Well, you could do some yelling and screaming and run about the house tearing your hair out.  I don’t recommend it, but you could.  You could also send off a nasty email cursing the buyer and all their family to the seventh generation.

Guess what?  I don’t recommend that either.

If they were nice enough to inform you they were going with someone else then I recommend a polite thank-you note and move on.

Nothing you can do is going to get you this job so there’s no reason to worry about it.  However, the fact that they put the time into the original discussion means that they are perfectly willing to consider working with you in the future.

So don’t do anything to mess that up.

One of the most common reasons that this happens is that the client found someone else who was better for this job.

It doesn’t mean they found someone who was better overall, just better for this job.  It may be that when their next opening comes up they’ll immediately think of you and fire off an email.

In the meantime, pick yourself up and work on something else.

Networking and patience are two of the keys to a successful freelance career.

Here’s an example of what I mean by patience.  As many of you know I don’t just work on oDesk, but I use other freelance sites as well.   I recently got my first job at one of those other sites:  after only five months of trying.

I admit I wasn’t spending all day every day looking for work on that site:  there were times I had more than enough work and stopped looking on new sites.  However I was looking fairly frequently and while there weren’t a lot of jobs that caught my eye, there were some that I would have liked to have done that I didn’t get.

So I spent time polishing my profile and figuring out the ins and outs of the site.  I tried a few different methods of bidding and finally won a job.

Yes it took a while, and more than I would have liked, but since I wasn’t depending purely on that site I had the time to spend getting it right and not ranting and raving about the injustice that meant I didn’t get a job there  until now.

It would have been just as pointless as any of the other rants I mentioned at the beginning of the post.

You need to look forward not backward.

As Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam goes:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
     Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

Freelancers need to live by that dictum.  You can’t change the past, only the future.

In other news:  I’m now writing for another blog as well as this one.  If you’re interested in technology why not come over and see what’s going on at Gizmotechnet.   Hopefully I’ll see some of you there.

 

Lately, a lot of my friends have seen what I’ve been doing, and they want “in on the action.” Of course, I’m perfectly willing to oblige by pointing them in the right direction. I say, “Well, actually, I work on a blog which explains the ropes of oDesk, and there’s a great book about freelancing on oDesk there. Check that out, sign up for an account, and just go for it.”

When I first started out, everything was so new to me, and I was excited about every aspect of freelance writing. I have friends who are writers, so I was excited to show them what is possible. However, I found that it’s a huge mistake to hold another’s hand while they’re getting started. It goes from simply helping them navigate around the website (which is fine) to bleeding off your own work to them to doing work that they’ve found even though they’re the one who gets paid.

If there ever was one, this is the proverbial “slippery slope.” Chances are, the person you’re introducing oDesk to is your friend. You want this person to succeed. However, the irony is that by using your skills and reputation to help this person succeed, you’re setting them up for ultimate failure. You’re also hurting yourself in the process. After I’ve pointed someone to resources, I tell them that’s as far as I’ll go.

When you’re helping them to succeed, you’re taking time away from your own career building. When you’ve finally given all you have and need some time to recover, that person will be unable to cope with the rough life of freelancing. Their success depends on you holding their hand the entire way. You let go, they flop.

That’s the cold, hard truth of freelancing. For people who are serious about it, it’s not about sitting on your porch with a cup of coffee and pecking at the keyboard with leisure. It’s a business, and if you’re not breaking a sweat by thinking hard, you’re not trying hard enough.

In a way, freelancers can be seen in the same light as movie stars. They see the money, the people you know, the freedom, the fact that your schedule is flexible. They see the product of your work. However, very few have seen the hours upon hours of work behind the scenes: applying for jobs, being rejected from jobs, cutting deals with clients, working until your eyes feel like they’re bleeding just to finish a project on time. There’s a lot we do which never sees the light of day, and for a lot of that work, we don’t get paid for it. It’s all about putting ourselves into a position where we can have those things people envy.

This type of career is a very solitary pursuit. Some people are simply not cut out for it. If you’re hanging on to someone else, or if someone else is hanging on to you, (politely) cut them loose. It will be better for both of you now and in the long run. There’s no other way you’ll know whether or not this career choice is right for you.

If you’re still trying to get your first job, don’t worry. It will come if you work for it. Take more tests, get better scores, and add pieces to your portfolio. It makes a huge difference.

It’s not quite like hitting a brick wall

It was very gradual. I didn’t know I was burned out until it was far too late to do anything about it. In addition, knowing that I was made me even worse. If it had been sudden, it would have been much easier to cope with, but that wasn’t the case.

