If you are new to the game, or maybe you are a bit confused, your first question would be:
What is Job Success Score (JSS) on Upwork?
Job Success Score is not something that should confuse you. It’s simple to grasp if only you follow this piece: How to Increase Your Job Success Score on Upwork.
Just as the name implies, a job success score measures how clients are satisfied with your work on the Upwork platform.
It tells you whether your clients are satisfied with your work or not.
This Job Success Score is based on relationships, feedback rehires, and job outcomes over time from your clients.
A high Job Success Score means you spend less time finding clients and more time working with them.
The higher the Job Success Score, the more clients you get and retain, thus the better your work career on Upwork.
Job Success Score is an important metric, so don’t joke about it.
Since you’ve known what is Job Success Score on Upwork is, the next important thing that might come to your mind is:
How is Job Success Score Calculated on Upwork?
Experience has shown that people try to find a way of beating any system that tends to track their success.
If someone knows something is reading their score and the score is of great importance, they might attempt to improve such score, and this is why Upwork and its team of developers have decided to conceal how to calculate Job Success Score to some extent.
The formula is available, which I will gladly share below, but there is still more to know about arriving at a Job Success Score that Upwork did not reveal.
The fear is so that you and I don’t artificially boost our score.
That would be cheating, you know.
On a higher level, the Job Success Score is viewed with this formula:
(Successful Contract Outcomes – Negative Contract Outcomes) / Total Outcomes
This is just the simple and less complicated way to look at a Job Success Score.
No need to bother yourself with so many details.
You need to give your clients the best job satisfaction possible, and a higher job success score is yours.
What affects your job success score on Upwork?
Some factors that impact your job success score are:
- Positive feedback from clients. This is why you need to ensure that your clients are satisfied with your work.
- Five-star ratings
- Longer-term relationships will help boost your score. However, the number of rehires also boost job success score. Unfortunately, not having them doesn’t count against you anyway.
- Higher earning jobs have more weight and a more significant impact on job success score.
How often is the Job Success Score updated on Upwork?
Job success score is calculated every two weeks, and they are of four different types.
- Average job success score for the past 24 months
- The average job success score for the past 12 months
- An average job success score for the past six month
- The “Trending Job Success Score” is obtained by adding the average JSS for the past six months with the average JSS for the past three months, then dividing it in half.
The Upwork platform monitors your JSS for 3, 6, 12, and 24 months in the marketplace and then finds the score for each. That’s all you should know about how often your job success score is updated on Upwork.
How To See Job Success Score on Upwork
How do you get to see that vital metric called “job success score” on Upwork?
It’s simple.
All you need do is navigate to the “My Stats page.” A 90% and above score is considered excellent and puts you on the top-rated status.
This status will fetch you more jobs on Upwork.
But, on the other hand, if your score is below 75%, you might be struggling to get jobs all the time.
You need to work harder and hope for some luck to reach a score of 90%.
How then can you improve your Success Score on Upwork?
It would help if you considered some things to improve your job success score on Upwork.
Let’s see some of them.
Give the client your best
This is my number one way to improve your job success score on Upwork and should be your number one priority.
Make sure you give the client maximum satisfaction by doing a perfect job.
If you are not that good, then work on sharpening your skills.
Clients don’t like to pay freelancers for poorly done jobs.
You should be good at what you do because that’s when people will pay you for your time.
When I say, no client will be satisfied if they don’t get what they want. And if you’re going to make them happy, give more than what they expected.
A happy client will give you a five-star rating and good feedback.
They will even want to come back knowing you’ve done an excellent job in the past.
Good feedback, a five-star rating, and client retention are necessary for a 90% and above job success score on Upwork.
Ensure to satisfy your client with your job. No client will be happy with a poor job, and no client will be willing to give an excellent rating to a freelancer who did a poor job except if the client is your brother or a family friend.
Other than that, you have to give them your best, and sometimes, even your best won’t be good enough, but you will at least sleep well at night, knowing you’ve done your best.
Good feedback from the client
The result of a well-satisfied client is good feedback.
