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dsmgdesign
Community Member

What hire rate do you stay away from?

Hello, 

I'm both a freelancer and a client. As a client, I have found it a challenge to find qualified freelancers on some of my jobs, and so those jobs will sadly go unfilled. I've read on this forum that many freelancers will avoid applying to jobs that have a low hire rate. So, I would like to take a poll from my fellow freelancers. When browsing project descriptions, and you look at the hire rate in the right column, what hire rate range would make you say "no way" and hit the back arrow? 

25 REPLIES 25
bilal1983
Community Member

Hi David,

I think this is a subjective question, as freelancers from different regions have different lowest thresholds.

 

So, for instance a $10 hourly rate might be too low for freelancers working from within US, but generally well accepted for freelancers from some Asian countries.

That's a good point, but not what I meant. I meant the client's hire rate, which is shown with a percentage in the right column on every project description. Like this one here. 

I'm sorry, I misunderstood. 🙂

 

I check the rate and total number of jobs posted, and if the rate is above 50% I usually still apply if I am a good fit, and if the total number of jobs posted is low.

 

But if it is 50%-60% with a very high number of jobs posted then I am vary.

 

And this is just me. More experienced freelancers here might be able to shed more light on it.

Well, there are many clients who just post the job and do not hire freelancers anymore. It's very frustrating for new freelancers. It misleads the freelancer and waste connects. So, in my case, i don't apply to those jobs where the hire rate is less than 50%.

To be honest, I never even look at my connects. I've got so many, I don't even know what I have.  It never crosses my mind when vetting projects. The only time I'm even aware of them is when I read this community forum. Connects is a cost of doing business. That said, I think 50% is a good number for other reasons that I've mentioned and a few other freelancers have mentioned here. Jessica L, for example, had a really great reason to vet clients based on their hire rate. 

a_lipsey
Community Member


David S M wrote:

Hello, 

I'm both a freelancer and a client. As a client, I have found it a challenge to find qualified freelancers on some of my jobs, and so those jobs will sadly go unfilled. I've read on this forum that many freelancers will avoid applying to jobs that have a low hire rate. So, I would like to take a poll from my fellow freelancers. When browsing project descriptions, and you look at the hire rate in the right column, what hire rate range would make you say "no way" and hit the back arrow? 


Hire rate has zero consequence in how I vet a client. I find it irrelevant, unless they've posted 100 jobs or more and never ever hired or something like that. If it just happens to be low, I presume they just didn't find anyone they liked and don't give it much thought. 

tlbp
Community Member

I think hire rates are only relevant for freelancers who are concerned about the cost of using connects. A freelancer who has a stockpile of connects or does see their cost as consequential will apply regardless of hire rate. 

dsmgdesign
Community Member

Hi, Tonya, That's interesting insight, and I think that is true it's relevant to freelancers concerned with cost of connects. But I don't think it's only those freelancers. I, myself, have a huge stock pile of connects that I will never use up. I have my own metric when it comes to hire rate and if clients fail my test, I won't apply. Why? Because as opposed to the cut and paste mentality that I see alot of freelancers use on my jobs when I'm in the client role, I customize all of my cover letters when I'm the freelancer applying so that it's relevant to the client's project which takes some time, and I value my time. Connects never even occurs to me to be honest, it's all about my time and nothing else. 

Agreed about the investment of time and effort.

 

I don't care about hire rate. If someone's a tirekicker, it will show in plenty of ways.

  • Any client has multiple ways to find contractors.
  • No client is beholden to Upwork, or to us, to focus their contracting here.
  • An excellent client could be selective in hiring on Upwork for a variety of reasons. 

Off the top of my head, here are my selection criteria:

  • Does this work interest me?
  • Is the work at a minimum ethical and as an optimum beneficial?
  • Does the prospect, as evidenced by their post, understand what they want and what our respective responsibilities will be?

If there's a history:

  • Does the prospect pay decently?
  • Do the reviews (both directions) reflect reasonable working relationships?
  • Does the hiring history show such diversity of projects that the prospect looks like a farmer?
    (Relevant because I offer very personalized service that often requires client engagement, and because I have no interest in enriching my competitors with what they skim off their billings.)

