oDesk Profile: 6 Commonly Overlooked Items

The oDesk Contractor Profile

On oDesk.com, one of the first things contractors are encouraged to do is to create and improve their profiles. The profile is where you as the contractor showcase your skills, certifications, education, portfolio items, employment history, and of course your work history and feedback on oDesk.

“Your oDesk profile is online proof of your experience as a freelance professional on the site.”

It’s online proof of your experience as a freelance professional, which is why you need to improve your profile as much as possible to be able to succeed in your applications and establish a good reputation on the site. To put it simply, your profile is the bait that will catch the employer’s attention, despite the fact that hundreds of competing candidates have applied for the same job as well.

6 Profile Items Contractors Miss

Sure, using fancy words and high-end descriptions about yourself can boost your profile, but there are details; nitty-gritty overlooked details in your profile that are actually vital to your success in winning the job. Here are 6 items newbie and regular oDesk contractors tend to miss out on:

• English self-assessment – Does the self-assessment score reflect the English writing and speaking skills of the contractor? You can see this in the content of the profile already.
• Titles – How does the contractor describe himself in his title? The title is the sentence beside his profile picture, ending in what type of freelancer he is on oDesk.
• Spelling and grammar – Some contractors forget to proofread and edit their profiles for spelling and grammatical errors. Do you see any of these errors in your own profile?
• Overview – This section is your objective as a freelancer. It’s where you explain in a paragraph or two why you think employers should hire you and why you are the perfect match for the job. Sadly, more often contractors forget to improve this part of the profile and seem to be satisfied with vague descriptions and objectives.
• Test scores – Some contractors take the free oDesk skill tests, fail, and leave them public on their profiles
• oDesk Readiness Test – Are you truly familiar with the system and the tools of oDesk?
• Hourly rate – Are you rating yourself way too low or way too high? Is your hourly rate both reasonable for employers and can compensate for all of your expenses?

We tend to get so caught up on applying for jobs and fighting with other bids that we forget that the profile could be the solution to winning that job. Don’t allow yourself to neglect your oDesk profile any longer.

A detailed profile and a great cover letter are your weapons whenever you enter the freelancer battlefield, so take the time to complete, customize, polish, and finalize both your profile and your cover letter.

Improve Your Profile Based On These 6 Items

Now that we’ve uncovered the 6 profile items that are usually taken for granted by oDesk contractors, let’s have a look at these helpful tips, some of which are comments taken from on the oDesk forums, on improving your oDesk profile:

• Assess your English oral and written skills with honesty. Even if you are confident that you’re a 5.0, it’s not going to work if your profile is full of misspelled words, grammar lapses, wrong capitalization of letters, so on and so forth.

Be as honest as you can be with this self-assessment score and rate according to how proficient you really are with the English language. Don’t be ashamed if it’s lower than a 5.0; in fact, take this as a challenge to study and brush up on your English skills for more effective communication.

• Your title should be a short yet catchy description of what you do. A title that only emphasizes on a contractor’s status as a student or a “hard worker” isn’t going to attract employers.

In all honesty, no one in this global marketplace is going to hire a student or a run-of-the-mill worker, no matter how diligent or talented he or she may be. With that said, remember that you are part of a tough competition and that you’re competing with actual professionals from around the world.

Start by asking yourself the question, “What does a student have to offer?” If you can’t come up with a good answer, change the title into something that will really highlight your skills. Webmaster, data entry specialist, tech writer, the list goes on.

• Always, ALWAYS, check your entire profile for spelling and grammatical errors. You don’t want your employers to reject you because of such carelessness. It is issues like this that jeopardizes your chances of landing good projects on sites like oDesk.

Ask a friend or someone with strong English skills to help you proofread and edit your profile if you are not confident with the outcome of your profile. Once it’s clean and ready to serve, you’ll be surprised with the increased number of invitations for interview.

• Your overview should already tell the employer what you, the freelancer, can do for him. Focus on your client by using “You” instead of just “I, me, me, me”. Ask your prospects if they’re looking for a qualified and experienced freelancer, tell them what it is they need, and how you can help them achieve their goals. To sum it up, end your overview with a call to action, which is of course to hire you for the project.
• Tests are proof of how knowledgeable you are with your skills and industry, so make sure that you publicize scores at the Top 10% or Top 20%. Take tests that are related to your expertise because quality employers may use this as a search category when searching for freelancers.

Hide those that are below 60% as these are not impressive and will not support your claims of being an expert in your field. The good news though is that oDesk tests can be retaken every 30 days, giving you enough time to brush up, study, and prepare yourself for better results.

• Being “oDesk ready” means you are familiar with how the oDesk system works, its Terms of Use and policies, and the tools to get work done. Passing the oDesk Readiness test is important because employers won’t tutor you on how to use oDesk. Their main priority is to get work done, so make sure that you know how the system works, have gone through the Learning Center, and are familiar with the oDesk Team 3, which is the desktop application used to track time worked on hourly projects.
• Decide on a reasonable hourly rate for work.Many contractors complain about how unreasonable employers are with their budgets nowadays that rants, complaints, and disheartening comments have flooded the entire oDesk contractor community.

My take on this is to set an hourly rate that you know is worth the time, brain power, and money spent on the project. Don’t ever decrease your hourly rates to a measly $1/hour to $5/hour just to beat the competition.

Take note that these tips are based on experience, opinions and advice contributed by experienced oDesk contractors, and even from the oDesk Help Center. They are not meant to dictate how you create and build your own oDesk profile.

What may work for me or for others may not work for you, so it’s up to you to decide how you will improve your oDesk profile. You can also visit the oDesk blog for more tips and advice.

How long has it been since you analyzed and edited your oDesk profile? Is your profile attracting good projects?