oDesk is proud to announce the beta launch of oDesk Skill Tests. Providers on our network can take the more than 100 technical and business skills tests for FREE. After a provider has taken the tests, he/she can add the scores to their oDesk Profile and leverage the test scores to get jobs on oDesk. The test scores are included in the profiles, allowing a person looking at the profile to objectively measure the strength of the provider’s skills. For e.g., take a look at Jeff K’s beta profile here .

The tests are prepared by experienced professionals with several years of experience in their technical domains under ISO 9001-2000 specifications. The questions have been through several rounds of analysis by experts to help build well balanced, comprehensive, and meaningful tests.

5 reasons fo Providers to take oDesk Tests:

1. Make more money. Buyers use test scores to make hiring decisions. Having oDesk Tests on the Profile increases chances of getting a job and get higher rates.
2. Show off skills. oDesk Tests cover a wide range of skills including ASP.Net, C, C++, PHP, Java, English language and many more. All tests are developed under ISO 9001-2000 specifications. See a full list here.
3. Taking tests is simple. Most tests take 40 minutes to complete and are automatically added to the oDesk Profile. The entire process is streamlined through the oDesk website, no need to go to other websites or create extra logins.
4. Retake tests. Provider can retake any test after 14 days. If the provider’s skills improve, he/she can retake the test to show the best score for each test on the oDesk Profile.
5. Complete control. After the provider completes a test, he/she has the choice to add the score to the Profile, or not show it and retake the test later. Taking the tests is completely risk-free.

For oDesk buyers, oDesk test scores will enable them to make intelligent hiring decisions. A buyer can use the test scores on the providers profiles to search, rank and sort when they are looking to hire someone for a job opening. A buyer can also have providers take tests as a requirement for selection to thier job opening.Take a look here to see a couple of comments by buyer on how eagerly they are waiting for this feature.

All oDesk Tests are available for free for Providers and do not require anything other than being logged into the oDesk account (Click here to go to the “My Tests” page on our beta site and click on “Qualification Testsâ€? to get started).

The feature is currently in beta and will be released in early August.

No other competitor has this powerful combination: free skills tests and top jobs from all over the world!

An oDesk provider posted a comment on the last entry about bonus payments stating that he would prefer a raise in his hourly rate instead of a bonus. I’m glad he asked this question. Many oDesk buyers have also rewarded providers with raises.

Here’s how the numbers stack up for 2006:

• 245 raises awarded in 2006
• Average raise: approx. $2.10 per hour
• Average raise (percentage): approx. 20%
• Average oDesk hours on assignment before raise: 145 hours

As everyone knows, it’s hard to hire and retain top talent. Bonuses and raises are 2 of the mechanisms a buyer can use to retain top talent.

For buyers: I recommend treating each oDesk provider as you would treat one of your own employees. If you decide that a raise is in order, you can issue a raise on an active assignment by going to the My Assignments tab, clicking View next to the active assignment, and then select Increase Hourly Rate. You can then issue a raise to that provider.

Thanks,

Josh Breinlinger

Many oDesk buyers have rewarded providers with bonus payments for exceptional work.

A few statistics on bonuses:

• Biggest bonus payment: $1,200
• Smallest bonus payment: $20
• Average bonus payment: $250

When bonuses have been awarded:

• Early completion of project
• Exceptional contribution to project
• Annual bonus
• Birthday gift

How bonuses have been used:

• A bonus awarded to an affiliate was used to have a dinner party for the team
• A bonus awarded to a freelance provider was used to buy a new computer
• A bonus awarded to a freelance provider was used to buy his child some birthday gifts

If you’re a buyer and would like to give your provider a bonus, submit a help ticket (click Help in the upper right of any page) and oDesk will process the bonus along with the provider’s next monthly payment. Please include in the help ticket the provider’s name and the bonus amount. There is a 10% payment processing fee added to the bonus amount.

Thanks,

Josh Breinlinger

oDesk is based on an hourly pay rate model rather than a fixed-bid project model. We have had a lot of debate about which model is better, both in the Community and in many conversations with our Buyers and Providers. Below are the results on the topic from our latest Provider survey:

		Response Percent
No, I am happy with hourly pay + bonuses		52.7%
Yes, I would like to add minimum commitment from Buyers		12.4%
Yes, I would like to add fixed bid projects from Buyers		9.1%
Yes, I would like to add both minimum commitment from Buyers and fixed bid projects		22.5%
Other (please specify)		3.3%

Sitepoint Tribune has a good article in their newsletter about the dangers of fixed-bid internet projects, arguing that although clients may think fixed-bid is less risky, contractors should be on an hourly basis to align their incentive with the client’s. The relevant portion of the newsletter is pasted below. You can read the entire newsletter here.

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Abid Mohsin

The Danger of Fixed Bid

Fixed bid projects are the scourge of the Internet industry. It’s well known that most estimates prove to be highly inaccurate, and most Internet projects fail to come in on time, or within the original budget.

Internet projects are notoriously difficult to estimate, and most clients require a specific budget for the project. Amazingly, most small business managers will turn around and require a fixed bid from their contractors, thus incurring the very same risk they exposed their clients to by accepting the fixed bid arrangement in the first place.

Think of it this way: if you offer your client a fixed bid, and something goes wrong, you have to incur the additional cost of correcting the problem. You’re creating a situation in which you’re at your least motivated when you client needs you to be firing on all cylinders. Is that how you want your contractors to work for you?

