Screening questions

The client sets them while posting the job. Upwork lets a client add up to five, chosen from a list of suggestions or written from scratch. Upwork's posting guidance presents them as optional, and as a way to make proposals easier to review and shortlist.

They are read side by side. A client comparing many proposals reads the answers next to each other, so an answer that dodges the question, or repeats the cover letter, is easier to spot than a weak letter. Typical questions ask about recent similar work, tools, process, availability or a specific certification.

They can be edited briefly. Answers can be changed together with the cover letter until the client views the proposal or the edit window after sending closes. After that they are fixed.

They are evidence questions. Most screening questions ask for a fact about the person bidding: a certification, a country, a rate, a past project. An answer written without that fact either invents one or tells the client it does not know, and both cost the proposal.

How Upsight uses it. A campaign can be set to match only jobs that carry screening questions. When it drafts, Upsight answers each question from the bidding member's own captured Upwork profile and the agency's knowledge profile, and the agency's written answer guidelines have the final word over the default rules. Before the member's profile was added as evidence, about one answer in six in our own sends narrated missing context back to the client. The answers are shown next to the letter in the draft, and a campaign that requires approval holds both for a person to check before sending.