It’s that time of the year. People are putting up the Christmas trees, hanging lights outside of their homes, shopping like crazy (or not)… and reviewing their plans for next year.

Yep, it’s time for companies to plan for 2008. Every business, large or small, looks for ways to improve their product and cut costs. While browsing through Business Week, I came across a great article on the topic: Ten Penny-Pinching Ideas for 2008 by Gene Marks. Among his suggestions (geared toward small businesses):

- Set up remote access (we think this is a great idea, too). If someone’s on the road or wants to work from home, they’ll have virtual access to the office.

- Create alerts. Remind yourself of when someone hasn’t paid, when you need to pay bills, when you need to check up on a project or meet a deadline.

- Invest in smartphones (particularly if you have remote workers). Keep in touch no matter where you are (a blessing or a curse, depending on how you look at it.)

Some suggestions we would like to add:

- Outsource your company’s T-Shirt design. oDesk recently needed some new designs for our swag, and rather than bog down our Marketing department, we hired a provider to do the job. About 15 hours and $150 later, we had seven designs to choose from and our provider is now building us a custom Printmojo store.

- Do your own marketing. Check out the Duct Tape Marketing Blog for ideas and tips. Hire a provider to create professional looking HTML newsletters or write press releases and then post them yourself on sites such as this one.

- Outsource your customer service. Staffing a live chat system like phplive.com can be a burden, but plenty of stay-at-home moms and dads in the U.S. have excellent English skills and are looking for work. Consider bringing in reps at $8-$20 an hour to meet your customer service needs.

- Create a blog. Not too familiar with the blogging world? No big deal. Find a Wordpress developer to set up your blog and customize your theme. Content is always king, so make sure you find a writer who really knows your subject.

Good luck on the planning. We hear eggnog and a little bit of mulled wine can go a long way on helping you get through the holidays

We wish all our our oDesk providers and buyers a Happy Thanksgiving!

This is really a holiday where many of us reflect on all we have to be thankful for, and here at oDesk, we’re grateful for many things. Just today, thanks to our amazing network of hardworking providers and diligent buyers, we hit a record of 4,002 hours worked in one day.

So it is with many thanks that we acknowledge your hard work on oDesk, and we hope you have a wonderful holiday with family and friends.

Applying for a job? You’re not alone. oDesk jobs receive an average of 12 applications in the first 24 hours. How to ensure that you’ll get a chance to interview? Write a cover letter that stands out and that shows the employer you’re seriously interested in the work.

Here are 15 tips to help you create an outstanding cover letter:

1. Read the job application carefully. The best way to ensure that you won’t get the job is to write something that shows you really didn’t read through the job description or that you don’t have the skills required.

2. Highlight relevant skills, but be brief. And while we’re at it, if you’ve taken a few skill tests on oDesk, that can help you verify those skills and impress buyers.

3. Spell check and proof-read. You’ll have someone’s attention for only a few minutes. Make sure you make a good impression. I recently saw a cover letter with someone who said they had perfect Englich. Yep, wasn’t too convinced.

4. If possible, include links to relevant work experience.

5. Be professional. Humor can backfire. You may laugh at these examples of funny cover letters, but future employers may not feel the same way.

6. Don’t cut and paste. When you’re applying to a bunch of jobs, it’s tempting to create a cookie cutter template, but employers will be more impressed when you spend the time to tailor your cover letter to the job.

7. Include your contact information and best times to reach you. Put your availability in the buyer’s time zone. Can you best be reached through Skype? Yahoo Messenger? Gchat? Let the buyer know.

8. Be online as much as possible. You never know when the buyer might be online and decide to contact you.

9. Explain your current availability. Do you currently have a few other projects going on through the system? How much time do you think you could devote to the job?

10. Be creative. Depending on the job, a creative cover letter may win over an employer, particularly if you’re going after a creative position such as a designer or content writer.

11. Suggest next actions and offer suggestions. For example, saying something like, “I can start reviewing the specifications with you. I was thinking perhaps you could consider XXX” shows that you’re thinking ahead and ready to go.

12. Offer a reference. If you’ve worked closely with a client in the past (and they’ve agreed to allow you to share their contact information), allow future employers the opportunity to learn just how great you are.

