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Andrea's avatar
Andrea G Community Manager

Get Profile Feedback from Experienced Freelancers on Upwork

Getting started on Upwork can take a lot of work and focus. To help make this process a little easier, we’ve created this post where you can request feedback on your profile. The community is full of experienced Upwork freelancers who are passionate about helping others. These users will review your profile and provide feedback based on their experience.

 

If you’re interested in requesting help, make sure your profile visibility is not set to “Private” and then reply below. 

 

We’re excited to see how Community members can continue to help each other to grow!

 

Note: A previous version of this post was closed as the number of responses made it difficult to read and navigate. If you had not received a response yet to a request you made, please post again in this thread.

~Andrea
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Andrea's avatar
Andrea G Community Manager

Hi all,

This thread has been closed from further replies due to its size. We appreciate your participation in the Community and welcome you to continue the conversation on this new thread.

Thank you!

~Andrea

View solution in original post

7,804 REPLIES 7,804
Clark's avatar
Clark S Community Member

Hello Ezinne,

 

Your profile overview/summary does not have enough information to convince clients to hire you. Virtual assistance is probably the most competitive skill area on Upwork; there are literally more than one million virtual assistants here, so your summary has to convince clients to hire you. To do that, you must use the first two sentences (and the rest of your summary) to tell clients what you can do and how you will help them.

 

First, remove the word "Background."  Then, give potential clients specific examples of your services (e.g., data entry, document maintenance, socal media management, calendar management and scheduling, etc.) and tell clients your approach to providing these services. Talk more about your timeliness, accuracy, and ability to communicate effectively. Also, tell clients which tools you are familiar with (i.e., Microsoft Word and Excel, Google, chat systems, CRM databases, etc.) Remember--you are competing with hundreds of thousands (actually, more than a million) virtual assistants, so clients need several reasons to choose you.

 

Unless you plan to focus on food safety, processing, and food technology as a virtual assistant, you probably don't need Food Science in your skills list.

 

Add a portfolio to show samples of previous work or to demonstrate your skills. The portfolio is a chance to make a positive first impression on potential clients. If you don’t have relevant examples to add to your portfolio, you can create items that demonstrate your skills.

 

Once you update your summary, clients will have a better understanding of your services and how you can help them.

Ezinne's avatar
Ezinne A Community Member

Thank you for your response 🙏🏾 

Jezrel Mark's avatar
Jezrel Mark H Community Member

Hello, 

 

I am JM from PH I hope you can consider my profile to be part of your team. You may view my profile here: https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~01cc34fecaaa94deff?viewMode=1

 

Thank you. 

Clark's avatar
Clark S Community Member

Hello Jezrel Mark,

 

Your profile overview/summary does not have enough information to convince clients to hire you. To make your profile more appealing, add more content to your summary. The summary should not be lengthy, but you must tell clients how you can help them. Right now, your entire summary focuses on you and your experience.

 

First, remove the first line of your summary:"Talent & Marketing Officer and Legal Admin Coordinator"  Why? Because 1) this is basically a repeat of your title; and 2) when clients search for freelancers, only the first 200-250 characters of your summary are shown. This means you have very little space to get their attention. You want that small space to include your services, skills, and experience.

 

Next, make the summary more client-focused by telling clients about your services. Also, refer to yourself by skill area instead of "individual."  Here is an example of all suggestions combined:

 

An innovative expert Legal Admin Coordinator with a proven track record in evaluating requirements for recruitment and marketing development projects, and devising creative solutions. I can help your recruitment teams plan and execute better hiring processes using a highly effective recruitment strategy.

 

(Here, I recommend mentioning the tools and resources you are familiar with or use to do your work. Also, talk about any successes (i.e., I have successfully recruited, hired, and onboared more than (number) legal professionals since (timeframe).")

 

I am renowned for out-of-the-box thinking and my dedication to improving performance. I thrive in collaborative settings and consistently meet project deadlines. As a recruitment expert, I have a verified history of successful project management, delivering top-notch results through proficient leadership and team motivation. I actively collaborate with clients to comprehend their requirements, ensuring the delivery of excellent service.

