Evan Carmichael shares three ways to land translation jobs on oDesk: respond fast to show reliability, explain language nuances like regional dialects to justify higher rates, and research clients deeply before pitching to stand out from cheaper competitors.
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How to get a translation job on oDesk. So I got a great question from one of my YouTube viewers, love you guys, Yum, who wrote in to say, I'm considering to apply for English-Japanese translator job through oDesk, and do you have any tips for that? It'd be greatly appreciated. Thank you. This is a great question. I love oDesk. If you haven't seen oDesk yet, go check it out. It's odesk.com. I've hired a number of people through oDesk, including Christina, who edits and Does all these videos. Thank you, Christina. Great resource for entrepreneurs. So this is coming from the other side now. This is for somebody who wants to apply to be hired on oDesk. And for a translation job, I recently just hired somebody to help me with my presentation that I went to Malaysia for. So I hired a Malay-English translator. And here's what I look for. And this is what you want to do to stand out as a contractor on oDesk. The first is be fast. Okay? One of the biggest fears with hiring somebody who's not in your office, which is going to be on oDesk or any outsourced worker, is reliability. So be fast. You may not apply to the job really quickly, you may not be the first one to apply, but you could be the fastest to respond to emails. So there's always an email dialogue that goes back and forth. Be fast, reply quickly, right? Just let them know that you care about this and that you are reliable. That should be basic stuff, but a lot of people get that wrong and they take a day or two days to get back. By that time I've moved on. You take two days to get back to me about a job, I'm hiring somebody else. So be fast in your responses. The second is educate. So educate the buyer. One of the people that impressed me the most on the Malay translation job was she was talking about all the differences in the Malay language and that people coming from different backgrounds might be speaking dialects and there's an authentic way to speak Malay and the writing. That made her stand out more. Okay, so example in English, you know, we have Canadian English and we have American English and it's close but it's not the same thing. And so if you're writing for Canadian audience, you have to make some modifications. And if I'm hiring somebody, you know, I may not know, I don't know the differences in Japanese language, right? All I know is I need to get my piece of content translated from English to Japanese. And if I wanted to have this video transcribed in Japanese, maybe I'd hire someone to do it. But I don't know anything about Japanese. I don't know if there's a specific way to write dialects, whatever, so educate me, right? It shows that you're a professional because the goal here is not to compete on price. Because when you're bidding on something on oDesk, you're going to have people who are coming in super low and people who are coming in much higher, right? If you're coming in at $15 an hour and somebody else is charging $3 an hour, how do you compete? Right? How do you stand out? You have to show that you know what you're talking about, and this is a way to educate the customer. So it makes you stand out, and I feel more confidence that you can deliver a great product for me, that you know what you're doing compared to everybody else. And the third one is wow your buyer. Find a way to make them say wow. Find a way to stand out. All of these jobs, the translation job, when I posted that Malay translation job, I don't know, I had maybe 30 applications. You do a Japanese one, you're going to have tons, right? You're going up against a lot of people, so you have to find a way to wow your customers. And It could be as simple as saying, you know, I went to your website and I loved it and I believe in your mission. I love what you're up to. Like, just show me that you did a little bit of extra work because a lot of these people will hire you on an ongoing basis, right? I've hired people, so like Christina or Monzur, or, you know, people who work for me, they started off, I hired them for one project, one project to see how it goes. And then I needed them more and more, and I had to increase their hours and increase what they do for me, right? So you have an opportunity to build a long-term relationship with each of these buyers who are coming, each of these new clients that are coming to me. It may become a full-time gig for you if that's something that you want. But to get in the door, you have to wow them. You've got to do something that's different, that shows them that you did a little bit extra research, that shows them that you care. Okay, so, so look at their websites, see what you can pull out. If they're on Twitter, follow them, talk to them on Twitter, comment on their stuff. Find a way to wow them beyond just applying for the job, because that's what everybody else is doing. Okay, so again, make sure you're fast, respond quickly to every email that comes in, be responsive, show that you care. 2, show your knowledge, explain the difference, educate the customer. And 3, find a way to wow them. You do that, then you can justify charging higher higher prices, and you're more likely to get the job. Believe. For those of you watching, like the video, thumbs up, leave a comment below, let me know what you think, ask a question, I'll make a video response just like this one, and click on my face to subscribe to the channel. Thank you guys so much, and I'll see you soon.