It all started with having a ton of work. In a professional/career sense, I was doing great. However, I kept piling up more and more work. Then, life interfered with my working schedule. That’s okay because there’s no way to avoid that. The result, though, was that I wasn’t constantly working. I enjoyed having some time off, but I took that time off too far. I never had any time on.

It wasn’t a sudden dropoff, though. I kept working on the projects I had open, finished them up. The bad part was that I stopped applying for new jobs. As a result, I ran out of work. Should that have been a wakeup call? Yes. Did I wake up? No.

Kept going on my merry way. Tried to force the thought of work completely out of my head. I had been under the gun for a long time, and I suppose I was subconsciously trying to keep myself from getting back into that situation.

Pace yourself

I’m recovering now. Taking baby steps. Trying to dispel my irrational fear for all things writing-related. Just seeing an ink pen makes me want to curl up in a ball and wet myself.

How do you keep yourself from crashing like I did? At the risk of sounding like every self-help book to ever hit a shelf, I’ll say this: schedule yourself some “you time.” As corny as it sounds, it actually helps. Treat it like you would treat any project you do on oDesk. If you tell a buyer you’re going to work two hours on something today, it wouldn’t be very smart to go back on that.

Pick a couple hours and stick to them. Turn off the computer. Turn off the phone. Don’t check your E-Mail every 15 minutes. Instead, read a book or watch a movie. Do something you enjoy which has nothing to do with work. The world isn’t suddenly going to crash to the ground if you don’t check your messages. You’ll crash to the ground if you get stuck in work-eat-sleep mode.

Give it a shot. It probably won’t be like you flipped a magic switch which makes life better, but it’s one of many ways to keep you from going crazy.

She couldn’t find the page, which was probably the main oConomy page here which currently shows 248 providers working and 95,545 registered int the system.  I admit that those numbers weren’t calculated to put a new provider in her happy place, but they don’t tell the whole story either.

It isn’t showing how many providers on the network have jobs, but how many people were actively logging time on the oDesk client at the time the numbers were generated.   Given that oDesk is a 24 hour global marketplace those numbers will fluctuate throughout the day and really aren’t anything to worry about.  They certainly don’t reflect the number of providers who are currently employed.  (I expect they’re short by at least one or two orders of magnitude).

Now let’s look at some other numbers from the same page.  There are almost 100,000 providers, and together they’ve earned just under 40 million dollars, which works out to an average of almost U$400/per provider to date.   Since not every provider on oDesk has worked, and that some profiles are so incomplete that the providers are never going to work, the numbers have nowhere to go but up.

When it comes to getting a job, none of those numbers matter.

As I said in the headline:  Chance only matters when it’s random.  oDesk buyers do not select providers by rolling dice. (Well Nelson might, but he’s a special case.)

Buyers select the provider they think is at the intersection of highest quality and lowest price. They go for the most value for money within their budget.

It’s not random at all.  Never has been, never will be.  This is business, not gambling and buyers don’t want to throw their money away.

The end result is that you’re not competing with all 95,544 other providers on the network for any given job.  In fact you’re rarely competing against as many as 10 serious competitors for any given position.  Those still don’t sound like good odds, but that’s just chopped four orders of magnitude off the ratio.

It gets better because they aren’t odds.

It’s not random.

It’s deterministic, and some of the factors are ones you know about and can control and the others are unknowable and uncontrollable.  However even the ones you don’t know and can’t control aren’t random chance.

If you write a great cover letter and your skills fit the job you are very likely to get it.  If you can demonstrate that your skills match your rates you’re even closer.

I’ll go so far as to say that any competent provider with a decent profile (including a picture) and portfolio is guaranteed to be able to find work at or slightly above their category average if they put the time in.  The work is there, and the buyers want it done more than they want their money.

Let me leave you with one other thought about statistics:

While statistics may say only one in ten people can succeed at something, they never tell you whether you’re the one or one of the nine.

I was on another site and someone was hiring members to take and pass the oDesk Readiness Test for them.  Don’t do it.

Just don’t.

What they say about us.

