So I've talked about the behavioral changes on Upwork that I've seen due to AI. Largely, it's not AI replacing me. It's prospects creating more work via AI while grasping at reassurance. Over the years, I've encountered prospects who tried to maintain daily correspondence with me via Upwork without ever committing to a call. My thoughts are that it would require a level of vulnerability from them, accountability, and the potential that they might encounter uncomfortable questions.
I remember once a prospect asked for my prices from a local business networking group. She never responded once I sent it to her, and then she saw me across the street one day while walking to the group and nervously walked faster to keep ahead of me. (I'm a woman too.) She definitely was an odd one, and I've never experienced that before. I'm not a high-pressure seller at all, but I've seen some leads get excited about my services, imagine what they could do if they contracted me, even commit verbally, and then just go MIA. I think they're living in a fantasy world instead of just saying "I'd love to hire you, but I don't have the budget right now." But as I've said before, real-world introduces more of a feeling of accountability IMO than in-person.
I do get many people on Upwork asking for calls and trying to specify what they want me to provide on a call which would be part of a paid engagement based on what GPT told them instead of realizing that they need to answer questions about their project. I have started sending them outlines of questions they need to answer. No, I'm not going to give you a 90-day plan of how I'd address a vaguely-defined problem. You're going to spend the call actually telling me what your problem is and what historical data you have, what resources you have already, and I'll let you know if I can help and how I'd approach this at a high-level overview. In fact, I'm getting much more top-of-the-funnel activity these days but from people who want reassurance without doing buyer-side labor.
One thing I'm seeing much more is them trying to carry on conversations in messages and sending me all this random stuff, wanting me to give much more details on myself and on their projects without them doing their part to explain what they're doing. Of course, even if they source labor from everyone, it's going to be useless because it's all based on unclear foundational data. And they'll even emphasize that they don't want to get on a call. I've also had more calls lately where people got offended when I asked basic operational questions. For example, one woman--it turned out--had an agency but had not actually secured a large contract yet. She was looking for someone who had my credentials who could help her win the contract. I have worked on large RFPs before, so I was like "so to clarify, you are intending to pay for pursuing this contract, right?" I also mentioned that I knew how hard it was to find someone with my background (a common thing clients tell me), and she somehow was offended by this and ran to archive my proposal after the call. Another person did this after I asked him some questions about his business goal in an area where I'd already had immense success in a subject matter niche (which past Upwork prospects tended to feel relieved about as there wouldn't be a learning curve involved). He also had mentioned being impressed by my work history and credentials but got offended when I started asking him basic questions--these are basic questions that most people tend to say are good questions that help them think. He said he realized he actually didn't want someone senior to challenge him. He just wanted a doer, ran and archived my proposal after I ended the conversation there as he seemed to expect that I would just keep talking to him.
These people are getting weirder, man. I don't see any bot activity that I can tell. Just a bunch of weirdos.
There still are some serious people who show up, like the way I help them think through problems, and take responsibility for communicating their problems, and don't make big promises they can't follow through on. But they too are not converting at as high a level as in the past, and I believe it's just general economic uncertainty.
