[cercatrova]

Upwork is great, I found a lot of good Eastern European developers. I set the rates to at least 75 USD/hour however (which is a lot by Eastern European standards, and so it's very worth it to them), and I ask questions through the project proposal and the chat as to whether they know exactly how to solve my problem or not. This process weeds out most of the unqualified candidates. Perhaps you are not vetting thoroughly enough or not paying enough to be worth their time.

[Lionga]

Upwork can be really great, but most people use it wrong.

Don't wait for the good developers to apply, invite them proactively. 95% of the developers applying themselves are sadly the bottom barrel. First weed out from their profil history if they know what they are doing. Only work with people that have 100% Jobsuccess with relevant projects and have the "Top Rated" Badge. Then do a small test project with them or a free consultation call to check for details, how good their english is and cultural fit.

I have both hired myself and got hired on very successful projects (e.g. build an MVP for a startup in a month that led them to secure a funding round) this way. In case anyone wants to see my profile https://www.upwork.com/fl/tobiasheidingsfeld

[SeripisChad]

I would say I fall into this camp of using is wrong. I'm only inviting a few candidates to a job post and the majority of applications are people manually or auto responding. I experiment with a private post and only inviting candidates.

Searching seems to be off at Upwork, for example, I'm look for someone add faceID support to a RN app and the results aren't too helpful. Looking at searches like "react native faceID" on upwork you would hope the top of the list would be the most relevant profiles containing all three terms or simply a search of "faceID" would return profiles containing this or biometric or react-native-touch-id, but searching the profile contents of the top five search results for this for me yield none of them having the search term. Testing google index against upwork is more effective for me 'site:upwork.com faceID'