Contract-to-Hire Opportunities
Upwork Update
Last month Upwork announced a new update - Contract-to-Hire Opportunities.
What's new
- Freelancers can check a box in their Job Preferences indicating that they are open to contract-to-hire opportunities. This is supposed to show clients that the freelancer want’s to start cooperation with a contract, but later move to a full-time option.
Clients now have to indicate if every job post they make is a contract-to-hire opportunity or not.
There is a new contract-to-hire filter in both the job and freelancers search. How does it work?
After both client and freelancer have already worked together and are happy with the cooperation, they can decide to move to full-time employment arrangement outside Upwork.
The request to do so may be sent only by the client and the client will have to pay conversion fee.
The feature of converting contracts to move outside of Upwork is not new, it has existed for a long time and is a required step if you want to move the contract outside Upwork. The Conversion Fee is 13.5% of estimated earnings over a 12-month period in each specific client-freelancer relationship, so it’s quite a log of money. For example, if you earned $500 every month with the client, the fee is $810. Only relationships with clients for over 2 years on the platform can be converted for $1.
Our opinion about Contract-to-Hire Opportunities
In the community there’s a lot of confusion connected with the new update:
- Does the full-time work happen fully outside Upwork or is it just another type of contract that stays on Upwork? (we think we answered this above)
What timeframes are involved from freelancing to full time employment?
Are the ToS updated to reflect changes, if any?
In our opinion, freelancers stay on Upwork for a reason (secured payment, for example). And most experts come to Upwork for freelancing in its literal sense - having several clients, not full-time employment. So, we frankly, do not see the attraction of converting contracts.
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