When I go on oDesk I often look at other providers’ profiles. It not only helps me get a better picture of the competition, but also lets me see where my profile can be improved.

One thing I can’t help but notice is that almost every provider rates their English skills at 5/5; I don’t think I have ever seen a lower rating on any provider’s profile. That’s good isn’t it? Besides, I’m mostly looking at writers’ profiles so they should be good at English: That’s their bread and butter.

Unfortunately, some of these profiles didn’t seem to reflect a 5/5 level of English. Many were rife with spelling and grammar errors; some would alternate between ‘I’ and ‘i’ as a personal profile. I was seeing some of the same errors I see in my daughter’s writing — and she’s in kindergarten.

The majority of errors I see fall into two types: typographical and fundamental errors.

Typographical errors (typos) are common. I typo ‘the’ as ‘hte’ or ‘just’ as ‘jsut’ quite often because one hand starts going faster than the other so I get two letters out of sequence. Everyone does them, and that’s why most word processors can be set up to correct these errors automatically.

I can’t say the same for fundamental errors. Fundamental errors are errors of grammar or word usage that show that the person who wrote the piece is either unaware of some of the basic rules of writing English, or that they didn’t care enough to apply them when writing their profile. Neither is a good sign.

So if we can’t use the self-assessment what can we use? One option is the oDesk sentence structure test. Most providers have taken this one, and since sentence structure is one of the basic components of written English let’s have a look at how scores in this test compare to self-assessed rankings.

I gave myself a 5/5 for English skills so let’s start with my ranking on the sentence structure test: I have a 5.00, am in the 99th percentile, and rank 22nd out of 12753 oDesk providers who have taken the test. Based on that criterion, I’d say that my self-assessment was reasonable.

I looked at two profiles lately: both had a 5/5 for English, but one was in the 99th percentile for the sentence structure test and the other was below the 40th percentile. That’s a huge difference. One person is better than almost everyone else who has taken the test, the other isn’t even as good as half the people who have taken the test.

That’s enough of a discrepancy to call the whole idea of the English self-assessment into doubt. The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that it means different things to different people and that some people think all you need for a 5/5 is to be able to communicate in English. After all, even with a sub 40th percentile score the person was able to write a readable profile.

Even though it’s possible to filter out an over-optimistic self-assessment just by reading the provider’s profile and cover letter, that doesn’t mean inflated self-assessments are a good idea.

An over-inflated self-assessment tells me two things; neither of them good.

1) It says this person is incapable of accurately assessing their own work. If they cannot see their own mistakes then they won’t be able to fix them. That tells me I’ll have to go over everything they do very carefully to catch the errors they miss.

2) It says this person may be exaggerating their own abilities to try and get more work. If they’re exaggerating one skill, what other skills are they exaggerating? I don’t know. It calls their entire profile into doubt, and if I can’t trust the profile and cover letter, I might be advised to reconsider hiring this person.

Here’s the real kicker, not everyone needs a 5/5 in English to get work on oDesk

As long as you can communicate with the buyer and are really good at the skills you’re marketing it doesn’t matter if you have a 3, 4, or 5/5 in English. The only people who need to be really good at English are the writers. We’re the ones who’re getting paid for our English skills. Everyone else just needs to be able to communicate clearly.

That leads me to a rather harsh point.

If you can’t write don’t call yourself a writer.

If you are applying for writing jobs because you don’t have any other skills and think writing is easy, you should stop right now. If your profile is full of grammatical and spelling errors you should fix them before applying for another writing job. If you don’t know how to fix them you need to learn.

No one is going to hire someone who has demonstrated they cannot do the job.

A badly written profile doesn’t do you or the buyers any good. All it does is hurt your reputation for future projects.

Part of the problem is that everyone is taught how to write in school. However, that doesn’t mean everyone is taught to write at a professional level. Most schools have sports teams, and those teams are not automatic tickets to the major leagues. Not everyone who plays basketball in high school goes on to play in the NBA.

Professional writers are better writers than most high school graduates. If we weren’t people would do the jobs themselves rather than paying us to do them.

Self-assessments matter for non-writers too.

If you aren’t a writer, you won’t be judged as harshly if you have a 5/5 English self-assessment and a 3/5 profile. You aren’t selling a 3/5 for the price of a 5/5. Even so, you still have to consider what any inaccurate assessment means on your profile.

Think about it, if one provider has a 4/5 English self-assessment and a great profile and portfolio while the other has a 5/5 self-assessment but a poorly written profile it won’t make a huge difference on a coding assignment. It’s relevant skills that really matter.   However, the claimed 5/5 which is not supported by the profile might lead the buyer to question the rest of your profile and that’s not going to help you get the job.

Do yourself a favor.  Rate yourself honestly.  It won’t hurt.

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