The thread started with someone who wanted to sell writing services to Marketing Directors. Marketing Directors, or MDs, are huge users of writing services and in the off line freelance world MDs are high grade targets. What caught my interest was the responses and advice from former MDs. Especially the gripes about freelance writers. Here’s the list:

• Freelancers who focus on money and contracts over a working relationship. “Don’t talk money before we even get the details hashed out. I want to be convinced you are the right person for the job before I have to think about the mechanics. I know you have to get paid, you seem like an amateur if you jump into contracts and payment too soon.”
• Freelancers who aren’t committed. “I managed my local staff, my cross country staff and my overseas staff. If one dropped the ball, I had recourse by going over their head or impacting their salary review. I could manage their behavior because we were on the same team.
  If my freelancer dropped the ball, I had no recourse. Sure, I could deny payment but I still looked bad to my bosses. Since most of them didn’t seem to care if I ever hired them again, I had little power to get the work done…well.”
• Freelancers who lie. “Maybe they need the work, and that’s why they lie. They tell you they have skill X or Y and it’s plain, after you get started, that they just don’t. Samples are a good start, but there’s no substitute for having something done for me directly. And too often, for whatever reason, they just can’t produce what they claimed. Along with this comes the excuses. Unlike ‘real’ employees, freelancers seem to feel they can just stop work or do a poor job if they have any sort of personal or equipment problem- it’s a disease.”
• The Prima Donna Syndrome. “I write, and I hire writers. I have to- there is plenty of work; more than enough. But some writers think they are the be-all and end-all of writing. As if I couldn’t hire another two or three whenever I wanted. I’ve got lots of things in the works, I don’t have the time to deal with wannabe Stephen Kings (if you are Stephen King, I’m not hiring you anyhow). Bottom line: You work for me. So work.”
• Whiny, needy freelancers. “Pretty much the same as above, but presents as: ‘The job is too hard. I don’t have the resources or the time.’ These folks have an endless series of complaints and excuses. And if I have a criticism, don’t take it personally. I can’t stand it when freelancers don’t listen, when they get piqued because I need a change. I’m not out to offend, I just want the final product to meet my expectations and my vision.”

This isn’t me, is it?

I’m a professional. I don’t do any of these things.

Yeah, that’s what I thought. Life has a funny way of punching you in the face with undeniable examples.

The very next day, after reading all these comments from MDs, I became the jerk they were talking about. I was due to write a few blog postings for a new client. This client had some clear particulars and objectives in mind, and for whatever reason, I focused almost entirely on the formatting constraints. She wanted certain links and images in each post.

I wrote one to specifications and, being happy with it, sent it off.

The reply included some comments about tone and style. My first attempt wasn’t personable enough and didn’t meet the listed criteria in that sense. The formatting was OK, but the content wasn’t up to par.

Oh boy! I was miffed. Someone hadn’t immediately fallen in love with my writing. That night, I sent off a snide email (oh yes, as writers we do a great ‘snide’) implying that the work was too hard, underpaid, and suggesting they hire another writer. In short, I was being the petulant child. Just the opposite of how I think of myself and precisely the model of what MDs hate.

A happy ending.

Thankfully, and beyond all reasonable expectation, she wrote me back the next day perfectly calm and businesslike. She graciously left me an opening to try again and said she hoped I wasn’t quitting.

Of course, by this time, my Mr Hyde had calmed. I could see clearly what a jerk I had been. I apologized and took up the reins again. I got lucky- I was dealing with a grownup.

The bottom line.

As freelancers, we live mostly with ourselves, mostly in our own heads. We need to be careful that we don’t catch the disease of thinking the world revolves around us and our individual concerns. It takes a bit of self discipline and watchfulness to avoid becoming a jerk. We are kings of our own little worlds, but we have to be good diplomats when we seek to trade outside our small kingdoms. It’s all about relationships. Don’t be a jerk.

I’ve been writing about money a lot lately, and not just because it’s one of my favorite things.   Today’s topic is a grab-bag of tips that can help you make more money for your work on oDesk.

Let’s start with one obvious fact that doesn’t always seem obvious to some of the posters in the Community:

oDesk wants you to bill high

That’s right, it’s in oDesk’s best interest for you to have as high a billing rate as you can manage to pull in.  They don’t want you to get jobs by underbidding everyone else, they want you to get jobs by proving you’re worth more to the buyer than everyone else.  oDesk gets paid by the buyers just like you do.  They want you to make more money because the more you make the more they make.

They have an even greater incentive for providers to raise rates than most providers do because they only get ten percent of the bill rate.  So if I make ninety dollars they make ten.   If I’m working at a charge rate of $1.00/hr they only get $0.10/hr and that’s not really worth it for either of us.

So if someone tells you there’s a conspiracy to keep rates low just laugh at them.  oDesk isn’t going to have anything to do with a conspiracy to make oDesk less money.