Doing a good job is to get positive feedback from your client, which is crucial to your job success score on Upwork.
Some clients ignore giving feedback, but you can ask them for positive feedback once you are sure of their satisfaction due to a job well done.
If, on the other hand, you are not so sure of their satisfaction or maybe there were some disputes or complaints resulting from delay, then it’s better not to ask for feedback, but if you must, you can plead with them for the positive feedback.
I hope you don’t feel too big to plead with clients or employers but try to be professional.
Tell them circumstances beyond your control caused the delay or whatever aspect the clients are not satisfied with.
Stay Humble and be Polite Always
A friend of mine once finished a job for a client.
The client confessed it to be the best he has received on Upwork. The client praised him but later forgot to leave feedback, which is crucial for a high job success score on Upwork.
Frustrated from having done an excellent job but getting no feedback from the client, this friend of mine got angry and made not polite statements to the client.
My friend got the worst feedback ever from this client, to cut the story short.
It’s not enough to do a good job.
You must always be polite and humble when dealing with clients.
They are your employers.
The way you will not talk to your boss at your place of work if you happen to be the 8 to 5 type of worker, that’s also the way you should not talk to your client on Upwork.
Your client giving you negative feedback is like getting fired at your place of work.
No matter how good you are at doing, always be polite. Character always goes with skill.
Stay humble! Stay polite.
Don’t Complain or Argue with a Client.
You might ask: What affects job success score on Upwork?
One of the things that affect the job success score on Upwork is a situation whereby a client is not satisfied with your work, they are now trying to express their displeasure, and you, on the other hand, are arguing or complaining.
The secret to handling clients’ complaints is: whenever a client is displeased with the nature of your work, the best you can do is try to make them understand the reason why the job is not up to their expectations.
Try to make them see why you couldn’t deliver the job on time or any other issue they might have. Unfortunately, some poorly done jobs have no excuses, though.
As much as some clients will never be satisfied, please don’t argue with them no matter how good the job is.
Be polite in explaining yourself.
Such clients, who are never satisfied and will always complain no matter how good the job is, are found everywhere.
Maybe you’ve met some but if you haven’t, expect to meet them someday because they will teach you some lessons you need to improve your job success score on Upwork and, most importantly, the classes you will need in other to succeed in your career.
Adhere to the Deadline
Time is money, which is always true.
Some clients can lose a considerable amount of money when you don’t meet their deadline.
Even if you do a perfect job, your client might give negative feedback if you fail to meet the required deadline.
I’ve done a job in which the deadline was more important than the quality of the job.
The client had a presentation to be made to some board of directors, and I understood that not meeting the required deadline will not only give me a bad rating but might cost my client his job.
Don’t just focus on the quality of your work.
Speed matters.
Meeting deadlines is very crucial.
Delivering a perfect job can be in vain if offered at the wrong time. While focusing on quality, always remember to work with deadlines because time is always money.
Always be Active and Responsive
There should be frequent communication between you and your client.
The means of communication should be such that your client can contact you for any modifications or changes made like the job anytime.
Good communication between clients and freelancers helps in improving confidence on the client-side.
For example, if clients know they can contact you anytime, they will be at ease knowing things will be alright, no matter how bad they were.
Good communication is something you should never joke with, and you should be reachable.
Whether you are on Upwork or not, no matter the skill set, that’s a huge red flag if clients are unhappy with your work.
On Upwork, it means negative feedback, low rating, and a low job success score, which means you will have to keep struggling to get new jobs.
And if you don’t get jobs, I don’t need to tell you what would happen. Your bank account would feel the impact of having no job.
Having a good job success score or trying to improve it is just one piece of the puzzle.
There are so many fundamentals you need to know about work. For example, you should be familiar with writing cover letters and different cover letter samples.
Feel free to check out How To Write A Cover Letter With Samples to know more about cover letters, which you need in other to get jobs on Upwork.
Don’t forget to stay tuned for our next money-making piece because helping you make money keeps this place going, but I’ve got you covered if you are still hungry for more information about Upwork.
You can navigate your way by clicking here.
