What is up with clients' job titles? - Page 2

jessicasimko · ‎06-17-2020

I have now received 2 job invites, from 2 different people, where the title of the job is exactly what I wrote next to my name on my freelancer profile. I have 2 different things in my job title/what i do, and one of them doesn't apply to these jobs so I am wondering if this is a new thing now for job invites - although it doesn't make sense if it is. This has never happened before in over 5 years. The first time it happened, I thought it was a fluke and the client must have copied it to his job post. This was yesterday. But today I have another one from a different client with a job titled with the exact wording on my profile page. It's not a huge issue if it's a fluke but most of my jobs are invites and if it keeps happening... and ...if I take these jobs, I don't want my profile page (feedback section) to be filled up with feedback from jobs with all the same job title that matches the title under my name on my own page. Something seems really off with that.... please advise.

wescowley · ‎07-03-2020

Petra R wrote:
Kosta, why don't you guys talk to us BEFORE introducing new stuff. Let's have an area on the forum where Upwork employees like yourself can present new ideas and get a free peer review on whether that would work.

I want to echo what Petra says here.

I think you'll find that you get a lot better feedback and suggestions for improvement if you float new ideas before you've committed them to code, pushed them out, and pissed off your users. And you'll free up dev resources to work on things that are actually useful and helpful to the community.

Yes, I get it - Agile, Move fast and break things, blah blah. That s*** is for startups, not platforms supporting the livelihoods and businesses of millions of people. Take your time, do your research, and get it right.

gilbert-phyllis · ‎07-03-2020

Wes C wrote:
Petra R wrote:
Kosta, why don't you guys talk to us BEFORE introducing new stuff. Let's have an area on the forum where Upwork employees like yourself can present new ideas and get a free peer review on whether that would work.
I want to echo what Petra says here.

I think you'll find that you get a lot better feedback and suggestions for improvement if you float new ideas before you've committed them to code, pushed them out, and pissed off your users. And you'll free up dev resources to work on things that are actually useful and helpful to the community.

Yes, I get it - Agile, Move fast and break things, blah blah. That s*** is for startups, not platforms supporting the livelihoods and businesses of millions of people. Take your time, do your research, and get it right.

THIS. Those of us who prosper on this platform -- and help UW to prosper -- do it by taking our time, doing our research, and getting it right every time, however those steps translate into our particular professional categories.

wendy_writes · ‎07-03-2020

Kudos X many thousands to Petra's words!

m_terrazas · ‎07-02-2020

Kosta A wrote:
First, thank you for sharing your concerns and feedback. We have paused this test as we work on making changes based on the information that was shared here. Our goal is to improve the way a client can reach out to you all, the professional talent on Upwork, and create an easier flow for them to post jobs so that you get more opportunities.
In future iterations, it would be helpful for me to better understand how you all select job posts in the marketplace- what is important to you? What qualities do you look for in a job post or invite?

Hi Kosta, thanks for showing up here.

I don't know how the client side is configured when presenting a job.
Is there some kind of template to fill out based on the work that is needed?
The vast majority of the jobs I see in my feed are completely lacking in customer information. This requires the expense of connects me just to see if I can get the job done.
And if, as some say, I didn't take into account jobs that don't give enough information, you couldn't bid 99% of the time.
So how about looking for ways for customers to give more information?

davidcmarcus · ‎07-02-2020

Maria T wrote:
Kosta A wrote:
First, thank you for sharing your concerns and feedback. We have paused this test as we work on making changes based on the information that was shared here. Our goal is to improve the way a client can reach out to you all, the professional talent on Upwork, and create an easier flow for them to post jobs so that you get more opportunities.
In future iterations, it would be helpful for me to better understand how you all select job posts in the marketplace- what is important to you? What qualities do you look for in a job post or invite?
Hi Kosta, thanks for showing up here.

I don't know how the client side is configured when presenting a job.
Is there some kind of template to fill out based on the work that is needed?
The vast majority of the jobs I see in my feed are completely lacking in customer information. This requires the expense of connects me just to see if I can get the job done.
And if, as some say, I didn't take into account jobs that don't give enough information, you couldn't bid 99% of the time.
So how about looking for ways for customers to give more information?

I don't believe the client side is that user friendly.

This was a job on my feed posted earlier today which I flagged (it's still up due to staff playing with Paypal addresses):

"Nothing special just need a transcriptionist for some audio files

I have a few questions that i didn't know where to put in the job post so if you are interested could you please email me at *hidden gmail address* thank you"

If clients had the ability (only a select few do and please leave out talent agents) to contact us and ask questions (you'd never allow it the other way around), and Upwork wasn't so terrified of them taking the work off platform, they wouldn't have to hire people like Kosta to fix the wrong problems.

Edited to Add: 20-50 people applied to that job only because it needed 1 connect. The client is interviewing 2 after sending an additional 5 invites. Who knows how many emails they got...

firescue17 · ‎07-02-2020

David M wrote:
I don't believe the client side is that user friendly ...
...
" ... I have a few questions that i didn't know where to put in the job post so if you are interested could you please email me at *hidden gmail address* thank you"

I can't imagine any better indicator than the client posting IN the job description, "I don't know how this works" lmao ... that's classic-ness.

gilbert-phyllis · ‎07-02-2020

Kosta A wrote:

In future iterations, it would be helpful for me to better understand how you all select job posts in the marketplace- what is important to you? What qualities do you look for in a job post or invite?