Okay, now that we have that squared away, on to the tips:

Tip 1) Don’t Do Data Entry

Lots of people put data entry down as one of their skills, and in some ways it makes sense.  for the most part it’s a job anyone can do if they just take care and pay attention to what they’re doing.

It’s also the lowest paying job category on oDesk

One reason it’s low paying is that it’s essentially commodity work.  There’s no way to put your own unique stamp on data entry so you cannot build a reputation as being the best person for it the way you can with some other fields.

It also doesn’t require any special training or even skill at the English language.

I don’t mean to disparage the job, but if you want to make a lot of money on oDesk it’s one category you should avoid.  The money isn’t there.

Tip 2) Don’t Lower Your Rate On An Invitation

Here’s an example of how lowering your rate can come back to bite you.  A provider with a very high rate (twice the category average and it’s a high average rate category) received an invitation to a position.  When they accepted the invitation, they offered to do the job for about a quarter of their billing rate.

What happened?

They were turned down because they charged too much.

Personally, I never lower my rate on an invitation and here’s why:  Anyone who invites me to do a job has already seen my rate before making the offer.  They wouldn’t have offered if the rate wasn’t acceptable, so why should I drop it?

Also, if I do drop my rate, I’m sending at least one of two messages:  a) I’m desperate; b) I have no confidence in the value of my work.

I don’t want to send either message.  The other thing that might happen is that if I do drop it the buyer may push to see how low I am willing to go.  If I drop my rate by seventy-five percent, maybe I’ll drop it by eighty percent, or possibly even more.  I don’t want to get caught in that trap.

The other problem is that the amount you were paid stays on your profile.  If you quote $50.00/hr and all your jobs are at $15.00/hr there’s no reason any buyer will ever pay you $50.00/hr.   You’ve sent the message that your real rate is $15.00/hr.

Lower rates on past jobs don’t hurt you if they show a steady pattern of increasing rates.  There’s nothing wrong with showing a few jobs at $5.00/hr, then $10.00/hr, $15.00/hr and so on.  That shows a normal upwards progression and doesn’t make the buyer think you’ve been undercharging all along, but rather that your rate has been increasing with time.

Tip 3) Let Your Profile Fit Your Description

Provider profiles are a huge subject, and I could go on for hours about them.  Right now though, I just want to focus on one aspect.

Make sure your skills reflect your area.  If you’re a writer who dabbles in programming, list your writing skills first, not your skills coding Flash or debugging HTML.  Further to that, if you have multiple areas of expertise, list the one you most want to work with first.  That’s the one you should be focusing on.

This doesn’t apply if your preferred skill is data entry and your other is voice-over, since those have the lowest and highest average pay rates respectively.  If one skill is going to pay you much more, focus on that one.

Okay, I’ve started you off.  If anyone has other tips for raising their average rate feel free to send them along.  Everyone wants to make more money and as long as your work is worth it there’s no reason you shouldn’t be working at the top of your category.

Regular readers may know that I have already decided that I like being an independent contractor, but I decided to open the email anyway.  It was an automated invitation saying that person ‘x’ had invited me to join company ‘y.’   Maybe it was someone who was overloaded with work who had a little extra to throw my way.

I didn’t recognize the name, so I decided to do a little digging.  Research never hurt anyone, at least not really, unless you count Marie Curie but that was different.

A little research showed me that the person was new to oDesk and despite no feedback and lower test scores than I have was charging significantly more per hour for the same kind of work.  I could see how I could benefit them, but I was still looking to see how this would benefit me.  I did a bit more research (beyond oDesk this time) and was able to find out some more about this person.

What I discovered told me that while they had the entrepreneurial spirit they didn’t have much of a publicly available track record.  I found multiple mentions of the person but never found any mention of clients.

Now one thing that’s important to remember with Provider Companies is that the company manager is responsible for payroll and they do it outside of oDesk.  oDesk pays the company account rather than the contractor.  From my perspective this was a big downside.  I would be losing oDesk’s payment guarantee and payment mechanisms and turning the earnings from any work done through this company over to someone I didn’t know.

I still could not see anything that would benefit me from this arrangement.

Most of my work already comes from long term clients and buyer invitations.  I don’t need someone else to ‘head-hunt’ for me.

I’ve been burned in the past by buyers when I worked on sites that did not have oDesk’s payment guarantee so I tend to be very cautious when dealing with anything except hourly work.  So having to turn my payment guarantee over to the company for any work done through the company doesn’t sit well with me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that provider companies or a bad idea or that no one should ever become an affiliate contractor.  Now that non-exclusivity is here I think it can be an excellent way for a new provider to get themselves into the system before branching off on their own.

