oDesk Guide: Land Your First oDesk Job Today! Part 2

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Students have Books, Technicians have Manuals, and Tourists do have Maps to utilize too. But what about those starting out their career as oDesk Freelancers, the so called Newbie Freelancer, what guide can they use?

We don’t want to keep you waiting for long so here’s the second part of the oDesk Guide. But if haven’t read the first part, oDesk Guide: Getting Started Part 1,you should definitely read it since you’ll be missing half of the guide if you don’t.

Plus, what’s the use of a guide if you skip steps and jump to the later part, right? You’ll save time, YES, but to be able to maximize what you’ll get from this guide, take time to read the first part too!

With that out of the way, Let’s get Movin’!

7. Make Sure Your Résumé is Always Updated

The oDesk Résumé is divided into several parts namely the Skills, Certifications, Employment History, Other Experience, and Education. Each by itself is a different factor for you to be considered for a job, so it’s highly suggested that you always keep your oDesk Résumé updated.

You’ve learned a new skill through watching online Tutorials, reading ebooks, skimming through Blogs and finally testing it out for yourself. Be sure to always add that into your Skill portion of the oDesk profile for your prospective(or current) Employers to see. Not only that though, always make sure you fill up the necessarily fields for the other parts of the oDesk  Résumé for the sake, and benefit of course,of having a complete oDesk Profile.

It’s interesting to know that oDesk already has a feature that allows you to select from the pre-define and related Skills, not unlike before where you’ll have to specify it yourself. With that feature, selecting the skill you have have become much easier and less of a hassle.

8. Be Reachable!

Just because you only have Skype installed on your workstation doesn’t mean you have to force your Employer to download Skype and have him sign up for an account too. As the oDesk Contractor, it is your responsibility to adjust and be reachable!

Ask your Employer beforehand what kind of communication platform he prefers. Be it through E-Mail, Google Talk, Skype, or Y! Messenger, always make sure that you can be reached easily by all means. Communication is one, if not the most, important aspect of successful Online Working Relationships between Contractors and Employers so always make sure you communicate with your Employers at least once per day, with the platform he prefers of course.

9. Research the Project’s Price

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As we’ve mentioned in the post How To Freelance: oDesk, oDesk is indeed the best Freelance-friendly Platform. Their features certainly back that claim of ours up in the form of The oConomy.

This is related to this specific oDesk Tip in a way that it allows us, the Freelancer, to gauge the competition, along with the price, for a certain Field or Project. This way, you need not blindly guess when bidding, which leads to losing the Job Opportunity if you overbid and under-compensation if you underbid.

Ignorance is certainly not and excuse so it is extremely important that you research and utilize The oConomy when bidding on Projects or Contracts that you’re interested in. When all else fails, ask a fellow Freelancer on his thoughts regarding the project! Never be afraid to ask, always have that in mind.

10. Set a Competent Yet Realistic Rate

If you already have an oDesk account and have manage to browse for jobs, you’d certainly be shocked as to how low the bids you’ll see on some oDesk Job Postings, particularly in the Data Entry Field. Ridiculous at it may seem, still the issue is there that some oDesk contractors are under-compensated for their skills and hardwork.

But certainly not for you though! Since you were able to read this guide, you’re lucky to be informed beforehand of that issue. With that, we highly suggest not having the “Mob Mentality” when talking about rate. So it doesn’t mean that if other oDesk Contractors are lowering their hourly rate just go get a job, you need to do so too.

Your work attitude and skills should dictate the rate you should set on your profile and consequently, the rate you bid on the oDesk Job Postings you plan to apply to. If you set your hourly rate to be $5.00/hr, that should be your standard and you should not let your Employer talk your way into a Spec Job or to lowering your rate just to get the job.

11. Grow Professionally as a Freelancer

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Like Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, you should always keep growing professionally. Being a College drop-out didn’t stop him from being successful, in fact that actually was for the better, just look at where he stands now. It doesn’t mean that if you started out small, like taking small-scale oDesk Contracts or Data Entry Jobs, that you should stick to that for the rest of your career as a Freelancer.

Always remember that you should always aim to learn something new, and consequently grow professionally with new skills, experiences, and knowledge. You never know, you might even be the next Steve Jobs in the making! As an added bonus, you’ll benefit financially too since you’ll be able to take on larger and more complicated oDesk Contracts and Projects.

The internet is a wonderful source of information and you can easily find a tutorial for a topic on a certain skill just by a simple Google Search. All you need is dedication and willingness to learn, if you have that then you are set to grow!

12. Never Raise the White Flag

If you’re reading the guide up to now, I congratulate you since you’ve manage to do the last but definitely not the least tip from the oDesk guide itself, which is to never raise the white flag or if you’ve probably known by now, NEVER GIVE UP!

There certainly will come a time when you’re just starting out in your Freelancing career that you’d feel that you’re losing hope and that you will never land a job. If you let that get the better of you, you’d simply quit. But if you’re like us, like those who’ve made a name of themselves in the Freelancing world already, like those who found a stable job online, and like those whose Financial problems were taken care of because of their Freelancing career, you would never give up!

Just like how we experience problems in our lives, being a Freelancer isn’t no different. You just have to be resilient and stay positive, always remember that “Hardwork always pays off”.

There you have it, an oDesk guide both for those starting out their Freelancing career and for those oDesk veterans out there. I hope you had as much fun as I did when I was writing the guide and I’d be expecting to see you on our next edition of the Freelance Jobs Guru! Now off to find, or do, your oDesk Job you go!

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To wrap things up, it’s my pleasure to introduce the man behind the original guide, Mr. Leo Joseph Gajitos, who is a PHP-MySQL-jQuery Progammer / Project Manager / Internet Marketer from the Philippines. He specializes in building websites from scratch like Nutritionix, facebook apps like Quotezilla and manages blogs like SlackerMommy.

Find out more about Leejay from his wife’s blog SlackerMommy. You can contact him via the contact form on the said blog as he is very much available for new opportunities!