The fact is that fixed bid projects are always at risk of turning into the never ending project, complete with burnt out programmers and diminishing client satisfaction. Just as you wish your client would pay you by the hour (even if it results in a lower total amount), your contractors wish you would extend them the same courtesy.

Whenever possible, try to determine your potential profit margins and pay your contractors by the hour. It will result in increased quality, less fatigue, great satisfaction, and a more successful project overall.

How Can I Pay An Hourly Rate When My Client Has Me On A Fixed Bid?

If you’re on a fixed bid with a client, how can you possibly afford not to have vendors on an hourly rate? It seems as if it would be exceedingly risky and unwise to do so. After all, if there is a problem in the project, you’ll really need my contractors to come through for me. If they’re on a fixed bid and someone makes a mistake, they have to fix it for free and they’re unlikely to maintain motivation. So, your client is ultimately at risk.

How do we make this work? The answer is simple:

Margin

Margin makes a tough situation easy, and lets you sleep at night.

Let’s say I have a client who needs a ground-up Website with an online store and back-end integration. I consider myself to be experienced enough to create fairly accurate estimations, so I’ll break the project down into hourly blocks and resource allocations right at the beginning.

Note: Never estimate value, only estimate time. There is no relevance to project value since rates are arbitrary. The only useful information when projecting project costs are hours worked, which can be multiplied by the hourly rate one the estimations are complete.

So, the project might break down like this:

A total of 174 actual hours are projected.

At a rate of, say, $40/hr for local contractors, the estimated value of the project would be $6,960.

Now, I ask myself what the desired margin is on the project. Given the high potential for scope-creep and bloat on a typical Web project, I’ll want at least to triple the projected hourly requirement, for a total cost of $20,880. Most likely, I’d quadruple it, for a total value of $27,840.

Sound too high? Sure, there’s always someone’s nephew hanging around to take a project for $600. Then again, there are always clients hanging around who have already been burned by the ‘nephew job’ and are ready to pay real money for real work.

If the project is highly complex or the client is very difficult, I won’t hesitate to multiply the projected hours by 6 or even 8 before bidding on the job. As a rule, if you feel that there’s any chance that you might ‘get a haircut’ on a job, you’re selling yourself short. As a Web professional, you are expected to understand the risks of a project and price them accordingly.

If a project spins out of control and you lose money on it, you cannot blame the client or your contractors. We all know how this business goes and the problems that can arise, so be prepared.

Since I’m in the business of remote collaboration, I’ve attempted numerous different ways to collaborate with remote teams over the past year and a half.

These have included a variety of both synchronous and asynchronous methods including voice calls, Skype calls, Yahoo Messenger, Jabber, Webex, oDesk Share, chat conferences, email lists, webcams, and screensnaps. Screensnaps (or web-based screenshots – see example here: http://url.odesk.com/y0ut ) have become one of my favorite tools for communicating with remote individuals. What I’ve found interesting in the last few months is that it’s become the tool of choice even for communication within our own office. They are extremely efficient in quick communication of bugs, ideas, spreadsheets, documents, UI designs, and more. I’ve found that it’s a great replacement for emailing files around for feedback, since often I just need feedback from a peer on one particular aspect of a spreadsheet. I can take a screensnap, ping the URL to my colleague through chat, and get the feedback immediately through our chat conversation. It’s also the best tool that I’m aware of for reporting bugs – I could of course take a full-size screenshot, turn it into a .jpg, and email it to QA; but it’s much faster and easier to take a screensnap and send just the URL.

Another important metric that we track at oDesk is the usage of all of the tools within the suite of management tools that we provide. Within our own company, screensnaps have gone up in usage more than any other feature over the past several months. This is nice confirmation that it is indeed one of the most effective collaboration tools out there today. Check out our usage statistics over the past 6 months. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the least used features by our other users, and I believe that many more users could benefit from using this feature.

If you want to use screensnaps, you must have either oDesk Team or Share running on your computer, and then click Ctrl-Alt-S to capture the entire screen or Ctrl-Alt-A to capture just the active window (default settings – you can change the shortcuts in the Preferences menu). This will upload the screenshot along with your comments to a secure server and automatically copy the URL into your clipboard. Just hit Ctrl-V in an email or chat to send the URL to someone else for their review. Alternatively, you can right-click on the systray icon of either client application and select ScreenSnap.

Thanks,

Josh Breinlinger

First, I want to thank all of the oDesk users for your active participation in the launch of our feedback system. We’re proud to make the system fully public for the first time starting today.

To go along with the launch, I thought I’d share with you some of our interesting findings from the first two months of feedback scores submitted through the system. We’ve now been collecting feedback at the end of each assignment on a 1 to 5 scale (5 being the best) in six different categories including skills, quality, availability, deadlines, communication, and cooperation.

One of the first things we noticed is that there is a high correlation between feedback on assignments and the average pay rate for that provider. See for yourself.

I also wanted to show you a distribution of all of the feedback scores collected to date. Notice that a number of providers have perfect scores on feedback. If the above chart is any indication, these providers with perfect 5s may have very lucrative opportunities ahead of them.

One last important note. I would like to remind all users to be thoughtful when leaving feedback. Your rankings and comments will have a profound impact on the person you are evaluating, and it’s important that you provide careful assessments of performance.

Josh Breinlinger

Call me map crazy, but I really like some of the Google Map mashups coming up. I had mentioned Wikimapia in my earlier post. Another one I just found out is quikmaps.

You can create a map and save it and show it on your website. I created a map for directions to our new offices. Check it out below (might take some time to load).

Click on the markers for the information.

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Abid