So, you signed up for oDesk, got yourself a profile and now all you need is that first job. But how do you get it? What can you use to convince a buyer that you are the one best fitted for their project?
Sure a good profile helps, and feedback does too– but you don’t have any feedback yet. You need to complete a job first. Time to look for other options. Luckily for you, oDesk provides other options in the form of tests. The great thing about oDesk tests is that they provide independent confirmation of your skills.
This is important because it gives you a way to make sure you stand out from the crowd through something you’ve done, not just something you say about yourself.
So take those tests!
Don’t just take them blindly, though. If you do that you can do yourself more harm than good. A friend of mine showed me his oDesk profile. He’s another writer, but he’s new to oDesk and hasn’t done any work yet. He’d taken four tests and not done very well on any of them. One test wasn’t even writing-related.
Now I admit, I’ve got one test on my profile that’s not writing related either, but I also scored in the top 10% of all people on oDesk and I wanted that blue ribbon. Even though buyers don’t go entirely by your test scores, particularly low or high scores do stand out.
I wouldn’t hire a writer who scored low on the sentence structure test. I’d end up having to rewrite everything they had done. Tests let others know you have a certain minimum level of competence, and high marks across multiple tests show you take oDesk and your work seriously enough to put the time in to earn those high scores. A profile that shows low scores also worries me because it shows the provider doesn’t really care what kind of image they present. They haven’t taken the time to go through their tests and make sure they’re going to show them in a good light.
In a setting where reputation is everything, that’s not a good sign. A person who doesn’t care about there reputation is more likely to throw together some slap-dash mess and call it done. That’s not the person I would want working for me, and it’s not the face I want to present to the world.
Take the tests, as many as you have time for. But once you’ve done them, go through and pick which ones you really want to use to showcase your talents. They’re a tool, just like a hammer; use them to hit the nail, not your thumb.
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