Client's industry or category; enough details about what they need that I can determine whether it's a good fit for my skills and capabilities; enough details that I can determine whether their budget expectation is realistic and/or whether it's worth my while to help them understand the realistic budget ballpark; their timeline for getting the project launched and/or completed; professional demeanor -- decent grammar, organized project description.

deal breakers: buzzwords like rock star and ninja; describing themselves as a lean start-up; canned questions; include this word in your response; mention of additional work in the future.

colettelewis · ‎07-02-2020

Kosta A wrote:
First, thank you for sharing your concerns and feedback. We have paused this test as we work on making changes based on the information that was shared here. Our goal is to improve the way a client can reach out to you all, the professional talent on Upwork, and create an easier flow for them to post jobs so that you get more opportunities.
In future iterations, it would be helpful for me to better understand how you all select job posts in the marketplace- what is important to you? What qualities do you look for in a job post or invite?

__________________

You could also consider the inequalities related to geoblocking. You will never understand how any of us select job posts unless you actually see freelancers as humans who have businesses, whose aim is to make a living from the skills that they can offer, who are prepared to be Upwork partners - not Upwork shelf products or guinea pigs. You are basing your analysis on the premise that you and any one of your clients is superior to the skills and superiority of the freelancers who have signed up on Upwork.

iaabraham · ‎07-02-2020

Kosta A wrote:
In future iterations, it would be helpful for me to better understand how you all select job posts in the marketplace- what is important to you? What qualities do you look for in a job post or invite?

Oh please, how many times have freelancers wasted their time to offer great suggestions in the forums, only for Upwork to ignore it? The team doesn't care what we want.

You know what's important to us -- and if you pretend you don't, ask your team to spend just an hour on the forums to find out.

mtngigi · ‎07-02-2020

Isabelle Anne A wrote:
Kosta A wrote:
In future iterations, it would be helpful for me to better understand how you all select job posts in the marketplace- what is important to you? What qualities do you look for in a job post or invite?
Oh please, how many times have freelancers wasted their time to offer great suggestions in the forums, only for Upwork to ignore it? The team doesn't care what we want.

You know what's important to us -- and if you pretend you don't, ask your team to spend just an hour on the forums to find out.

I wonder the same thing, Isabelle Anne. Why the pretend concern towards our opionions. I constantly get pop-ups to "tell Upwork what I think". I tried it once, to no avail. Some "truthiness" (Google Stephen Colbert) would be a wellcome change.

wescowley · ‎07-02-2020

Oh my. One of the benefits of being nose deep in work through most of June is that I missed this thread when it came around the first time. This is amazingly bad.

Thank you for pausing the test. Please take that code branch all the way to the recycle bin, then empty it. You could set it on fire just to be sure. Have I said this is bad?

As to what I look for jobs/invites:

Details about the job that only the client knows - Upwork isn't going to pull these out the air (or off someone's profile).
I'm an editor, so I want to see word count, format (Word, LaTeX, Google Docs, PDF, etc), topic. If it's academic work, I want to know whether it's a thesis, dissertation, journal/conference paper, or classroom assignment. The latter is an auto-decline.
I want to see how many invites have been sent out. Too often, it shows 0, when I know there's at least 1 (me). More than 10 and I'll probably decline. More than 15 is an auto-decline.
I want to know their deadline. Same or next day is an auto-decline, and lately anything shorter than a week or two often gets declined.
I don't care so much about the offered budget, but I do want to see their job history. I'll often bid my rate on a low budget invite, but I usually will decline if their history is full of low budget jobs. This is especially important for direct offers, which, unless something has changed recently, don't offer access to the client's history.

What I don't want to see:

Invites from freelancers looking for work.
More than one or two of the stock screening questions. Zero is best. If I see 3 stock questions I'm probably going to decline it. I don't usually mind their own questions, but the stock ones? Just no.
Any mention of Grammarly.

pandoraharper · ‎07-06-2020

Jessica S wrote:
I have now received 2 job invites, from 2 different people, where the title of the job is exactly what I wrote next to my name on my freelancer profile. I have 2 different things in my job title/what i do, and one of them doesn't apply to these jobs so I am wondering if this is a new thing now for job invites - although it doesn't make sense if it is. This has never happened before in over 5 years. The first time it happened, I thought it was a fluke and the client must have copied it to his job post. This was yesterday. But today I have another one from a different client with a job titled with the exact wording on my profile page. It's not a huge issue if it's a fluke but most of my jobs are invites and if it keeps happening... and ...if I take these jobs, I don't want my profile page (feedback section) to be filled up with feedback from jobs with all the same job title that matches the title under my name on my own page. Something seems really off with that.... please advise.

Wow, heard about this thread but had no idea what it would reveal about Upwork.

Yikes.