 

(Add an action statement at the end. Maybe something like:)

 

Let’s discuss your business needs and how I can help. I'm available to meet on an Upwork Zoom call to review your requirements.

 

You can revise what I wrote and use your own words, but you get the idea: focus on the services you can provide to clients and explain how you can help them.

 

Add a portfolio to show samples of previous work or to demonstrate your skills. The portfolio is a chance to make a positive first impression on potential clients. If you don’t have relevant examples to add to your portfolio, you can create items that demonstrate your skills.

 

You should also consider adding a project catalog. The project catalog allows you to setup a pre-packaged service that clients can buy without you sending a proposal. Due to higher than usual requests for project catalogs, reviews and approvals are taking a minimum of 10 business days. Read Get Started With Project Catalog for more information.

 

Your skills and employment history look good.

Muhammad's avatar
Muhammad H Community Member

Please review my Upwork profile and let me know if there's any changes required. I have to add the profile video, add more portfolio and catalogs. You can tell me more about the improvements. Thanks!

 

Profile Link: https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/haseeb14

Clark's avatar
Clark S Community Member

Muhammad,

 

I think your profile looks good.

 

Your overview/summary is a bit long, but if I would change one thing, it would be the first sentence. It sounds fine, but it would sound great if you removed the greeting and your name, and made it more assertive. Here is an example:

 

"Highly skilled 𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐂𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐒𝐄𝐎 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 who will take your digital presence to the next level."

 

The reason I suggest this is because clients can only see the first 200-250 characters of your summary when they search for freelancers. This means you have very little space (approximately two short sentences) to get their attention. Greetings, names, and other nonessential words will reduce the number of important words a potential client sees; words like your services, skills, and experience.

 

Your portfolio, skills list, project catalog, testimonials, certifications, and employment history look good.

Muhammad's avatar
Muhammad H Community Member

Clark, Thank you so much for your feedback. I will look into it and change it. However, the reason for the long description, I strive to utilize all of the characters to insert my keywords for profile ranking. I would appreciate it if you could drop a few tips for the profile ranking so I could get some invites. Thanks!

Melvin's avatar
Melvin W Community Member

Hi please I need help to impove my profile can you  go and check it for me?

Clark's avatar
Clark S Community Member

Melvin,

 

In addition to the great advice Anthony provided on 18 December, you need to make several other updates to your profile.

 

1) Start by making the changes in the image below:

 

celgins_0-1703085728128.png

Why remove these? a) The excessive space at the beginning of your summary may cause clients to leave since they will not see information without scrolling, and some clients don't expect to scroll as soon as they reach your profile; b) When clients search for freelancers, only the first 200-250 characters are shown. This means you have very little space to get their attention, and you don't want to waste space with greetings, your name, or emojis. The first things a client should see are your services, your skills, and your experience.

 

2) Your profile overview/summary will be confusing to clients because you speak about unrelated skill areas. Logo design and illustration are not related to English-French translation. I suggest focusing your main profile on translation. Then, create a Specialized Profile that focuses on your logo design/illustration services. This will eliminate confusion.

 

In your logo design content, there are more words and phrases that should be removed:

 

"Welcome to my Creative Hub! "
"Hey there! I'm [MELVI],"
"MELVIN WOROMOGO"

"Fee"

 

Neither provides any value to clients reading your profile.

 

3) Add short job descriptions to each job in your employment history. This is especially important when the jobs are highly relevant to the services you provide on Upwork.

Mohammed's avatar
Mohammed I Community Member

Hello,

Would you please take a look at my profile, and advise?

Thank you 

Clark's avatar
Clark S Community Member

Mohammed,

 

Your profile is not public. Try to set your profile to Public or Upwork users only so we can see it.

 

Thanks.

Jatin's avatar
Jatin S Community Member

Hello, I am new to he plus membership and recently updated my profile to my current experience. 

