The first impression you leave on a potential employer when looking for work online is not your resume or user profile, but rather your cover letter.  Resumes and profiles are succinct listings of professional accomplishment, but don’t say much about an applicant’s personality, work ethic, interests and talents.  Therefore, a cover letter is your place to shine.

A cover letter should ALWAYS accompany a resume or link to an online profile.  Lack of a cover letter leaves buyers with the impression that the applicant is lazy or that he or she isn’t really that interested in the position.  On the opposite side of the spectrum, endless cover letters that read like a provider’s autobiography are unlikely to be read in their entirety.  Employers are generally busy people, who don’t have time to comb through a long letter and pick out the few facts about an applicant that interest them.

An applicant has an average of 20 seconds to wow an employer.  It is, therefore, the provider’s responsibility to completely read through a job description and respond to it with a letter that consolidates all of his or her professional training and experience relevant to the job.  The letter should also be used to answer any questions posed in the job listing.  A well written and pertinent cover letter demonstrates that an applicant has fully read and understood the job description and is confident of his or her ability to carry out the duties required of the position.

Cover letters should be dynamic and specific to each job position and buyer.  They should also be as concise and a maximum of one page, although half a page is the recommended length.  Limiting paragraphs to one to four sentences also makes the cover letter easy for potential employers to skim and process.

Personal introduction: start your cover letter by sparking the buyer’s interest instantly:
• Briefly introduce yourself
• Mention the position for which you are applying.
• Transition into describing the traits, qualities and experiences that will make you stand apart from other providers.

Example:
I am an expert web designer interested in the web development job you’ve posted.  I am certified in five different programming languages, and am an expert in Dreamweaver and Photoshop.  I have designed and built 80 websites to date.

Qualifications: The second section should be used to delve a little deeper into professional and academic qualifications.  Stress accomplishments rather than explaining your duties and responsibilities in past positions.

Example:
I have a Masters degree in Computer Sciences from Harvard and have worked in this field for 10 years.  I worked three years for Accenture, where I was promoted to Lead Programmer within one year of joining the company.  In 2006, I started my own web design and IT consuling firm, which currently has completed 60 jobs for 45 clients in 12 countries.

Fit: you want to demonstrate your knowledge of the company and the position being filled.  Explain why you are suited to working with the company and to the position advertised.

Call for action: end your cover letter should incite the buyer to take action:
• Request an interview.
• Ask the employer if he or she would be interested in seeing additional samples of work.
• Let the employer know that you are available to answer any questions or clarify anything that may be left unclear (although your letter should leave everything crystal clear).

Etiquette:
• If the job posting provides a name, address the letter to that individual.
• Unless you’re confident you know their gender, don’t take for granted that the person reading your letter is male; be gender neutral.
• Always re-read and check your letter for typos and grammatical mistakes.

If you follow these suggestions and don’t clutter your letter with unnecessary information, you are more likely to compose a concise, informative and successful cover letter.  It’s your personal marketing piece; treat it as such!

-Justine Bayod Espoz, Guest Blogger

oDesk is an exciting new paradigm that offers multiple advantages– remote, low-cost and low overhead work product without upfront outlay; a wealth of skilled contractors to select from; pay-for-performance; flexibility with a built-in background structure and real-time monitoring. However, with all these pluses, buyers are left with the same final hiring decision they have in any employment situation.
New buyers and experts familiar with oDesk face the same question and the same challenge.

The challenge.
How can I be confident that I’m hiring the best person for the job at hand?
Although  relevant for first time buyers and buyers seeking expertise in an area they have never hired for, any long term relationship is going to have the same initial trial period. I want to know not only that the people I hire are qualified, but also that they are going to fit my organization and the way I conduct business..
Examining provider profiles, portfolios and feedback is the suggested method, and for many jobs, this is sufficient. But  this may not be enough. There’s more to it than selecting a qualified person: Will this person work well with me? Will they meet my specific expectations, time constraints and budget? Will our relationship be effective and productive?

The solution.
There’s a way to test drive providers at oDesk with little risk. A way to answer the important questions and ease the worries that come with any new hire. And it can be key when filling a longterm position.
The idea is simple. Post your Job and expectations normally, but when you find providers that have the qualifications necessary, hire them with limited hours and assign a portion of a project (or a smaller but similar project). You can create a small project and test several providers. The cost is minimal, as little as a single hour’s time for each provider.
The commitment is limited, but the experience of working remotely and using the oDesk tools with a particular provider can be invaluable. If evaluating provider profiles, work samples and cover letters is the gold standard, test driving would be the platinum standard. You get to see how one (or multiple) providers actually performs with a task you set. And you get to find out how you perform as a team.

