Evan Carmichael breaks down five steps to land freelance work on Upwork: use a professional headshot, ace the platform skill tests, read job posts completely, personalize proposals by referencing the client's actual work, and overdeliver on communication and quality to become indispensable.
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How to get hired on oDesk. I'm a big believer in oDesk. I love using oDesk. Basically what it is, it's a website that connects employers with employees remotely, and people can bid on projects. And as an employer, you can go and find people to work on whatever it is that you need help with, if it's programming or graphic design or administrative tasks, whatever it is. So I've used oDesk to bring on video editors, marketing assistants, personal assistants, graphic designers, data entry people, tons of different jobs. Increasingly in this world, we don't have to actually have somebody in our office to do work for us. So I'm a big believer in the, in the tool, and I got recently asked a question on YouTube by somebody who wrote in to say, I'm a web designer, graphic designer, logo designer. How can I get started and attract people to hire me "on oDesk?" And this is from GiveLike. Now usually I'm answering questions from entrepreneurs who might be on the other side, who are wondering about how to hire people. So it's cool to be asked by the employee side, and I do have a lot of great advice. So here it is, here are my tips if you are looking to get hired on oDesk, okay? The first thing is have a picture of you smiling, okay? Most people on oDesk, they have a picture But if it's not in your culture, a lot of times people have very serious pictures, like this. And remember who you're selling to, okay? The people who are gonna pay you the bigger dollars are the ones typically in North American culture. And for us, we like pictures of smiling people. So don't look like a serial killer. Have a smiling picture of you looking professional, okay? I can't tell you how many pictures I've seen of people who are very serious and they might be in their undershirt or something. Like nobody's going to hire you if that's what you're looking like. They don't care if you're attractive or not, what you look like, but look professional, have a suit on and smile. Just that already will help separate you from most of the people who are out there. Okay, number 2, pass the tests. Okay, with oDesk you're given a chance to look for, to apply for different tests. So it could be English speaking tests, it could be customer service tests, it could be data entry tests, it could be about programming a specific language. It tests you and as an employer employer, they'll often look at that. If I'm hiring a PHP programmer, I want to know that you passed and scored well on the PHP programming test. It's not enough just to pass it. You got to score well. I don't want somebody who can just barely get by. And so when you're taking the test, prepare for it. Study for it. Don't have something else going on in the background, listening to YouTube videos or being distracted on chat. Take it seriously because employers will take those test scores seriously. So take the test and prepare for them. Number 3, pay attention to the job application. Whenever I put out a job, I get hundreds of people who are interested in it, which is great, but most people never fully read the job application. Now, I make it a little difficult on purpose because as an employer, I got killed trying to go through all these applications. So I'll write one big ugly paragraph and in the middle write something like, "How many Twitter followers do I have?" And put that in the first sentence of your job application. And 80% of people don't do that. 80% of people won't even read that line and give me my answer. So you think I'm going to hire that person? No. Read the job application. Okay, this may sound like simple basic things, but most people are not doing it. Okay, number 4, find a way to make it personal. Find a way to stand out. Okay, the ones who I've hired who made an impression on me are the ones who always left something personal in the job application, like, "I went to your website and I really enjoyed whatever article," or, "I saw your YouTube video and it really spoke to me." You don't want to lie about something, you want to be honest. You want to make it personal. But that extra little touch immediately makes you stand out over everybody else. So do it. And then the last one, my last point, number 5, is overdeliver. Okay, because the most popular people I find on oDesk, they already have jobs with somebody else because those employers don't want to let them go. Overdeliver, be responsive. The thing I hate the most and the thing that worries people a lot is communication. If somebody writes to you, especially from different time zones, you want to make sure that you're responding quickly and you're giving your employee— actually, your employer more than what they asked for. Make them love to have you, right? They're hiring you for their business. You need to become an important part of their business. You have to be so important that if you leave, they're, they're in a big hole. That's how not only you get hired, but that's how you can start increasing your prices. You have to be super important to that business. Okay, so those are my— how many? 5 tips. 1, have a picture. 2, answer the questions on the test and prepare for it. 3, read the job description, everything through. 4, personalize it. And number 5, overdeliver like crazy for your employer. That's it. You do that, you'll be an O-Test superstar. Believe. For those of you watching, like the video, give it a thumbs up below. If you have a question for me or a comment, leave it below. I love seeing those come in too. Thank you so much, and I'll see you soon.
