to assume that, in most cases, the applicants are sufficiently qualified and at least one of them would be worth hiring for the job.

 

So, if the client has a real job and gets serious proposals from qualified candidates, why are there so many left unhired?

 

I might be one of these:

 

1) The client is getting hammered by to many proposal notifications and get frustrated.

 

2) The client doesn't actualy have a serious job and never intended to hire someone.

 

3) The client doesn't really understand how to describe what they want and doesn't want to spend time sufficiently articulating their need.

 

4) They're finding the talent they want somewhere else.

 

5) The parties are negotiating a deal off-site and bypassing Upwork.

 

I'd like others' opinions about what's going on.  Compared to my past experiences landing other jobs on other platforms or through my own advertising, the batting average of matching up qualified freelancers with real jobs is pretty poor.

 

Thanks - John

6 REPLIES 6
mwiggenhorn
Community Member

More than 3 - They hired elsewhere, they used an internal resource, they hired locally, they changed their  mind about the need for the job, they ran out of money, they were just testing the waters to see what's out there.

 

Best to not fret about stuff like this.  Send your proposal and then forget about it.  Really.

What I'm asking is what's the most likely reasons, not what are all the possible reasons.  I'm not worrying about it, but I do want to understand how to optimize my time.  I can do this by knowing what a reasonable batting average is for proposals.

 

If I can make proposal and profile improvements that yield returns, I'll do that.  But if quality improvements aren't going to improve the batting average, then the only improvement I can make is to limit the my time involvement in writing proposals so as to free my time for other advertising pursuits.

 

Without any visibility into the job poster side of the equation, sending proposals is little more than gambling for me.  If "send the proposal and forget about it" is the only answer, I can accept that and find other more prosperous opportunities that involve less gambling.  The disappearing rate just seems extraordinary IMO.

I completely understand where you are coming from.  I just don't think there are simple answers.  For example, in my field, job posters are almost always first timers who are looking to see what's out there.  In another field, it could be that clients are being overwhelmed with dozens of really terrible proposals.  I would be interested in seeing what others think.

This will vary by domain. I joined elance (predecessor) around 2005, and one had to sign up for specific specialties. I elected management and finance, and most weeks found not a single job post worth considering. I won 75% of the jobs to which I applied that were actually awarded. I still won only 20% of the jobs to which I applied. I was able to reach a senior elance executive and asked for an explanation.

 

He had the statistics in front of him, and claimed that more than 60% of all posted jobs in my domain were awarded. I then looked at the job postings and found that the majority of jobs in "management and finance" were for commodity services: secretarial or data entry. All jobs are equal. I might guide a startup manufacturer from concept to first shipment for $35,000, while ten freelancers in Asia won projects for data entry at $2.50 an hour. So, lots of jobs are awarded. Were I assessing UW's business, I'd ask at least two dozen questions that have never crossed an employees' mind. The company knows algorithms, not freelancing.

 

The other big issue is "What I do is difficult and complicated, while what you do is easy and simple." Most people posting jobs have no idea what they need, mistaking a symptom for the disease, developing a perfect plan to fix the wrong problem, and just needing someone to implement it. In that scenario, the poster never figures out why projects fail, and never get a response from anyone able to identify and fix the real problem. Their friends come on UW, post a job, find the cheapest person, and go around ToS to hire the person off-platorm. Then they disappear, and the next job is posted on some other platform. And both projects fail.

martina_plaschka
Community Member

That's why I skip the new clients usually. After a while I learned to read between the lines, and usually have a reasonably good idea if a client is serious or not, but there is never a guarantee that the client will go through with the hiring, any number of things could happen. 

In my domain, my experience is that most clients don't know what they want and need someone like me to guide them from ideas to solution and fill in the gaps in-between.  On projects with poor scope definition, that consulting is exactly what will make the project a success, so I see those new customers as opportunities.

 

Perhaps my expectations of the client are too high for effectively communicating that sentiment in proposals.  Or, the client's expectations are unclear and they don't know a good opportunity when they see it. 

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