More Advantages.
As a manager or business owner, you know that jobs evolve– the goal posts change, deadlines and scope get modified, new ideas pop up and new concerns need to be addressed. Test driving allows you to do an initial shake-out and tighten your focus before you decide on the right  approach. It may be that the job requires a different mix of talent than you originally thought. Perhaps your deadline or budget was too optimistic. Test driving is a way to clarify things.
Test driving by limiting hours also protects you from an unscrupulous provider who ‘milks’ time. If a provider cannot produce a quality product in a reasonable amount of time, you’ve made a mistake hiring at a rock-bottom hourly rate. Trying before buying will allow you to find out before you’ve committed.
Finally, test driving lets you filter a larger set of qualified applicants to find the best fit. By hiring several providers and test driving, you can see exactly what you will get for your money and keep the best of the group.

–Bill Morrison, Guest Blogger

As part of our ongoing marketing efforts at oDesk, we have a pretty substantial Google Adwords campaign set up. I was reviewing some of the data today and we noticed that for all campaigns, the conversion ratios (% of visitors that sign up for an account) were highest on Saturdays. A little unexpected, but an interesting finding. Google allows you to tailor your campaigns by automatically adjusting your bid amounts by day of week. Seems like it would be appropriate to increase our bid amounts on Saturdays so we capitalize on this increased conversion ratio. Or maybe not?

I was wondering why conversion ratio was higher on the weekend so I decided to take a look at oDesk data for job postings over the last few months. I took a look at over 10,000 jobs posted and analyzed results based on a few simple criteria.

First, I wanted to understand the distribution of types of jobs posted by day. I put together all the results in Excel and did a pivot table on the day of week. Note that for all of the following charts, 1 = Monday, 7 = Sunday. This first chart shows the total ratio of fixed price jobs posted on the oDesk network by the day of week. Sundays apparently have the highest percentage of fixed price jobs.

Ok, so clearly there is a small bias toward fixed price jobs on the weekends. What about job size? The following chart shows the average estimated hours for hourly jobs (estimated hours = estimated workload in hours per week * estimated duration in weeks). Note that durations over 100 weeks are rounded down to 100 weeks. Clearly, hourly jobs tend to be smallest on Sundays.

Ok, we’re starting to see a trend here. Let’s take a look at Fixed Price jobs. I looked at a chart of Fixed Price job size by day of week posted. You can see in this next chart that the budgets tend to be smaller than the average (the average being 100%) on Friday thru Sunday.

So, jobs that are posted on the weekend tend to be smaller and more urgent than the rest of the jobs posted. Now, remember that the conversion ratio was highest on Saturdays. The way I read this data is that if you’re looking for urgent work, you’re more willing to try anything to get the job done so you’ll convert to a user at a higher rate than normal. Now the last step is to look at the relative value of a customer that signs up for our network by day of week. If the “weekend warrior” types do indeed have small, urgent jobs then they should have a lower lifetime value than the average.

While there is not a huge difference, I think the findings are pretty interesting. Note for providers -> if you’re looking for the best jobs available - make sure you’re looking Mon - Fri.

I just went out for a team lunch with our local team - 5 of us had a very nice lunch and talked and joked about family, golf, airplanes, dating, and Hillary Clinton. During the lunch, I thought of the other 8 people that are part of my team. 3 data entry professionals in Mohali, India; 1 work-at-home mom in Pune, India; 1 part-time community moderator in Omsk, Russia; 1 freelance newsletter writer in Oakland, CA; 1 copywriter / editor based in Oregon but traveling in Brazil; and 1 search marketing consultant working at home in San Francisco, CA. If you’re reading this blog, you probably have been in a similar situation.

Why should they be excluded? Do they have the same needs as the rest of us co-located workers that get to enjoy each other’s company and go out for a lunch or a happy hour? Of course they do. So what do you do for team-building for distributed teams. Here’s a few ideas:

1 ) Introduce everyone - Make sure that your remote team is well-connected with each other and with everyone in the organization that they need to be. It’s easy for a local employee to raise their hand and ask others for help, but if you are the primary point of contact for your remote contractor, you need to make sure they have multiple people that they can turn to for help. And have some fun with the intros - ask each team member to send an intro email that includes hobbies or a funny story.

2 ) Run a full group chat 24×7 - Almost all instant messenger platforms have group chat capability. Start a group chat and let it run all day long even if you’re not around. Your team can easily communicate with the rest of the group and make the occasional jokes and comments. If people aren’t around during the time of the chat, they can read it once they get back to their computer. Make sure everyone has personal photos in their instant messenger client.