And, the golden ticket:

Am I the best possible person for this contract?

tagrendy
Community Member

40% and below, but it's not an automatic "no", I'll look at client's work history, if there is bunch of projects with low pay - then I'm getting the signal that the client is low on money, and probably has hard time finding a Freelancer cause he wants cheap work done with quality. If, though, the projects are paid for an adequate amount, I assume the client may not be the direct client, and some of the projects he posted got pulled out by the direct client. If it's really an issue, it might be beneficial to mention in the project description that in the case of no hire you will close the project and freelancers will get their connects back ( or whatever Upwork needs you to do to give the connects back ).

moonraker
Community Member

I don't look.

bevcam
Community Member

The hire rate plays no part for me, but I do look at reviews of other freelancers.

noman19bd
Community Member

Hi David,

 

It varies from man to man. But If I see it's less than 20% to 30% of my hourly rate then I just ignore it. But sometimes the exception happened.
--

Regards

Abdullah

martina_plaschka
Community Member

Under 80%

ashrafkhan81
Community Member

I consider "hire rate" only if sending the proposal needs 6 connects and if his average pay on past jobs is less than $500.  In this case I look for hire rate of at least 50%

 

 

wlyonsatl
Community Member

For the reason cited by Tonya, I pay no attention to hire rate.

 

I do sometimes pay attention to some combination of average pay rate on previous projects, number of proposals received from other freelancers (avoiding any project with more than 20 proposals), most recent check on the project's proposals by client (more than 48 hours ago likely means the client has selected a freelancer, or never will) and recency of job's initial posting (ignoring jobs posted more than 2 days ago).

gilbert-phyllis
Community Member

I look at the available metrics in combination, along with the tone and tenor of the job description. For me, the hire rate is least likely to be useful on its own or as one factor among several. All of my UW proposals involve bespoke cover letters and my time investment ranges from 90 seconds to 15-20 minutes depending on the opportunity. Both the time and the connects are a cost of doing business and I find on UW, the ROI is overwhelmingly better than it is in my off-platform biz dev activities. 

dsmgdesign
Community Member

Thanks everyone for their feedback. As for me, when I'm looking for freelance or agency gigs I do look at hire rate...it's one of the first things I look at. But red flags are set off only if the hire rate is somewhere around 35% or lower, and the client posted 10 or more jobs. Even then, I don't hit the back arrow just yet. I'll weigh some other factors provided to me then decide if I should quickly bail out or not. Was just curious what other freelancers do because as a client my hire rate usually hovers around 65-70% and was nervous if I'm missing out on qualified freelancers or not because of it. 

jesslimag
Community Member

I never looked at hire rate before, but I'll factor it in now. 

 

I just submitted a proposal to a client who scheduled a meeting and then immediately tried to get me to go off-platform with them (at 42% of my rate, with the promise of potentially working my way up to 80% 🙄). This is an established company that's been on Upwork for a year with 25 jobs posted and a 0% hire rate, presumably because they go off-platform with everybody. 

It was annoying because I wasted 20 minutes of my time on that video call before they dumped the "Surprise! We're cheap AND unethical!" bit on me. Just put the job up on your site's career page if you want to hire directly, ya bums!


Jessica L wrote:

I just submitted a proposal to a client who scheduled a meeting and then immediately tried to get me to go off-platform with them (at 42% of my rate, with the promise of potentially working my way up to 80% 🙄). This is an established company that's been on Upwork for a year with 25 jobs posted and a 0% hire rate, presumably because they go off-platform with everybody. 


I hope you flagged the job post as inappropriate!

Yep, flagged them! Whether anything happens remains to be seen. Clearly a deliberate strategy on their part rather than a misunderstanding of the platform; they kept stressing the benefit of not having to pay the 20% to Upwork. 

Thanks Jessica. This is another really great reason not to ignore client hire rates. Clients who hire off platform will have very low hire rates! Although I don'ty think I've ever seen a 0% hire rate before. That's definitely an immediate back button decision. 

b8cb779e
Community Member

hello can i ask if it is 0 % of hire rate is it legit?

sajal36
Community Member

Depends on workscope and complexity along with strategy.  Just step back & think if you are outsourcing your project than how the SI will charge you. Here is my thought process and experience --> SI do MSA build 25-30% margin on the cost of the resource to the client. But than to be competitive they balance cost by loading bulge and rookie on the project costing. The prime responsibility lies on the SI to deliver the project so resource training and other responsibilities lies with SI. The resource mix comes as 25-30% onsite and 70-75% remote / offshore with Bulge being maintained around 60%.

So you need to evaluate which skill and experience segment you are onboarding the resource.

 

If it is core resource like project manager / architect / key developer than definitely no look down on rate. If it is flex resource than you are free to negotiate on low rate. 

6bfcdaf8
Community Member

Hire rate is one of the factors i notice, now it's not very important unless its around 50% or lower. Because it is important to write a genuine proposal and that requires time. As well as actual money (connects). So i'm not wasting my time for someone who has a habit of randomly posting jobs and not hiring anyone

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