can I award/select several freelancers and choose the first one to accept?

[Fredrik K]

I post fairly simple jobs which I want done and accepted quickly.

Is it possible to "hire" or award more than one freelancer, and then automatically the first one to accept will get the job (and other offers are revoked)

I know I can award the job to several freelancers already, but upwork requires me to deposit one milestone per freelancer, which doesn't follow the logic I want.

Ideally, I want to 1. add a milestone (and cash) 2. Award/hire 2-3 freelancers 3. The first to accept gets job 4. The other "offer" get automatically revoked.

Anyone who can fill me in on how to work like this, I'd be happy to hear.

thanks!

/Fred

[Katrina B]

---

@Fredrik K wrote:

I post fairly simple jobs which I want done and accepted quickly.

Is it possible to "hire" or award more than one freelancer, and then automatically the first one to accept will get the job (and other offers are revoked)

I know I can award the job to several freelancers already, but upwork requires me to deposit one milestone per freelancer, which doesn't follow the logic I want.

Ideally, I want to 1. add a milestone (and cash) 2. Award/hire 2-3 freelancers 3. The first to accept gets job 4. The other "offer" get automatically revoked.

Anyone who can fill me in on how to work like this, I'd be happy to hear.

thanks!

/Fred

---

 What you're proposing is not possible with the "Send Offer" since as you know you have to fund the escrow to make the offer. 

My suggestion would be when you get your applicants initiate the interview with two or three that you would like to try out and the first one that replies, send that person the offer. 

[Rene K]

You cannot do this. And you don't have to. You post a job, select a freelancer and award them the job. That's it, very easy.

[John K]

---

@Rene K wrote:

You cannot do this. And you don't have to. You post a job, select a freelancer and award them the job. That's it, very easy.

---

 And if that freelancer doesn't respond "soon enough", you could withdraw the offer, and make an offer to another freelancer, although that's not the most polite way of doing things.

[Preston H]

Fredrik:

I think you CAN do this if you use an hourly contract.

With the caveat being that I have never personally tried this...

I know that when I post hourly contract jobs I have the option to click a button to "hire" freelancers, but they still need to accept the offer.

One of the options on the client-side interface is an option to automatically close a job post if a freelancer accepts it.

So that means:

If I post a job, and 3 different freelancers apply to it... and I'm in a hurry, so I click the "Hire" button for all three...

AND I select the option to CLOSE the job when somebody accepts the offer...

Then theoretically this means that only one of them can actually accept the offer: The first one. And anybody after that won't be able to accept the offer, because the job is closed.

At least that's what I think might happen... I have never tried it.

In practice, I do not use the "auto-close" button because I want to be able to manually decide when to stop hiring people for a job, and I often hire and pay more than one freelancer for the same job.