Upwork Product Updates, Q2 2022: Stronger Connections Give Your Company Agility to Grow

Companies are staffing up and many are putting independent talent at the heart of their strategies to compete and stay agile. Nearly half (47%) say remote freelancers will play a bigger role in their plans over the next two years. We’re constantly exploring new Upwork updates that can help you make those critical connections more easily.

The dynamics of this changing work reality are part of Upwork’s DNA; our hybrid workforce has more than 1,700 independent professionals. Every day, we pair our insights with your feedback to help make stronger connections that enable extraordinary results.

As we head into summer, our teams at Upwork have been fine-tuning some of the systems you rely on most.

For example, you may have already seen the fresh look we’ve given to your client dashboard. For now, this is a stylistic change that maintains the same functionality you’re used to—but it also provides a framework for new solutions that are on the horizon. Let’s look at how Upwork’s new features can help you find the talent your business is looking for.

Connect with the experts you need, when you need them

One of Upwork’s strengths is the speed with which you can connect to skilled professionals and get important work done. These recent updates will help reduce friction so you can access the right skills at the right time.

Get stronger matches with a complete company profile

The more you share about your business, the easier it is for talent to see when their knowledge and experience make them a smart fit.

To provide a more complete introduction to your organization, we’ve added fields to your company profile that indicate industry and size. This will be shown on your job posts alongside information about your company’s history on Upwork.

Including this in your Upwork profile also helps us better understand your business and customize your experience. Here’s how you can edit your company information.

New tools help motivated talent get your attention

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To help you identify specialists who are actively looking for new projects or are highly interested in working with you, we’ve launched two features across Upwork:

• The “Available Now” badge is a signal professionals can turn on to help you see, at a glance, when they’re able to start working on your project as soon as possible. Also available for Enterprise clients.
• Boosted Proposals enable professionals to signal their interest in your project by bidding for one of three slots that you’ll find at the top of the list of proposals for your consideration.

Both of these features are available on a per-use basis to help talent more easily stand out from the competition.

Quickly start new projects with these Virtual Talent Bench™ updates

Virtual Talent Bench (VTB) is a collection of features to help you find, organize, and mobilize the expertise you need to support your team and get the most critical projects started as quickly as possible.

Over the past few months, we’ve streamlined your options to grow your network of trusted talent and to strengthen existing relationships through new opportunities. These enhancements include:

• Sharing new jobs with trusted talent immediately. When you post a new job to the work marketplace, you can immediately invite talent you’ve saved to VTB to check it out and consider submitting a proposal.
• Discovering new talent to expand your existing lists. As you save interesting independent professionals to VTB, the platform learns more about what you’re looking for. As a result, Upwork will highlight other professionals based not only on talent you’ve just saved but also on any profiles already saved to your list. These recommendations consider characteristics such as skills category, rate, location, and language to help you discover other professionals who might be a great fit.

Build your ideal team your way

Flexibility is key to being adaptable and maintaining a competitive edge. That means finding talent when you need it—and collaborating in a way that works best for your business. We’re exploring new ways to help you move forward as smoothly as possible.

Make your first hire on Upwork more quickly

You’ve posted your first job on Upwork and proposals are coming in. What happens next? To help clients who are new to Upwork navigate this process, we’re changing the proposal manager experience so it explains the process and offers helpful tips through key steps.

How can we help you make a bigger impact?

Some of our biggest insights are sparked by conversations we have every day with companies like yours. We know that access to highly skilled talent helps make incredible things possible and we’re always looking for new ways to help you drive the impact you envision at scale. There are big things on the horizon, we look forward to sharing them with you.