My concern was with whether this particular company and invitation was a good idea for me.

It wasn’t.

My biggest problem was and still is that this person who approached me was and is a complete stranger.  I have no idea who they are beyond what I looked up online.  They could be a wonderful person, they could be a terrible person.

I don’t know.

In a world where everything depends on reputation I have no reason at all to tie mine to the whims of a complete stranger.  It’s not good business.

If becoming an affiliate contractor is something you want to do then go ahead and do it.

However, I strongly recommend that you approach it with at least as much care as you would a fixed-price job; because that’s what it is.

Take a look at the company.  See what kind of feedback it has and how many hours its providers have logged.  If it doesn’t have any feedback and no one has logged any hours with the company then it’s unlikely that it will be able to benefit you.

Contract law requires two things:  A “meeting of the minds” and an “exchange of value.”  There’s a lot more to it and I’m not a lawyer, but those will do for the basics.

The first part means that both parties need to understand and agree to the contract.

The second part means that contacts can’t be one sided.  They don’t have to be “fair,” but both sides do need to receive something of value.

This invitation failed on both counts.

Still, who knows, sometime I may find myself doing work with a provider company.  I just know which one it won’t be.

Additional News

Since I originally wrote this post a few more things have come to light that I felt I should share.

First, when I didn’t respond to the invitation I received another from the same source.  I haven’t responded to that one either.

Second, I came across this post on the oDesk Community from someone else who received the same invitation I did.  They accepted the invitation and now they want to know how to get out of it because they cannot see a benefit to them either.

Most of the members have no hours and no feedback; one of the few members who does have work experience on oDesk accepted the invitation in error.   Personally I would advise that people stay clear of this company until it builds up some history on oDesk.

Recommendations

I don’t normally do this but I would like to make some specific recommendations for how oDesk should handle the Provider Company invitation process.

First, I think it would be a good idea to include a decline link as well as an accept link in the invitation.  That way if a provider is not interested in the position they can let the originator know.

Second, I think it would also help to include someting akin to the interview process.  That way if a provider receives an invitation to a provider company they aren’t familiar with they have a way to ask some questions and see if they’re a good fit.

More communication options are always going to help any situation.

Money.

I bet that got your attention; it gets mine.

We’ve talked about rates before, but what I want to discuss today is setting them.  One of the best tools for setting your rate on oDesk is the oConomy.  It lets you see just how much people in your field are getting paid so that you can see what the market can actually bear.

I’m a writer, so let’s look at the writing category:

This graph shows how provider’s hourly rates break down against the number of jobs.  I got this information from the very useful Rate Distributions by Job Category section of the oConomy.   If you haven’t looked at it already you really need to.

As you can see, while the majority of jobs cluster around the lower end of the pay scale, there are noticeable spikes that correspond to pay rates of $5.00/hr, $10.00/hr, $15.00/hr, $20.00/hr and $25.00/hr.  The numbers are skewed a little high because the graph shows billing rates, but the message is clear:  If you’re currently making $10.00/hr and want to increase your rate you may as well jump straight to $15.00/hr, or if you’re at $15.00/hr you should go to $20.00/hr without bothering with any of the intermediate rates.

However, also note that the vast majority of jobs pay $10.00/hr or less so you may want to take that into consideration too.

Further down they list breakdowns by sub-category so you can see that the average rate for technical writing is $12.75/hr while for blog and article writing it’s $8.03/hr.

While it’s not exactly writing, many writers may consider data entry– but be warned it has the lowest average pay of any sub-category, drawing just $3.13/hr.  I don’t know about you, but that rate’s enough to scare me off.

Before we go any further I want to throw out one more set of numbers.  This is a more general chart, showing the average hourly rate for job hires over the last year.  You can find this information on the Rate Statistics page of the oConomy.

If you look closely you’ll see that the majority of oDesk jobs come between $13.00/hr and $15.00/hr and that the rate has stayed pretty constant over the course of the last year.  It’s important to note that these numbers reflect the pay rates at which people were actually hired, not the rates they would like to be paid.

Now that we’ve got the numbers down we can talk about what triggered this post.

Most of you probably know there have been a lot of posts on the oDesk Community about wages lately.  I discussed one of those threads in a previous post here.  Well, the discussion hasn’t stopped, and the minimum wage adherents are out in full force.

