In this tutorial, Evan Carmichael shares the exact criteria he uses when hiring freelancers on oDesk (now Upwork) and offers concrete advice for freelancers who want to stand out. He emphasizes answering the employer’s posted question in the first line of the proposal to prove the job posting was read. He stresses the importance of a professional, smiling profile picture that matches the expectations of North American clients. He advises maintaining strong 5‑star feedback and over‑delivering to earn glowing reviews. He recommends passing relevant oDesk skill tests and aiming for top‑percentile scores to demonstrate competence. Prompt, reliable communication is highlighted as a key trust factor. He suggests “wowing” the client by researching their business, mentioning recent content, or sharing a personal story that connects to the client’s mission. Finally, he explains his practice of hiring multiple freelancers for small paid test projects to evaluate quality, speed, and reliability before committing to a longer‑term engagement. Throughout, he encourages freelancers to be proactive, professional, and personable to attract and retain clients on the platform.
Chapters
How to be an attractive freelancer on oDesk. So I got a great question from one of my YouTube viewers, love you guys, Jmar, who wrote in to say, Evan, I'm looking for your tips on how to be an attractive freelancer on oDesk. I'm hoping you help me for this stuff. Thanks and believe. So bonus tips there for you, Jmar, on using believe in your question. This is really important. So I love oDesk, I'm a big fan, I've hired lots of people through oDesk, I've spent lots of money on oDesk. It's one of the most important tools that I use to run my business and for finding people to help me with what I'm doing. Here's what I look for, okay, as an employer, as somebody who hires a lot of freelancers, here's what I look for in my hiring process, okay. First of all is, did you answer my question? So in every job application that I put out there, I always make it one big ugly paragraph and in the middle I ask some kind of question. It'll be, you know, how many Twitter followers do I have, how many Facebook fans do I have, Something really basic and simple, but easy to find, right? You can, if you type in Evan Carmichael Twitter, you'll find my account, you can tell me how many followers I have. It's really to figure out, did you read my posting or not? Because there are so many people on oDesk, and these are the people you're going up against, there are so many people on oDesk who just apply for every single job out there and don't actually ever read the the posting. So I don't pay attention to your cover letter much. I don't pay attention to anything until you've answered my question. And I ask, put it in the first line of your application. And so when you submit your application, if that's not the first thing in the line there, then, then you're gone. You're canceled from my process. I'm not going to even read anything that you sent me because you're wasting my time, right? You didn't read my job posting, and so I'm not going to waste time reading your application. That's the first thing. Second thing is your picture. And this may seem very superficial, but we connect with people— the only thing I have, I can't meet you, so the only thing I have is your picture. And what I want to see is a happy person. Now for a lot of cultures, having a smiling picture is strange and it may be against your culture. And that's okay. What I would tell you though is think of who you're selling to. Because a really serious picture is bad when you're selling to a North American market. If you wanna sell to North Americans, if you want North Americans to hire you, then we're more likely to be receptive to a smiling picture than a serious picture. Right? It doesn't have to be this huge, big, goofy, silly smile, but I wanna see a smiling professional picture. That's how most of our pictures are. That's what we connect with. So, you know, that may not be what you're used to, but if you want to sell to the North American market, you're gonna have a better chance with a smiling picture. I want somebody who looks professional, right? If, you know, wear a suit, wear a professional-looking top at least. Maybe you're in shorts, whatever, I don't care, but I can only see from here up. Make it professional, right? I've had people who've applied for jobs who have sunglasses on or in a tank top and look like they're on some beach, right? Like, ah, why would I hire you, right? Like, it's already a strike against. I want somebody professional. So smiling professional picture, number 2. Next thing is I'm looking at your feedback. So I want somebody who's gotten good feedback from other employers that they've worked with. If you look at my feedback from the people I've hired, it's 5 stars across the board, 'cause I work really hard to provide a great experience for the people who I work with on NoDesk. And I want people who will work really hard for me as well. And so I will look at, did you get good feedback from your past clients or not? And hopefully you are, right? And you want to make sure you're blowing away your customers, giving great work, and hopefully they give you a good feedback score as well. So work hard to overdeliver to your customers so they say, wow, this person is amazing. Next thing I'm going to look at, your skills and what tests did you pass. So, you know, if I'm hiring somebody to be a PHP programmer for me, for example, you know, I'm not an expert in PHP. So how do I know if you're any good at PHP or not? I want to see you pass the test. So take the test and practice for them. A lot of people on ODesk, this is who you're going up against, right? And maybe you, you see the test, you take the test, you