Great American Job Fair Attendance

I’ve attended a lot of job fairs in my day, but I’ve never been so taken back by the number of people who attended a job fair at this hour of the day!

I was asked by oDesk to consider manning a table a the Great American Job Fair hosted by Tory Johnson who does the work segments on  Good Morning America. This job fair was going to be held in Boston.   Here’s the catch: We had to be there at 5am and the job fair ran from 6am to 10am.  So here’s my story:

First off  I want to commend oDesk staff Josh and Elizabeth for giving us so much information up front and I also want to thank my fellow partner in crime for the day Erin.  Thank heavens there were two of us!  Actually job fairs where you are the ‘displayer’ versus the ‘job seeker’ are two different things!

I arrived at the Boston Sheraton at 4:45am to set up for the job fair. There were at least 50 tables set up for display as well as a ‘Resume Critique’ area where specialists from the area where invited to participate and review folks resumes as they came through the job fair.

From our spot (right in front of the doors) the immediate ‘neighbor’ displays were Westinghouse (yes the light bulb folks), Poland Springs, a multi level marketing company, a security company and if you can believe this we even saw a display from the Secret Service!

As one would expect in Boston, a number of the area hospitals also had tables set up with folks there to talk about job opportunities. No doubt, in this economy there are more job seekers than there are jobs to go around!

The doors to the Grand Ballroom where the job fair was being held opened at 6am – from then until 10am the traffic was very steady.  In fact, when I arrived at 4:45 there were at least 30 people who were already lined up with their resumes in hand. Go figure (even when I was looking for work full time you would NOT have found me there!).  (we even wondered if some folks skipped work or school to show up there!)

For those who don’t know much about Boston we have a large college area in Boston (and surrounding communities) and we also have a significant health care community in Boston proper (some of the leading researchers in the country come from Boston).  So I wasn’t too sure how much interest  we would see in oDesk at this job fair! I was more than pleasantly surprised.

We had a steady stream (and often 3-4 people at one time) of people approach us at the job fair, and all of them asked the same first question “What is oDesk?”. As best as we could Erin and I talked about oDesk from the providers perspective (and in a couple of cases I talked about it from the buyers perspective since I’m a buyer as well).  I think a few people thought we were off our rockers (i.e. no job site is legit) or we were just there ’selling something’.

We first had to dispel the myth that we were employees of oDesk which was pretty simple to do and then we basically discussed our own experiences on oDesk and explained what we found as benefits:

A)  Guaranteed pay on hourly work

B)  Variety of Jobs

C)  No up front costs

D)  Set your own hours

All of these things appealed to the people we talked to at the job fair once they understood what we were doing.

In all I would estimate that the bulk of people we spoke with were in fact writers (which is interesting) though we did run into a few graphic artists, IT people and others with an interest (more than passing) in the entire notion of working at home.  We even talked to a few who had been laid off from the financial services industry and were looking for other opportunities and that’s why they were at the job fair.

All in all, it was unlike any other job fair I’ve ever attended. And being on the ‘other’ side of the table instead of the one trying to get someone to look at my resume was interesting and fun!

If oDesk offers you the opportunity to represent them at one of these job fairs, consider doing so! It’s fun and you can spread the word about oDesk and how you work effectively with them!

Happy Freelancing!

Why oDesk

I have heard a lot of comments about various work at home opportunities through blogs that I’ve read, Yahoo Answers, and any other numbers of locations (including Helium) and many of them either (a) are negative about oDesk (more about this later) or don’t refer to them at all as a source of potential work.

First I’d like to address some of the negative things I have heard/read about oDesk.

1.  My work is monitored – I am a freelancer because I don’t want someone monitoring my work

Let’s start with this one first because this is the one that I find the most laughable.  First of all if you work on fixed rate jobs (which are not guaranteed payment by the way) you never have to run the monitor.  Even if you are working on an hourly rate job this thing isn’t exactly what I’d call intrusive.  Sure it monitors your keystrokes and it takes a snapshot of your screen but so what.  I worked as a telecommuter for years and they monitored my activity all the time. If you have a real problem with this then don’t accept hourly jobs.

2. The rates are too low

OK first things first – you set your own rates, you bid on jobs and you set the per job rate.  If you can’t get a job then fine lower the rates a little bit, but don’t sell yourself short.  Make sure if you are bidding $30 an hour on a job that you are telling a buyer why you’re asking for that kind of money. It’s that simple.