Looking at the numbers I don’t see any reason why oDesk should implement a minimum wage.  The most common suggestion is $5.00/hr and the numbers clearly show that the average hourly rate on oDesk is over twice that amount.

In fact, according to the rate distribution chart there are only two sub-categories that average below $5.00/hr:  Personal Assistant at $4.88/hr and Data Entry at $3.13/hr.   Both are under Administrative Support and personally I would consder $4.88/hr close enough to $5.00/hr that it doesn’t matter.  So with the glaring exception of Data Entry, almost any average job on oDesk should be paying more than $5.00/hr.

Yes there will always be buyers who want the world for nothing, but the numbers clearly show that they aren’t getting it, and that $1.00/hr jobs are very much the exception not the rule.  Going back to writing for a moment; if you’re an average writer there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be making an average of at least $8.00/hr, especially since the average billing rate for working writers on oDesk is $9.53/hr.

Remember that number:  We’ll come back to it.

Now that we know the average, we have somewhere to base our rates.  If you want to charge significantly more than the going rate you need to be able to provide your buyer with a benefit for that additional cost.  If you cannot convince your buyer that you’re worth more than the average rate for your category you won’t get any jobs.

I tend to read peoples’ profiles as well as the threads they post in.   It’s often very interesting reading, especially when it’s someone complaining about the low wages on oDesk, because it tells me what kind of experience they have had on the site.

Here’s an example:  I checked the profile of one person who had been taking part in the discussion of low wages and discovered that they had only taken two relevant tests, with an average score around the 55th percentile, and was looking for $25.00/hr to start.  This was a writer with an error in the first sentence of their profile overview.

As it stands that person is not going to get work on oDesk.

To begin with they’re charging almost three times the average rate for the category.  Remember, your average writing job bills at $9.53/hr which means the provider earns $8.57/hr.   Regardless of their background, without feedback and given their test scores they’re currently sitting squarely in the middle of the pack, if not a little below.

This isn’t an isolated case.

I’ve seen several people complaining about wages lately who have profiles that show no oDesk experience and a billing rate that’s two or three times the category average.  Unless you have an amazing profile and a fantastic portfolio that’s just not going to cut it.

You can work steadily for more than your category average on oDesk.  Nelson, Bill and I all do, and so do a number of others.  You just have to prove to the buyers that you’re worth it.

Buyers can and will pay you what you’re worth.

The catch is they’re going to base what you’re worth on what they see on oDesk and the oDesk marketplace, not your own opinion.

I recommend that every new provider start by setting their rate near the category average and then moving up in rate as they build hours and earn feedback.  Show the community what you’re worth.  Once you have good feedback and enough hours to build a real history you will find you can raise your rates.  Test scores matter less then too.

So next time you see one of those threads complaining about low rates on oDesk take a look at the oConomy.  What you see might surprise you.

I didn’t always agree with his English, but it’s hard to fault the sentiment.

If you’re a long-term reader of the blog, and I hope you are, some of this may sound familiar.  That’s because I’ve posted on a similar subject before.  The reason I’m posting again is that it’s a topic that keeps coming up in the oDesk Community and I wanted to bring it to people’s attention one more time.

Let me put it another way:

Don’t lie in your profile

Don’t lie to your buyer.

Integrity comes from having your actions match your words.  If you’re not sure about something, say so.  Yes you may not get the job, but not getting a job you can’t do is going to hurt you a lot less than getting one you can’t do and possibly having to pay back the money and lose the time.

The biggest offense against integrity that I see on oDesk comes in provider self-assessments.  People will say they have a 5/5 skill in English, and their profile doesn’t reflect it.  Or they may show a brainbench score in the mid-sixties for one certification, and give themselves a self-assessed skill level of 5/5 in the same field.

That kind of disconnect is a big red flag to a buyer.

Think about it for a moment, really think about it.  If you say you have a much better score than the tests show the most likely reaction a buyer will have is that either you’re deluding yourself or you’re lying.

I don’t want to hire someone who’s delusional about their skills; and I definitely don’t want to hire someone who is lying to me.

Even if your test results are not the greatest, you can use your portfolio and your cover letter to show the buyer why you are the best person for their job.  Remember, the buyer’s concern is more can you do the job within their budget than anything else.

If you are concerned your test scores are too low don’t show them.

Most buyers are going to penalize you least for not showing scores, and most for showing contradictory scores, so remember that when you are building your profile.

As a professional freelancer your integrity is vital.  Don’t squander it on a contradictory profile.