8 Freelancer Pro-Tips from Someone Who Hires Freelancers
For my day job, I regularly hire and work with freelancers on both an individual contract basis and through sites like Upwork. Over and over again, I've seen freelancers make the same mistakes when pitching me to hire them. In fact, I see these things so regularly that I have come to use many of them as heuristics in my hiring process.
With that in mind, I've put together eight tips for freelancers who are looking to actually make a living off their writing (as opposed to just getting a little extra money here and there – though, these tips would help those freelancers too!).
Tip 1: Replace Confidence with Examples
Stating confidently that you can do a job means nothing to me; sharing an article with me that shows your chops means everything. I am much more likely to hire you if you show me something you've already written that is close in tone to what I am looking for, or which shows a familiarity with the topic, than I am if you simply state that you are confident you can do the job.
I know that a lot of people find confidence compelling – it's a Sales 101 technique. Tell someone you can get the job done, and they'll hire you, right? I get so many pitches that say something like, "I'm confident I can have the job done by Friday," that for me as the person hiring, such confidence has lost all meaning. Show me your skills and knowledge area, and then we'll talk.
Tip 2: Filter by Location
Here's the thing: If I specify a location requirement (e.g., "United States" or "North America") and you do not meet it, I won't even look at your pitch. It's a waste of both our time for you to even submit a pitch to me, and if you're on a freelancer site like Upwork, you've also wasted your limited connection opportunities.
You might wonder why I even make location a requirement in the first place. Certainly there are competent writers all over the world, but my experience has shown me that there are many grammatical and cultural nuances that people from other countries or continents simply do not understand or even think about. Only so much research can be done online – there are times where knowing the culture and language idioms are extremely important. Whatever the case, if I've gone to the trouble of specifying a location requirement, then I have done so for a reason.
Tip 3: Set Your Price Appropriately
Generally speaking, this is what I've found with regard to freelancer proposals for specific jobs:
- Poor writers overestimate their value.
- Good writers estimate their value.
- Great writers underestimate their value.
On freelancer sites, I tend to hire by fixed-rate jobs – e.g., $50 for a blog post, $200 for a static web page, etc. What I've found is that most people will pitch an amount equal (or nearly equal) to the budget I set for the job, despite a clear difference in experience and skill among the writers.
To be completely honest, what I'm always looking for is that great writer who doesn't know their own value – or who hasn't yet proven their value to the market. Despite all of the websites telling you how you can make thousands of dollars a month as a freelancer, freelancing is actually a pretty hard gig to make a living at. You have to spend time establishing yourself, and often that means taking jobs that pay much less than you deserve. I've stumbled on a number of such writers, and have continued working with them even after they increased their price thresholds, because they are so good at what they do.
Tip 4: Learn to Accept Rejection
While all of the tips above address reasons why I might reject a proposal, there is also the fact that for most of my jobs I'm only looking to hire one person. If I didn't choose you this time, that doesn't mean you aren't qualified. Many factors go into choosing a writer for a particular job, and not all of them are necessarily bad.
Sometimes, it literally comes down to a coin flip. There are quite a few instances where I've had to pick between two, three, four applicants for a job that they all seemed equally capable of doing. At that point, other factors come into play, many of which are basic human social cues.
Tip 5: Personalize the Message
I cannot stress how important this tip is when getting me to consider hiring you. "To whom it may concern" and a form letter do not cut it when you can see my name, picture, profile, and job details. People who take the time to actually use my name and personalize their letter to match the job at hand will almost always get hired by me.
I realize that not all sites let you view the hiring manager's profile, so you might not actually be able to know the name of the person who submitted the job. In that case, leave out the salutation altogether and go straight to the pitch. More often than not I'm trying to find someone quickly for a job, and seeing "To the hiring manager" or some other impersonal greeting is both a waste of time and a reminder that you don't have any idea who I am.
Tip 6: Use Appropriate Examples
I once put out a request for a medical writer. One of the people who applied for the job shared an example of their work titled “22 Best Plugins for WooCommerce.” As you might imagine, I did not hire that person.
To me, an appropriate example is any one that shows you have the skills to complete the job. In general, this will come down to showing me at least one of three things:
- Research Skills – Not just online, but old-school skills as well. Have you interviewed people face-to-face or by phone (not just through a set of prefabricated email questions)? Do you know how to look up medical journals at your local university library?
- Topic famliarity – If I'm asking you to write about a rare form of cancer, then showing me a generic article you did last October about Breast Cancer Awareness Month probably isn't going to cut it.
- Breadth of Ability – In most cases, I'm looking for a versatile writer, because then I can work with them again in the future, which cuts down on the amount of time I need to spend sorting through bad pitches.
Tip 7: Meet the Qualifications
It is absurd how much I get messages that begin with something like, “Hello, I noticed I do not meet 2 of your qualifications…” For what should be obvious reasons, this isn’t an effective way to get me to hire you.
Like the location requirements listed above, I set qualification requirements for a reason. If you do not meet them, then I'm not even going to consider your pitch seriously. You've wasted both my time and yours.
Not meeting the qualifications is bad enough when it happens by accident – someone might think they are qualified without realizing they are not. But what really gets my grits is when people acknowledge they have seen the qualifications, know they don't meet them, and then still submit a job proposal anyway! Not only am I not going to hire you, but I will probably put you on my personal blacklist, since you clearly are not willing to follow instructions.
Tip 8: Read the WHOLE Job Description
Don’t send a cover letter/proposal based on your assumptions about the job after only reading the job title. I've seen this one so many times, where the freelancer will try to personalize their cover letter (a good thing) without actually having read the full description of the job at hand. It becomes clear very quickly that they made an assumption about the job without actually looking at the details.
In fact, more recently I've even started purposefully keeping the job titles vague, partly because I want to easily filter out those who don't read the whole description. Back when I was just a freelancer myself, I used to wonder why I saw so many job "descriptions" that were so broad – it didn't make sense to me why the people hiring wouldn't be more descriptive to make their jobs stand out. Now, as someone who hires freelancers, I realize that many of them probably did on purpose, specifically so they could weed out the ones who don't pay enough attention to the details.
Conclusion: Don't Waste Time
For me as someone who hires freelancers, the biggest consideration comes down to not wasting my time or your own. For any given job, I typically have to sort through dozens of proposals, and I'm going to do it the quickest way possible – which means immediately cutting out the people who don't meet the criteria I established.
However, if you are a great candidate for a job, then by all means apply. Even if I don't pick you, I may remember you for a future job (or even another one I am about to post). I frequently save the profiles of freelancers who impress me, but who aren't quite perfect for the job at hand, and I do reach back out to them when I have another job come up.
| Follow Curtis | Follow Bookdotes |
|---|---|