Check out my profile and let me know your thoughts 
Link: Jatin R. - Brand Identity Designer - Upwork Freelancer from Gurugram, India

Anthony's avatar
Anthony H Community Member

Jatin,

Your third sentence starts with "I firmly believe effective branding ..."

 

From that moment on, you very gently lecture your audience on the powers of branding or on your devotion to branding. This dilutes your profile. The trick is the people reading your profile are already aware of the need for effective branding -- why else would they be reading your profile? And your devotion to it is nice to know, but it is pretty much assumed if you are in the branding business you are passionate and devoted to it. So your information is neither interesting or useful. Most people are passionate about what they do every day. It is not a surprise that you are one of them.

 

What you need to do is to be more professional. A professional can actually talk (or write) about the factual effective ness of what they do. You have to tie that to your personal successes -- the things that make it believable that you are an expert at this. What companies have you helped? What problems did they have and how did those problems evaporate because of your work with them? Were these corporate projects or Mom and Pop street-corner businesses? DId their businesses expand? OK, by how much? Did their profits go up? OK, by how much?

 

You could also talk shop by actually describing what you do. Do you survey competitors and look for ways to approach a client's problems with original ideas? Do you do post-branding surveys? Do you meet with company leaders and have brain-storming sessions? Do you work alone in isolation? What? You're the pro. Tell us some details about how you actually do your work. (People like to know in advance what they are paying for.)

 

These are the details that convince people that you are a professional at what you do. Certainly, if you have a string of successes to talk about (write about) then you don't have to say something as rudimentary as "I am devoted to this." Your devotion will show in the story you tell without having to say it. More details and a summation of your track record will be very helpful changing your profile from enthusiastic to convincing.

Jatin's avatar
Jatin S Community Member

Thanks for your insights, It is really helpful

Agnes's avatar
Agnes N Community Member

Hello everyone,

I am new to upwork.

Please review my profile & let me know if there are any recommendations to add to my profile.

Thanks

Clark's avatar
Clark S Community Member

Hello Agnes,

 

Welcome to Upwork.

 

Good start to your profile. Here are a few suggestions that might help improve it:

 

Title: Only use skill areas or categories in your title. For example: Finance Analyst | Bookkeeping | Reporting | Budgeting

 

Overview/Summary: Your summary starts nicely, but there probably isn't enough information to convince clients to hire you. In addition to telling clients about your services, tell them about your approach to providing those services. For example, you can briefly explain your process for maintaining accurate financial records and data, and how you ensure sensitive information is protected. Also talk about how you communicate with clients, how often you communicate, and the types of reports/presentations you can prepare to deliver your findings to management or investors. Since there are thousands of financial analysts here, clients need several reasons to choose you over them.

 

Skills: Be sure to add skill categories like Financial Analysis  to your skills list since it is related to your services. Upwork uses these skill categories to match our profiles with relevant jobs and to help our profiles appear in search results.

 

Portfolio: Add a portfolio to show samples of previous work or to demonstrate your skills. The portfolio is a chance to make a positive first impression on potential clients. If you don’t have relevant examples to add to your portfolio, you can create items that demonstrate your skills.

Agnes's avatar
Agnes N Community Member

Thankyou Clark , this is much appreciated.

I wanted to enquire on whether portfolio considers work performed outside upwork since am new on the platform and  I haven't received any offers.

MA's avatar
MA S Community Member

Dear @Clark, if you would audit my profile, i'd be grateful to you...

Sarah's avatar
Sarah C Community Member

I was just let go from my full time marketing role and am eagerly looking for that first UpWork gig. A lot of my previous work I'm not allowed to share due to ownership issues, would you recommend I write relevant pieces to present here?

 

Any advice you have for me is hugely appreciated! https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~010c196f3a9d6b7b59

Clark's avatar
Clark S Community Member

Hi Sarah,

 

Yes--that is my recommendation.

 

Almost anything you can do to effectively promote your services is fine. Obviously--like you said--some previous work cannot be used due to proprietary, sensitivity, and ownership issues. But other promotional information, data, and content--even newly created content--is okay.

