Upwork are giving $1 million in talent grants to support businesses working to counter the impact of COVID-19. The Work Together Talent Grants Program is designed to support projects with missions directly tied to mitigating COVID-19's devastating impact on individuals, communities, and economies everywhere. Upwork have partnered with global payments platform, Veem to help US-based talent and clients apply for the SBA Paycheck Protection Program. Small businesses, sole proprietors, independent contractors, and self-employed persons are eligible to apply.
Signing up in Upwork is stricter now. Upwork aims to make the website free from harm such as scammers and people who didn't provide enough information about their identity which makes their account suspended. So today, this post will help you make your Upwork profile to be approve easily.
For old freelancers who have their upwork profile approved before, Upwork is now requiring everyone to do a video-call with their customer service representative and providing government ids to ensure that the person really owns the account.
Be a Professional, Right from the Start: You're not just signing up in Upwork, You are already creating your business portfolio. Upwork signing up makes it clear for the people that they are serious in looking for the potential freelancers for the client. One of the example preferred is when creating a profile in upwork, they preferred a business email address over personal email address. Even if you have a personal email address, always make sure to use a professional username not a personal one.
Show What You Can Do: Upwork aims for the freelancers to win big time jobs and earn big bucks of money. Upwork always monitors and balances the freelancers and the demand of jobs every day. So in order for your profile to be approved, focus on different skills that you have. If you only knew one skill, there is a big chance for you not to be approve because of the demands that I mentioned. So never choose just one work category. If you see something from the category that you can do, tick the box. You don't need to be a master on that job, as long as you know how to do it, and then let Upwork know that you can do it.
List Down your Maximum Number of Skills: Be sure to list your genuine skills that are relevant to the service that you can offer to clients. There are many types of skills that you can choose from, even if it's not listed, you can tick the others and list it down. Narrow your skills for example: Sales Writing instead of Copy Writing or you can use Lead Generation.
Don't Underestimate Your Skills: One common mistake that the freelancer commits is that they are underestimating their experience. Just because you aren't an experience freelancer doesn't mean that you can't do what they can do. In addition for the categories and skills, Upwork lets you select one of the three experience levels: Entry Level, Intermediate Level, and Expert Level. It will always depend on your skills. With that said, you can choose an Entry Level. After all, we started from the beginning, right?
Make your Title a Great One: If your title is too general for example, Secretary. Upwork may consider it a low-effort. If it's too specific for example, Marketing Secretary for Industrial Corporation, then Upwork may think that you are not interested in taking part of another job aside from the specific title. Creating a great title will not only impress Upwork, but also the clients.
Update Your Employment History: If you are a fresh graduate with no job experience, don't assume that you are not able to share any experience at all. If you have done any intern experience, you can list that as an Employment History. Describe what you had done in that company aside from being an intern. Time to use your writing skills and show off what you got and make it relevant.
Update Your Education: Write a detail description for each as it shows relevance to your skills and expertise. You can also include your school projects and seminars that you have attended. Use your creativity and show off. If you joined any mentorship program, you can also include that. Even if you took an online course, you can also include that to your profile.
Treat Your Upwork Profile as a Resume: As the post mentioned, you need to treat Upwork more seriously. In creating an Upwork profile, you have to treat it like you are passing a resume. Show off your skills and make it in a professional way. Always remember the proper capitalizations, proper grammars and proper use of sentences. Download Grammarly for free to check your grammars and punctuations. So your Upwork profile can be approved easily.