13. Be confident. Don’t say you can deliver with 110% guarantee, but be confident in your abilities and skills.

14. Ask questions to demonstrate understanding and initiative. 

15. Be persistent. So maybe you didn’t land the first job you applied to. Don’t get discouraged because you spent a good amount of time on your cover letter. Start with smaller jobs and get some oDesk experience and feedback.

See some more examples of cover letters on our site.

We’re psyched! oDesk made the short list for the Red Herring 100 Global 2007!

Drawing from a pool of 1,800 promising, privately-held companies from around the world, editors at Red Herring Magazine selected only 200 companies as finalists. In the next round, the top 100 companies will be announced at the Red Herring Global 2007 conference to be held in Seattle on Dec. 3-5. Companies are chosen for their financial performance, innovation, management, global strategy and ecosystem integration.

We’ve been working on making oDesk a standout startup for freelancers and IT companies and have been working on even more features to improve our product and customer experience. We’re excited to be considered for this distinction and look forward to seeing the results!

Learn more about the Red Herring Global 2007 on our website.

We’re excited to announce that our CEO, Gary Swart, was broadcasted on the waves this last Sunday! The radio waves, that is: Gary chatted with Robert Reiss on The CEO Show on November 11 at 10 p.m. PST on “The New World Order of Hiring.”

How do you hire top talent? How do people around the world manage to find each other and work together? Gary shared his views on how to run a successful outsourced team, provide good customer service, and manage a network of over 30,000 community members. As the CEO of oDesk, Gary interacts with providers and buyers on a regular basis and has learned from their best (and not-so-great) practices.

Looking into the future, Gary shared his thoughts on rising trends in hiring and the outsourcing industry.

Robert Reiss has interviewed CEOs such as David Neeleman of Jet Blue, Bernard Marcus of Home Depot and Jay Walker of Priceline.com, so we’re pumped to be included in the mix.

Want to tune in? Listen to the entire interview here. For more on The CEO Show, visit the website.

We’ve all been there. It’s a gorgeous day outside, the sun is shining, birds are singing, and you have to go to work. You pick up the phone, practice your best hoarse, scratchy voice, and when the voice on the other line says hello, you launch into your spiel:

“Yes, cough, cough. How are you doing, sir? Me? Well, I have a terrible cold today, cough, cough. Odd, isn’t it? No, no, I didn’t feel bad yesterday, it must be one of those 24-hour bugs that’s going around. Probably best to stay home, so as not to get the other employees sick.”

Your way of looking at it: Hey, I’m just taking it easy for one day, right? No big deal.

Your employers’? Absence Abuse.

Business Week has a great article out right now by Michelle Conlin looking at the problem of absenteeism at work. According to the research cited in the article, only about 85% of labor costs pay for actual work. The rest is vacation and those “sick” days everyone takes every once in a while.

But too many “sick” days has become an issue for some companies and they’ve begun to take action. Some have begun monitoring carefully who’s been calling in sick and how often. In some workplaces, if you call in sick too many times, disciplinary actions begin.

There are many reasons people call in sick. Some are genuinely ill, others just need a day off. But some employees are simply dissatisfied with their jobs and are loathe to go to work. The article mentions the experience of one unit within a manufacturing company that was calling in sick significantly more often than other units within the same firm. The culprit ended up being the manager, whom many employees disliked (and thus took sick days to avoid). Once the problem was identified through focus groups and the company took steps to resolve it, absenteeism dropped. But the company would have been slower to identify and resolve the issue had it not been keeping track of sick days.

So as a company, how do you lower your absenteeism rate? One solution is to allow your workers to work from home. Research by staffing agency Randstad shows that productivity for home-based agents is up to 45% higher than for on-site employees — and that some of this increased productivity is accounted for by reduced employee absenteeism (for more, see World of Work, 2007).

Home-based workers are also more likely have higher job satisfaction, up to 25% higher as compared to in-office employees. As we saw from the experience of the manufacturing company with the large absenteeism rate in the one unit, unhappy workers are more likely to skip work.

