Building Your Go-to Team Just Got Easier With Virtual Talent Bench™

When you know one freelancer who consistently delivers, it can change how you think about getting things done. When you create a network of trusted talent, it can transform what you believe is possible.

We designed Upwork to spark and support new business connections that help your most important projects move at full speed. We also know the relationships that form through Upwork don’t end just because a project does: Many of you will work with the same independent professionals again and again.

"Virtual Talent Bench enables us to get the right talent working on projects so much more quickly! It’s easy to contact professionals we’ve worked with—or that we want to work with—when we actually need their support."

—Julie Ewald, CEO of Impressa Solutions

However, you’ve told us that we can do more to simplify the process of staying connected with the talent you love working with, finding promising professionals for future projects, and organizing your talent network. That’s why we’re introducing Virtual Talent Bench™, a series of features that puts relationship building at the heart of the client experience. It includes:

• A new Discover page to help you connect with independent professionals
• Custom lists to help you instantly reconnect with trusted talent or reach out to other skilled professionals who’ve caught your attention
• Tags to highlight soft skills and other competencies
• Private notes that can be added to any professional or agency profile and combined with tags to quickly add context that you won’t get from a profile on its own
  

If you’re an independent professional, Virtual Talent Bench streamlines your opportunity for repeat business and a more consistent income stream. As you build stronger relationships over time, this enables you to spend less time looking for new clients and more time doing the work you love.

Here’s a closer look at what Virtual Talent Bench can do for you.

The new Discover page offers a shortcut to new talent and ideas

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We set out to reimagine how clients find the skilled independent professionals they need. The result is the new Discover page, an experience that helps get you closer to the right talent right away.

We’ll suggest potential skills and individual profiles based on professionals you’ve worked with, previous searches, or job posts you’ve written—and for Basic and Plus clients, Project Catalog™ services that match projects you’ve looked at in the past.

With these recommendations, you can quickly check out great new talent to add to your shortlist or use the suggestions to refine your search. The more actions you take, the better the matches.

Lists help you keep your Virtual Talent Bench organized

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Keep track of professionals you’ve worked with—and ones you want to work with—by taking advantage of new lists to organize your network. Just click on the heart icon on any talent profile to get started.

Depending on the type of account you have, you’ll notice a few automatically curated lists such as:

• Your hires
• Company hires
• BYOT (Bring Your Own Talent)
• Recently viewed talent
  

You can also create custom lists that make sense to you. For example, you can create skill-based lists, such as “copywriters” or “web developers.” Or organize lists by campaign, such as “product launch event.”

Tags help you quickly spot the professional you’re looking for

An Upwork profile highlights a freelancer’s professional qualifications. With talent tags, you can highlight soft skills and quickly capture additional qualities that are specific to your needs.

For example, you can learn from his profile that Sunny V. is a social media strategist and content creator. After your first project together, you know that he’s also an excellent communicator with great project management skills and extensive experience in your industry.

By adding tags that reflect these qualities, you’ll remind yourself—at a glance—what made Sunny a great fit for your project and why he’ll be a solid addition to your next social media campaign team.

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Notes capture your impressions so you can find them later

While tags offer a quick point of reference, notes are longer and more open-ended private comments that can be added to talent profiles—whether you’ve worked with the talent or not.

These comments will then be connected to that profile wherever you might see it again, including:

• Future search results
• Proposals
• Any custom lists you’ve added the person to
  

Use the notes feature to capture any information that might be helpful to you in the future, such as highlighting that someone was your second choice for a big project or that you read an insightful article they’d written.

What can a bench of high-quality talent help you unleash?

We’ve geared Virtual Talent Bench toward one thing: growing relationships that help propel your business forward. It’s this access and flexibility that drive the kind of productivity and outsize outcomes that can help your team thrive in this new world of work.

We’d like to specifically thank the members of our community who helped bring these improvements to life through their valuable input and feedback.

Ready to grow your go-to team? Visit your Discover page to start building your own Virtual Talent Bench™.