3. There is too much competition

Fair enough, but that’s life! Basically you need to let folks know why you’re the best person for the job.  It’s not all that unusual to apply for a job and see 99 other people applying for the same job.  Make sure your cover letter is standing out from the crowd!

So here’s why I use oDesk

When I first started looking for work I signed up for job board after job board.  Elance, Linked in, you name it I have open accounts with them.  So with eLance you have to select your category and if you want to work at the ‘premier’ level you can’t do that unless you’re paying a subscription fee.  If you’re not using a subscription fee, you can look at jobs in one (1) category and you can bid on jobs up to three (3) ‘credits’ that they provide you. Additional credits cost money. The things that kill me are that you need to do all sorts of weird things to even bid on the job then on top of that the jobs are not even going to be awarded for weeks on end.   Also one other thing – when you change your job category you cannot bid in that category until the beginning of your next billing cycle.

Let’s talk Profiles – another weird feature at eLance is that they want to be paid for verifying information in your profile.  Sure, you don’t have to have it verified but frankly according to everything I’ve ever seen I think that most buyers there really depend on the ‘verified credentials’.

Without paying you’re limited to five (5) skill tests too which is another bizarre feature. And of course although eLance uses escrow they don’t guarantee payment.

OK I’m ranting I’ll be quiet now Happy Freelancing

Don’t Waste My Time!

As a freelancer, our time is precious. As a buyer, we ask that you have the same respect for our time that you expect us to have for ours.

I want to share a story about a job that I posted for this week. Let me start this off by saying this: I’ve been signed up with oDesk for more than a year and I’ve had very few instances when I’ve really complained about buyers because for the most part they are extremely helpful, cooperative and they are good to deal with.

But this story is a ‘red flag’ warning to providers and a red flag to buyers as well!

Since March I have applied for less than 100 job postings. Since this is December that means that I apply for less than ten per month which is not excessive. In fairness, this is because I have a solid base of regular buyers who keep me on ‘retainer’ if you will to do work for them every month.

With that said let me say this: when I do apply for tasks it’s because I feel it’s a good match and that I can do the job to the specifications laid out in the job description. If I apply for a fixed rate job I anticipate being able to turn it over quickly and get it done with (this is an exception for me) and if I apply for an hourly job my goal is to eventually turn that buyer into a long term assignment. There’s no gray area here for me!

So with all of the dramatics out of the way let me share this with you. I applied for an hourly job this week with a buyer looking for three (3) to five (5) articles a day. My ’standard’ hourly rate is $25 per hour (and I really would like to be making more than that but factually I’m not ready to raise the rate higher) but if I feel I can turn the buyer into a long term assignment I’m willing to go a little lower. With this in mind I applied for this position.

The buyer had some sketchy requirements in the job posting so I elaborated by giving the buyer some history (i.e. look at my profile) and laid out a clear proposal of what I could do (i.e. how many articles a day, a week and a month) and what I was willing to accept for a rate based on (a) hours; (b) article count and I also provided him with a maximum monthly amount based on a total number of articles assuring him that if for some reason hours X article count didn’t give with the amount I was quoting I’d cover the ‘difference’ by providing the shortfall in articles for free. I spent at least thirty minutes writing this proposal.

I then attached a sample of a ’standard’ 500 word article and explained my research methods as well as providing my ’standard’ guarantee which is:

A) Free from plagiarism;
B) Free from typos/grammar errors
C) You’ll be happy or I keep it and reproduce it free

I submitted my cover letter and went back to work. About 2 hours later this buyer invited me to interview with him. Now to put this into perspective, I offered the buyer $15 per hour for this job (plus oDesk fees) which is $10 lower than my normal hourly rate.

I acknowledged the interview request and at the buyers request signed him into my chat and proceeded to discuss his job requirements with him and reiterated my commitment to the above points and my rate one more time.

In turn (after about 20 minutes) the buyer offered me $7 per article. When I pointed out to him that I had offered him an hourly rate and the above guarantees I was told that the job was not hourly but it was fixed and he would pay on a per article price only. I pointed out that he had posted an hourly job – he said he understood that but if I wanted the job he’d re-post as a fixed rate job.

So, I spent 30 minutes on my cover letter, 30 minutes on a chat and that’s one hour out of my work day for nothing.

Please don’t post an hourly rate job if you don’t intend to hire someone for hourly rate. Have some respect for my time as I have respect for yours.