The idea of suddenly allowing their employees to work from home with no oversight makes some managers a little wary. Understandably, of course. If your workers still manage to surf YouTube at work, what’s to keep them from doing that at home all the time on the company’s dime?

That’s where the beauty of the oDesk Work Diary comes in. When an employee is logging in time remotely, managers have access to screenshots of the employee’s monitor at 10 minute intervals. Keystrokes and mouse clicks record activity levels. It offers managers peace of mind: when Johnny says he’s “working from home,” he really is working from home, (and his Work Diary shows it), he’s not watching football.

Easy enough for everyone to understand: if you’re working, you’re getting paid. If you’re watching football (unless you happen to be a referee!), you’re not.

The sudden turn of events in Pakistan over the last few days has been nothing short of frightening. As we scanned through the headlines, our thoughts here at oDesk quickly turned to the 1,000+ oDesk community members residing in Pakistan. Many of us here in the office have made connections with providers and buyers residing in the country, and we know many of our buyers have established important connections with users there as well.

What also came to mind as we read through the stories is just how connected we all are in today’s economy. Pakistan has gone through Martial Law before, but the effects are now greater due to the interconnected nature of the global economy. Many of us have professional connections with citizens affected by political situations in various countries, and in an increasingly connected society, conflicts reach further than their borders.

The flipside is that our interconnectedness has the ability to move us to action. The more connections we make with citizens in other countries, the more we’re likely to (a) work to understand their culture to improve our communication, (b) empathize with them and (c) prevent and resolve conflicts in order to keep our interconnected economies humming. We hope that in coming years, as business connections through outsourcing increase, that we’ll all feel a greater stake in the political situations in other countries.

For now, however, we wish our friends in Pakistan the best and hope all remain safe.

Steve Lohr’s recent article in the New York Times on hiring tutors from India (Hello India, I need help with my math) shines a spotlight on the increasingly popular trend of outsourcing consumer services. The article focuses on one offshore tutoring company and also touches upon the practice of hiring virtual personal assistants.

We’ve seen this trend reflected in our marketplace as well. Take a look at the numerous Buyers on oDesk who are currently seeking personal assistants. These assistants can help busy professionals with a variety of different tasks, including managing databases, preparing documents, taking calls, and booking travel arrangements. Already there are more than 2,000 providers on our network available as “personal assistants.”

What is particularly startling about the trend highlighted in the New York Times is that many of these new outsourcing clients are young. Really young. They’re kids seeking homework and exam help from tutors working on the other side of the globe. This next generation is primed for a working world without borders. Computer savvy, comfortable with communicating online and already experienced in the world of offshoring, by the time this generation hits the workforce, there will be no hesitation in finding outsourcing solutions. They won’t hesitate to look for creative ways to outsource their business tasks and personal lives, leading to further growth in the outsourcing realm.

We have one thing to say: Generation Y (and beyond), oDesk will be ready for you

According to a recent article by Hispanic Business magazine, the practice of homeshoring — hiring people who work from home — is skyrocketing. The magazine estimates that there are about 150,000 home-based “agents” working for companies in the U.S. today, a number that could reach 300,000 in 2010.

If you’re considering outsourcing solutions, homeshoring offers some advantages. Your providers are working in similar time zones, which may make it easier to communicate. Additionally, according to Business Week, employees who work from home may be more loyal than on-site employees.

To read more, here are some articles we’ve selected you may want to peruse:

1. Fortune: Commute to work in 30 seconds

2. Management Issues: Homeshoring is where the heart is

3. Seattle Post Intelligencer: ‘Homeshoring’ means that call center might be in someone’s bedroom

4. Small Business Trends: Homeshoring and its impact on small businesses

5. HR and Homeshoring Blog

6. Outsourcing Times: Offshoring vs. Homeshoring

7. IT Business Edge: Homeshoring helps companies improve customer service

8. Arbor Law Blog: Is Homeshoring the new offshoring?

9. Christian Science Monitor: Outsourcing comes home

10. CNN - How to earn more from home

11. CNET -  Homeshoring to trump offshoring?

If you are looking for some providers, check out this search for U.S.-based oDesk providers. Happy home (agent) hunting!