3 ) Send around joke emails - Why not? You do it with local employees and old college buddies. Spend a little time thinking about your remote staff and send some articles, jokes, comics, funny videos that you think they might find amusing. If you’re using something like oDesk Team for automated time-tracking, you’re not paying for any non-work related time. Encourage a small amount of fun time as part of the weekly work schedule.

4 ) Hold a weekly team meeting - Even if you have your staff is working on completely different things, it’s nice to hear everyone’s voice on the same call. Hold a team meeting at the same time every week and use webcams and headsets via a Skype or Yahoo group conference call.

5 ) Send around a weekly newsletter - Recognize team members for any strong contributions that week. Recognize someone if it’s their birthday. Keep everyone on the same page by including an update from your end.

6 ) Have a photo share - Ask everyone to upload some photos of a weekend activity to Flickr or other photo-sharing site. Spend 20 minutes during a team meeting to let everyone describe a weekend activity.

7 ) Create a Facebook group - If you have enough people on your team, create a Facebook group and consider it your virtual water cooler.

8 ) Host an online game for your team - Play Scrabulous with your team. Play online chess, backgammon, etc. Challenge your team members to a game of Desktop Defender or share Line Rider creations.

9 ) Send around birthday cards - You all know virtual card sites. Any time a team member has a birthday, make sure everyone else on the team sends the brithday-girl or -boy a virtual card. It’s sure to brighten their day.

10 ) Hold a fantasy sports league - It brings together local offices, no reason it shouldn’t work in virtual offices. If you don’t want to do a full fantasy sports league, find something that’s a short-term contest and get everyone involved.

Let’s talk about feedback systems. In the early days of oDesk (read: 2005), we didn’t have a feedback system in place and I remember being on sales calls where almost every potential customer said, “You know, you guys should build a feedback system. Like eBay.” And it’s not surprising; feedback systems are such a fundamental part of making an online marketplace work that it sticks out like a sore thumb if you don’t have one.

Feedback systems in online marketplaces are designed to improve the user experience as a whole by allowing users to establish their own reputation and review the reputation of others. Users submit feedback on other users and relay their positive or negative experience so others can review feedback before entering into a transaction or relationship. In theory, it all works great. But it depends on a few key principles:

1) Identity Verification - what if any user could create multiple profiles? Well, then there’s not enough motivation to maintain a positive reputation. If I receive a negative feedback score, no worries, I’ll just create a new profile. Problem solved.

2) Transparency - what if people could leave feedback and comments, but others couldn’t see that feedback? Well, that wouldn’t do much good. If a user has received some negative feedback, others need to know about it.

3) Accuracy - the feedback that users leave on the system must be accurate. This seems simple, but in reality is quite complex. There are a lot of factors that go into a user’s decision about whether or not to leave positive or negative feedback.

4) Consistency - users should all “grade” the same. If a user is just a particularly tough critic, it might throw things off.

For the vast majority of cases, feedback systems work great and we believe oDesk’s system works well too. However, I do want to talk about some potential issues with #3 - accuracy of feedback and the mechanisms that may negatively affect accuracy. Let’s take a look at eBay first - they’re the founder of the feast when it comes to feedback systems, and they’ve announced some very major changes to their feedback system. From eBay’s site:

What changes are being made to the eBay Feedback system?
Sellers will no longer be able to leave negative or neutral Feedback for buyers. This change will occur in May, 2008.

Why is eBay making these changes?
No negative or neutral Feedback for buyers
The current system prevents buyers from leaving honest Feedback as they fear retaliation from the sellers if they leave a negative. This makes it hard for buyers to distinguish between sellers while making bidding or buying decisions. In addition, when buyers receive negative Feedback, they reduce their activity in the marketplace, which in-turn harms all sellers.

So, why have eBay buyers not been leaving accurate feedback. I believe it stems from personal motivation. Let’s say I’m an eBay buyer and I had a bad experience. I could leave negative feedback, but that might end up hurting my reputation if I get retaliatory negative feedback. So, why leave negative feedback, it only benefits the next user, not me.

Now let’s look at oDesk. I don’t think it’s as simple as the eBay feedback system since eBay is all about point transactions. The transaction is arranged, paid, and completed all within a couple days. At oDesk, it’s all about relationships, which are often ongoing and may result in repeat transactions. So, let’s look at some of the possible issues that may arise near the end of a relationship? Let’s say that buyer x has been working with provider y for 3 months on a website. It’s nearing completion, and now there are a few things that might happen (note: oDesk’s feedback system is bi-directional with a 1-5 scale):

• If everything went great, both parties will know that perfect 5 feedback scores will result.
• If the provider is expecting a 4-4.9 feedback, provider might email buyer explicitly asking for a 5.
• If the provider is expecting a lower score, the provider may, in the worst cases, blackmail the buyer. eg, “I’ll take down your site, if you don’t give me a good feedback score.” If you’re buyer x, you might as well give a good feedback score since you don’t want to risk your site coming down.