don't prepare for it at all, and you end up in the bottom 50% or the bottom 20%. I've seen some of those them. You know how bad that makes you look, right? Those tests are one of the only ways— again, since I can't meet you in person, those tests are one of the only ways that I have to, to see that you're really good at what you do. So study, practice, take the test, and it'll help you stand out. There are some oDesk employers who that's the first thing they look for. They look for the people who've gotten the top 10% in the various tests. So that can really help make you stand out. So practice and take the test. The next thing I look for is how prompt is the person. Okay, I want you to be fast in responding to me. So if I'm writing to you and I have some questions for you to clarify, to see who I'm going to go with, how fast are you in writing back to me? Now I'm not really fast in responding, but I want you to be fast in responding to me. But if you're taking a day, 2 days, 3 days to write back to me, it's probably over. I mean, you gotta have something else that's amazing about you to get the job because I want somebody who's reliable and fast. And a lot of times, people who, you know, employers like myself who've had a hard time with oDesk people, it's been that they're just unreliable and, you know, they drop off the face of the earth and they go away for 2 weeks. Like, where were you without any explanation? So you ease that fear by responding quickly to people. You may not even have the answer, right? If somebody asks you for something and you have to do some work to find the answer, just write back to say, "I got your message. I'm on it. I'll be looking for it. I'll respond to you as soon as I find an answer." Just let me know you got it and that you're working on it. It makes a huge difference. Again, because I can't meet you face to face, you know, I can't shake your hand, so I'm only going on the limited information that I have. And the last thing I look for is I want somebody to wow me. And it doesn't take a lot to wow somebody, right? What I'd love for you to do is go visit my website and tell me something that you like. Did you like something that I posted on Twitter recently? Are you following me on Facebook? Just show me that you actually took 2 minutes out of your day before applying to this job to actually look in to the business that you are applying to, right? Sharing something like that, making it personal, maybe tell me a story about how entrepreneurship is important to you or your family or your dreams, something related to my business. Even just you saying believe in your question makes me feel like you're more of an avid viewer of my videos. Like you watch some of my videos, you know that's what I stand for, and so I feel more connected to you already. So you want to do that. I call it wowing your customers, but you're bare— like, that's bare-bones minimum stuff, right? Look at the website of the company that you're applying to and find one little thing that you can talk about. But yet almost nobody does it. It's mind-blowing. And so that's— those are some easy ways to stand out on oDesk against everybody else and get the job. Now, the last thing for me is before I hire somebody, I usually do a series of test projects. So I'll hire a bunch of people. Again, I don't care about what your resume looks like. I don't care about any of that stuff. I want to see performance. So I hire a bunch of people to do the same job, a paid job, maybe, you know, 5 hours, and, you know, edit this video or do this market research, something that they would actually be doing for me. And then I see, you know, What's the quality of their work? You know, are you doing a good job with what I gave you, with the results? Are you milking me for the full 5 hours? Or if you're done in 3, you stop it at 3, right? Somebody who's doing the full 5 hours, it's like, you know what, you're just milking me for those hours, you know, I don't trust you, and so I'm not gonna give you the job. And, you know, again, are you reliable? Are you responding to me quickly? And am I happy with our working relationship? And I can usually figure out after a small project who are the 5, 8, 10 people that I hired I want to give the full-time job to. So that's where you can really overdeliver like crazy, really wow your customers. A quick example for— so this is Christina who edits my videos. Hey Christina, she's watching. When I hired my video editor, I forget how many people I hired, 8, 10, 12, 15, it was a lot of people. And I said, here's a video, make it special, make it look good. And I gave some clear guidelines, and then I also said, you know, do whatever you want with it, add something, add some flair to it if you want. And Christina was the only one who really made it special. She didn't just do what I asked her to do, she also added her own touch to it. And I was so impressed that, okay, you know what, Christina got the job. Everybody else forget about it, right? So you really want to make sure you're over-delivering because it's not only going to help you land your first job, it's going to help you get great, you know, 5-star review. It's going to help more deals come from the same client, right? It's going to leave great testimonials. You're going to get more budget, right? So really, once you get that opportunity, you want to wow your customers as much as possible. So those are my tips for how to stand out and be an attractive freelancer on oDesk. Believe. For those of you guys watching, like the video. You can support me by clicking on the link in the description. If you have questions, let me know. Leave a comment underneath. I love seeing your questions come in. And you can click on my face, subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.
