Quickly finding the right talent for your project is essential. Our platform offers several ways to discover talent and filter search by hourly rates, skills, feedback, saved lists and more. Some filters are dynamic and adapt to your search criteria. Plus, you can quickly reconnect with talent you’ve worked with before and save profiles for easy review later.
Search for talent from any page
You can begin a search for talent using the search bar at the top of any page. Search keywords or job titles of the professionals you’re looking for. You can also select the heart icon from the main navigation bar to see your saved talent.
Pro tip:
If you’re feeling stuck, try searching the title of your job post.
Once you’ve done an initial search in the main search bar, you can use the search bar above your results for additional searches. You can also refine your search by choosing Advanced Search to use advanced keyword search, or by selecting search filters.
Filters
Selecting filters helps you narrow down your search. You can apply multiple filters simultaneously, including:
- In your network: You can select to search talent that you or your company have hired before, including specifying BYO talent, or search in your saved talent lists
- Talent quality: You can filter for talent who have earned one of our talent badges through success on the platform and proven skills
- Hourly rate: You can search for freelancers who have an asking rate that aligns with your budget
- Location: Choosing a similar location can be important if you're looking for similar hours or regional knowledge
You can also search for freelancers or agencies, talent who are open to contract-to-hire, specific skills, languages, and more.
Hire talent tab
You can also use the Hire talent tab to search for talent. Choose the drop-down selection you want or choose Search to begin a general search.
- In the dropdown selections, you can choose to view BYO talent (which shows talent your company has brought to Upwork, Company hires, or Your hires)
- From the Company hires or Your hires pages, you can see other search options too:
- Discover takes you to a page where you can browse suggested freelancers based on your recent job posts or scroll down and search by category
- Recently viewed shows you freelancers whose profiles you’ve recently looked at
- Your lists shows you lists you’ve created for your saved talent
- Shared with you shows you lists of saved talent that others have created and shared with you
Saving talent
You can add a freelancer or agency’s profile to your Saved talent by selecting the heart icon on their profile. To find saved talent, select the heart icon ♡ in your main navigation bar.
Pro tip:
You can search for Expert-Vetted freelancers right from your Enterprise Dashboard. Expert-Vetted talent represent the top 1% of freelancers on Upwork.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Upwork search algorithm uses both platform-generated data, such as number of completed projects and client feedback, and freelancer-generated information, such as descriptions of their offered services. Depending on the type of search you do, it may also consider your search queries, selected filters, and the job post.
Search for talent by one of the following ways:
- Enter your target keywords into the Talent search box and then add filters to refine your search. If you’re looking for talent you’ve saved or that you or your company have worked with before and want to add other filters too, this may be the best method
- Use Advanced Search to refine your keywords after an initial search in the Talent search box. You may want to use this if you’re looking for very specific details and want to filter out other results. Learn more about Advanced Search
- Browse talent on the Discover page. Results there are based on the specifics of your job post. You can also filter for talent you’ve saved or that you and your company have worked with before
- Find Expert-Vetted talent by category right from your Enterprise Dashboard. This lets you quickly find talent with a high level of expertise. Learn more about Expert-Vetted talent
Once you start typing in the Talent Search box, you can select one of the autosuggestions in the dropdown to help you find what you need faster.
If you type in your published job post title in the search box, you can select it from the auto-suggestion dropdown to conduct a search using the specifications you included in your job post.
Boolean search works by applying complex logic to keywords and keyword strings. Our Advanced Search function automatically applies Boolean operators to your searches.
Use the location filter to search locations, such as region, country, or city. You can also find freelancers in your desired time zone by using the global time zone filter.
If you are a U.S. client and want to see only U.S. freelancers, select the “U.S. only” filter in the sidebar first, then filter further by state, city, and time zones.
Search results from a keyword search in the search bar are specific to your search query, while results on the Discover page are recommendations based on the specifications of your job post.