Winning Jobs Without an Interview

You've got a sharp suit, a fabulous business card, and a lovely gold pen — all of which are doing you no good at all when applying for freelance jobs at online job-brokering sites. These kinds of job boards require a different strategy for selling yourself.

Your key selling tool is the online profile you create at the job-brokering site. This may include a link to your website with your portfolio, but should also include well-written text emphasizing your freelance experience, software you use, any special areas of expertise, and details of the benefits you can offer a client.

If words aren't your strong point, you may want to hire or barter with a writer friend to craft this profile, employing keywords to help make you more "findable" and emphasizing your top selling points.

While the bidding nature of many freelance sites creates an impression of work going to the person who quotes the lowest rate, this may not necessarily be the case. If your profile and bid can sell the client on the value of your work, you may get the job without having to underbid anyone else.

Watch out for scam "clients," and seek out those who are willing to put all or part of the fee in escrow with the site proprietors to be sure you actually get paid. Also pay attention to whether or not other freelancers have left feedback for this client.

Finally, read up on the bidding site's fee structure before you put in a bid. Some charge per bid; others ask for a monthly fee or a percentage of your revenue.

Tags: advice, Networking

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 at 10:40 am and is filed under Career Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.