Backstory (if you don’t care, skip ahead)

To hire staff, I have historically relied on Craigslist and UpWork.com (Formerly ODesk.com). For myself, as a former freelance developer, I tried to find work on ODesk.com but found that the audience was primarily seeking low-wage workers (as was I when I was an employer) so it proved fruitless for an American seeking a fair-market wage. I knew that there were some out there seeking to hire people like myself, and willing to pay my rates, but UpWork.com failed to provide the tools for users to do that.

Then I discovered Freelancer.com which shared tons of statistics and tools that would help you find great staff and great projects. I used it as an employer a couple of years ago and had a pretty good experience but stopped after a week or two after finding my ideal staff somewhere else. So I don’t have a lot of feedback on the employer side of things in this article.

But recently, I decided to create a profile for myself and see what type of work I could attract, or find, at a mid-level American wage in my market. I purchased the Professional Member account, and took a variety of exams, and right when I got my first offer I began having a terrible experience, so bad that it instilled doubt in the entire Freelancer.com system.

This article was born from that, particularly, to help others learn whether or not you can solve these problems, and to get the attention of Freelancer.com support.

The Bugs

UI / UX Problems

These ones are exactly bugs, but they’re annoyances with the system.

1. Customizing the News Feed – You can’t customize the News Feed, so I’m getting stuff like “X new articles published on Freelancer Community”. I don’t know what that is, I don’t know why I should care about reading them, and it just clutters my News Feed. To me, as someone seeking work, I don’t want to see anything that doesn’t help me find work today.
2. Clearing News Feed Items – It allows you to “Hide” items, but I want to “Mark as Read” or “Clear” them so they disappear permanently.

Sponsored Profile

Update: I paid $50 for a “Promoted Profile” and immediately noticed it uses my username instead of my display name. This is stupid. I want employers to recognize me by my actual name.

Okay, so I have complained about the problems. But what am I doing about it? Well, I took to support and Twitter. Within an hour I got a reply and spent another hour with them and got promises they’ll address the Bugs in the immediate future and follow up with me. We’ll see!

By:

Spencer Hill

Categorized in: PHP

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