 

For example, when setting up the graphic design portion of my Upwork profile, I created graphics (i.e., logos, banners, promo ads, etc.) instead of using paid samples from my previous client's. I had one client who was completely open to it, so I had full permission to upload the graphics I completed for her. My other clients would probably be open to it too, but I didn't bother asking--it was more straigtforward to simply create items solely for my Upwork portfolio.

 

I like the way your profile starts. Your overview/summary is informative and tells clients about your services and how you can help them. The EAT in Content Marketing articles is great, but you definitely need two or three more writing samples in your portfolio. Clients will like your summary and the EAT article, but they may still want a few more samples from a content writer.

 

Two small things I would consider updating in your profile:

 

1) I would probably change the EAT article or any uploaded documents to PDF. You are using Microsoft Word (.docx), which is fine, but some clients may not have the ability to open Word documents. The Adobe PDF format is universal and viewable in any browser and across multiple platforms (i.e., desktop, mobile phone, tablet, etc.)

 

2) Add short job descriptions to each job in your employment history. This is especially important when the jobs are highly relevant to the services you provide on Upwork.

Your skills, project catalog, and other information looks good.

Bhupinder's avatar
Bhupinder D Community Member

Please have a look at my profile and let me know if anyone is willing to give me the best feedback.

Thank you.

 

https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~01ad2b4cad32f645b7

 

Clark's avatar
Clark S Community Member

Bhupinder,

 

I looked through your profile and here is what I see:

 

1) First, I recommend changing your profile photo. The picture in your photo might be too casual for many Upwork clients. The picture should be a close-up image of your head and shoulders that clearly shows your face. Read through Upwork's best practices for How to Choose A Good Profile Picture.

 

2) You need to add more information to your overview/summary to convince clients to hire you. First, remove the greeting and your name: "Hi there! I'm Bhupinder."

 

Next, tell clients about your approach to providing graphic design services. Tell them which tools/applications you use; how you gather feedback during the development process to ensure their ideas and visions are reflected in the final product; and whether you offer unlimted revisions. Also talk about your timeliness, how you maintain quality standards, and why a client should choose you over the other 1+ million graphic designers here.

 

3) The most important part of a graphic designer's profile might be the portfolio. It is absolutely critical to have a portfolio packed with images and designs a client can look through. The portfolio is a chance to make a positive first impression on potential clients, and almost all with expect to see several samples from a graphic designer. If you don’t have relevant examples to add to your portfolio, you can create items that demonstrate your skills.

 

4) Add short job descriptions to each job in your employment history. This is especially important when the jobs are highly relevant to the services you provide on Upwork.

 

Good luck.

Anum's avatar
Anum K Community Member

Clark's avatar
Clark S Community Member

Anum,

 

I like your profile; I think it provides clients the right information about your services and how you can help them.

 

If I would change something, it would be the beginning of your overview/summary. First, I would remove this: "Greetings, esteemed clients" Why? Because when clients search for freelancers, only the first 200-250 characters of your summary are shown. This means you have very little space to get their attention, and you don't want to waste characters on greetings. Also, remove the same or similar greetings in both specialized profiles (Video Editing and Article Blog Writing)

 

Instead of offering skills and confidence in your first paragraph, I would shorten it by introducing your services and telling clients what you will do to help them:

 

As an experienced SEO-friendly content creator with 8 years of experience, I can help your website or blog stand out by delivering and managing engaging and informative content optimized for search engines.

 

This example is more conversational and allows potential clients to see more of their goals (your services) within the first 200-250 characters.

 

Also, add a short job description to your job at Perfume HK in your employment history. This is especially important when the jobs are highly relevant to the services you provide on Upwork.

 

Good luck!

Anthony's avatar
Anthony H Community Member

Anum,

Look through Clark's comments below this. He knows his stuff.

 

But also, post some writing samples. Do you have professional, published articles? Post two or three of those. Choose your best ones. 

Now read  Clark's more thoroough comments.