Dribbble has long been a community that designers rely on to find their next full-time job or freelance project. In fact, we constantly hear from designers that we’ve helped them earn an income as a professional designer.
Today we’re excited to announce huge improvements to our messaging system that will help designers everywhere find meaningful work. With these improvements, we’ve sought out to increase both the quality and quantity of leads for Pro players.
“If I’ve made one investment that’s truly paid off, it would be paying for Dribbble Pro. Love the projects that I get from there.” Kassie Scribner
Filtering the Noise
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been slowly rolling out iterations to improve the quality of leads. Our new work inquiry format requires the sender to provide more useful information before they can send an inquiry your way.
For designers, that means we’re capturing the skills needed and the type of work opportunity (either full-time jobs, hourly projects, or fixed-rate projects) they’re inquiring about. Additionally, we prime the sender with a minimum salary or budget range to help filter out messages that are well below your expectations.
In addition to providing you a quick gut-check on the quality of a lead, this new format has already shown a significant decrease in the number of SPAM messages sent across the platform. Win Win!
“As a direct result of Dribbble membership, I’ve had the opportunity to work on the types of projects that excite me the most. I’m grateful for the exposure, the community and the inspiration.” Jory Raphael
More Messages for Designers
On the quantity front, we’re so excited to introduce recommendations. Recommendations are a quick and helpful way for people hiring to find talented designers that meet their criteria.
We’ve been fine-tuning the algorithm that will introduce similar designers based on the specifications in the hiring manager’s initial message. If a Pro designer meets those qualifications, they are recommended to the hiring manager who has the opportunity to quickly send on the lead.
This has allowed us to recommend designers that may currently be harder to find on the platform, for projects that they would be a good fit for.
As a designer, to qualify for recommendations, you must be a Pro subscriber and have completed your Work Opportunities settings. We’re rolling our recommendations to our Advanced Search subscribers first.
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