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hermanng
Community Member

What is going on with clients?

I just checked into messages and the UpWork page came up saying" it takes on average 3 days for a client to hire a freelancer"  you should really change that to 6 weeks to never. I just got and finished a 35 hour job and it took the client 6 weeks to decide because as he said, he was going through some 60 proposals he received. 

I have 14 active candidacies  and 35 submitted proposals 

out there in the ether and all are not hiring anyone, but most have 50+ proposals 

Those proposals would have been 6 connects each based on the new system. = 210 x $0.15 = $31.15 and not a job in sight - as I said, the other small job I had send a proposal 6 weeks ago so I have no idea at the moment of what is going on.

I get an email once a week with 10 jobs from UpWork, but they are all 3-4 days old and have 50+ proposals already - there were jobs offered where the client had send out 40 invitations - this whole thing is a nightmare and if UpWork does not get this situation under controll the future looks dismal 

52 REPLIES 52
nosvan
Community Member

I hear they have the internets in Venezuela now.

 

It depends. Internet cables are being stolen on a daily basis, and the national ISP that pretty much monopolizes the internet here (CANTV) doesn't have enough money to repair them. Thus, a lot of places lost their internet service years ago. Also, even if you have the possibility of requesting internet, you have to wait years to get a number assigned.

 

I personally use Netuno, which I pay in $. When I moved out I had to choose a place where Netuno was available, which makes it even harder since, due to rent laws, renting is almost impossible for young couples (TL;DR: if you have a son, the landowner can't take you out and by the time the child is old enough, the rented have the same amount they have lived in that place to leave). 


Jose Daniel M wrote:

I hear they have the internets in Venezuela now.

 

It depends. Internet cables are being stolen on a daily basis, and the national ISP that pretty much monopolizes the internet here (CANTV) doesn't have enough money to repair them. Thus, a lot of places lost their internet service years ago. Also, even if you have the possibility of requesting internet, you have to wait years to get a number assigned.

 

I personally use Netuno, which I pay in $. When I moved out I had to choose a place where Netuno was available, which makes it even harder since, due to rent laws, renting is almost impossible for young couples (TL;DR: if you have a son, the landowner can't take you out and by the time the child is old enough, the rented have the same amount they have lived in that place to leave). 


Wow, how awful. I spent the past winter in Mexico and had a crappy Internet connection for about a week in one little village that I was staying in; I was nearly tearing my hair out in frustration. I can't begin to imagine what it's like to have to deal with that, especially when you've got a family to support.

Checkout this year's blackouts. Quick reminder that Venezuela only has drought season and hot rain season.

 

And to be honest, you eventually get used to it. It's the worst part of course, but there is nothing you can do as an individual. Do your best with what you have.


Jose Daniel M wrote:

Checkout this year's blackouts. Quick reminder that Venezuela only has drought season and hot rain season.

 

And to be honest, you eventually get used to it. It's the worst part of course, but there is nothing you can do as an individual. Do your best with what you have.


Yeah, I went through flooding in my same Mexican apartment after a bad rainstorm, followed by a 9-hour blackout. That was fun. I spent the evening in my completely dark apartment reading with a flashlight while trying to eat most of the food in my fridge before it spoiled (it was 41 degrees Celsius outside). Fun times. You don't even realise how much you take for granted and how quickly things can all go wrong.

 

Thanks for putting all our whiny little problems into perspective. 🙂

 

That but imagine it happening for five days straight. That was, at least in our city. Some places stayed without power for weeks. Zulia (eastermost state) got it so bad that even as wek speak they get power a few hours a day. That's crushingly bad for that incredibly humid and hot state.

tlsanders
Community Member

Hermann, are you saying that Upwork should replace the information it provides based on millions of jobs and hundreds of thousands of clients with your personal experience? Why?

I'm not sure what you mean


Hermann M wrote:
I'm not sure what you mean

You suggested that Upwork should change it's statement about the average time to hire--which would, of course, be the average across hundreds of thousands of posted jobs--an instead use numbers closer to those matching your extremely limited personal experience.

Doesn't it seem likely that Upwork's broad-based data yields a more accurate average than a one-freelancer sample across a limited time period in a single field?

I do not believe that there is any reality base in the 3 day statement - it
may have been so 6 months ago, but it is certainly not now - they simply
have not changed it since it sounds a lot better than 6 weeks to never and it is not just my personal experience since of the 36 I send out each has now 50+ proposals and not a single one was hired which obviously means that at least 50x36 freelancers have the same experience

 

petra_r
Community Member


Hermann M wrote:

I do not believe that there is any reality base in the 3 day statement - it
may have been so 6 months ago, but it is certainly not now - they simply
have not changed it since it sounds a lot better than 6 weeks to never


 

The average time to hire (obviously) does not include clients who don't hire at all.

 

 

 


Hermann M wrote:

I do not believe that there is any reality base in the 3 day statement - it
may have been so 6 months ago, but it is certainly not now - they simply
have not changed it since it sounds a lot better than 6 weeks to never and it is not just my personal experience since of the 36 I send out each has now 50+ proposals and not a single one was hired which obviously means that at least 50x36 freelancers have the same experience

 


I'm pretty sure that figure doesn't include projects on which no one is hired, since there's obviously no way to average in "never".

Of course,the fact that 50 other freelancers on each of your jobs shared your experience WITH THAT JOB in no way supports the conclusion that their average hire rates or time to hire are similar to yours.

negrusti
Community Member

Well, it's an average - as useful as the average body temperature in the hospital. In my industry, it's quite common for clients to hire within minutes.

re: "In my industry, it's quite common for clients to hire within minutes."

 

This is an important market niche within Upwork's platform.

 

As a freelancer, I sometimes look for jobs like that.

 

As a client, I have hired freelancers within minutes dozens of times.

 

I found there are many freelancers eager to work on short-term, fast-hire jobs.

 

As a client, it's great to be able to post a job posting that addresses a difficult question or task, hire somebody within about ten minutes, and have the project completed within an hour.

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