Evan Carmichael breaks down five moves for new freelancers to land clients on Upwork: write a passion-filled bio with flawless English, research each client's business before pitching, use a professional smiling photo, score in the top 10% on skill tests, and build a portfolio that matches your target market's style.
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If you're an oDesk contractor and you're trying to win more jobs, I'm gonna share with you the 5 ways to wow employers on oDesk and land that job. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. I believe in entrepreneurs, and I got a great question from one of my YouTube subscribers, Albert— love you guys— who wrote in to say, "Hi Evan, I'm about to start on oDesk, and first I want to get all things ready. I'm a graphic designer and illustrator. My question is, do employers get interested on beginners? I mean, I'm not a beginner, but obviously I would not have any feedback yet because I'm starting. It would be enough with the skills and the test to get hired. Albert. Albert, fantastic question. I'm a huge supporter of oDesk. I've been an employer there for a while, and I wanted to share with you my 5 tips for how you can stand out and wow employers. Number 1 is write a great bio. What I look for in a bio is not just the skills you have, but I want to feel the passion for what you do. I want to know why you're doing what you do and what excites you about it. So yes, tell me your skills. Tell me where you've worked, tell me how many years experience you have, but also tell me what makes you come alive and why you do what you do. Also make sure you get your bio checked out by native English speakers so you don't have errors in it. In your question to me, you had a few grammatical errors that people don't care so much if you're a graphic designer, they're not hiring you for your English skills, but every chance you have to impress a client, you want to take it. So just get a friend of yours who speaks English fluently to check out that bio and make sure there are no mistakes. #2: Show you care about the company. One of the biggest pet peeves I have with people who are applying for a job for me on oDesk or otherwise is they do zero research into me and my business. They just submit the form, submit their cover letter, and fire it away, sometimes not even changing the name, and it's just saying "Dear Sir or Madam." If you want to stand out and really wow the employer, then do a little research and digging into the business. Visit my website and tell me what you like about it. Follow me on social media and respond to something that I've posted. "Tell me what you really love about my business and what attracts you to working with me." I'd say only 1% of the people who apply to a job actually go that extra mile, and I always pay attention to those guys over everybody else. Number 3 is have a great picture. Have a professional full-color picture of yourself that I can clearly see your face and I can relate to you. Don't make your picture black and white, don't have a picture of you on the beach, don't have a picture of you in your undershirt, in your pajamas. It's professional, you're trying to get a job, make it professional. Another thing I'd say is make sure to smile in your picture. I know a lot of people from different cultures, having a serious picture, a serious face is normal and standard, but if you want to work with North Americans, we're used to seeing smiling pictures. For North American employers, seeing somebody who's smiling makes us relate to that person more, makes us like that person more, and makes you more likely to get a response from us. So have a great picture. Number 4 is take the tests. So oDesk provides you all kinds of different tests that you can take to showcase how great you are at different software tools. This is especially important if you don't have any work experience yet and you're just getting started. You want to take those tests. And it's not just taking the test, it's doing well on the test. Don't just go into it saying, "Yeah, I know Photoshop, I'll do that really well, no problem." You need to score well. You want to be in the top 10% of everybody on oDesk who has taken that test. So prepare for it, study for it, and ace it, because that will really help make you stand out versus everybody else on oDesk. And number 5 is upload your portfolio. Again, this is super important if you have zero work experience. You wanna be able to show people that you have a great portfolio and you know what you're doing. I try to show a diverse range of portfolio items so that people know you can do a lot of different things. And as a bonus, if you really wanna connect to the North American employers, I try to have some North American content in my portfolio. Even if you've never actually worked with a North American company before, just take a company and make a brochure for them. Because again, as an employer, if I'm seeing something that I can relate to, that's in my language, that is around the company that I can understand, I'm much more likely to wanna hire you than if everything you have is in another language or in businesses that I don't understand. So upload your portfolio, and if you don't have anything for a North American company yet, create something. So those are my 5 tips: write a great bio, show you care about the company, have a great picture, take the tests, and upload your portfolio. And of course, believe. For those of you watching, I'd love for you to answer this question: If you were considering hiring somebody on oDesk and they had zero work experience that they could share, that's their first contract, what would you look for? What would you want to see in somebody's response to you to get them to wow you and make that memorable? Leave that in the comments below. I'd love to hear what's on your mind, and I think others would really benefit from it as well. If you guys like this video, don't forget to subscribe to the channel and to the newsletter. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.