So, the provider looks to be malicious in the example above. What about buyers? Are there ever any issues that crop up with buyers of services? Here’s a couple examples that I’ve heard:

• So, it’s been 3 months and the buyer has exceeded their budget but has changing requirements and still needs more work. The buyer may threaten bad feedback scores unless the provider finishes the remaining work for free.
• The buyer is actually quite happy with the work of the provider and needs to retain full-time work. The buyer, being of low moral character, does not want to give the provider a good feedback score. Why? Because the buyer fears losing the provider to other interested buyers. Or because the buyer does not want the provider to increase the hourly rate based on a strong reputation.

While these issues are the minority of cases with online feedback systems, they have a negative effect on the whole system. I believe the only way to ultimately resolve the issues is to foster open, honest discussion about the feedback system. This post is just a problem statement, solutions are ‘to be determined’. It seems that eBay hasn’t figured it out yet, and I can certainly say that oDesk hasn’t figured everything out. But I can say that we’re dedicated to focus on user quality, and there’s no doubt that the feedback system and its integrity is critical to the success of the marketplace.

ps - if you know the solution, please comment.

Nowadays, many engineering managers are already building highly distributed teams. Many are doing it for the first time. Many are getting cost-cutting pressure, but are scared to take the leap into an uncertain world of remote work.

Let these books be your guide. All these authors have helped blaze the path for others to get the most out of a distributed development team. oDesk recommends:

Happy Reading!

So, as you may know, oDesk offers 100 free online certification tests available to users to prove their skills.

Rewind 1 year ago:

-Many users complained about the quality of the test content.
-We didn’t have the bandwidth to review and improve all of the content ourselves.

So, after a number of users had brought the quality to our attention, we launched two new feedback mechanisms.

First, any user could Report an Issue with a specific question.
Second, any user could provide a Content Feedback Score at the completion of the test.

Now, let’s look at today.

Over the course of 1 year, over 2,500 issues have been reported to improve the test content. Together with our testing vendor, ExpertRating, we have used these issues reported by our users to dramatically improve the test content. These improvements are reflected in the content feedback scores from our users; they have gone up 33% from around a 3.0 (out of 5.0) to over 4.0.

This confirms our beliefs that communities are critically important to shaping the product and offering. While it was initially painful to hear the complaints of our users, it forced us to build a solution that allowed the community to get involved. And it has paid off.

The job going forward for oDesk, and for all Web 2.0 companies, is to continue to build in more ways for the community to contribute.

Much has been published recently about the decline of the US dollar and the reverse flow of jobs back to the US from popular offshore outsourcing hotspots including India and China.

It made me curious to see the trends at oDesk. We have providers all over the world, and should be able to see this trend if it’s really happening.

So here it is:

Looks to me that while the entire market for remote contract labor is growing, the United States is possibly growing most rapidly over the last couple quarters.

There’s always been some discussion about whether or not portraits are important for the provider profiles. I firmly believe that they are - and I’m happy to see some providers have used the portrait to really market themselves well. Consider these portraits:

- This says to me that the provider is professional, can functionally use Photoshop, and gives me a sense of his style.

- I like this one. It shows both individualism as well as the corporate brand of the oDesk affiliate company.

- Another well done portrait showcasing the company name and brand as well as the individual.

- This one makes me feel like she’s already thinking about my design.

- Ok, this guy knows his stuff, a true computer geek with disassembled parts in the background.

- Nice touch, but would prefer more of the face. If I’m looking for an animator, I’m intrigued.

- A bit impersonal since no face, but I like the clever sense of style.

- Hmm. Nothing like showing off a little local scenery I suppose.

- Professional, casual, sincere. I get a sense of the individual as well as the workplace. Quite nice.

Compare the portraits above to this one:

What do you think potential buyers would prefer?

So, upload a portrait. Exercise some creativity, but keep it personal and individual. You only have a brief second to impress buyers in the search results and a good intriguing portrait can capture that attention.

Guess what? Not every job succeeds.

Some recent articles cite very low general satisfaction rates with outsourced relationships:

IT World Canada has a nice article about satisfaction rates citing a drop from 50% to an abysmal 35% satisfaction rate.

TransWorldNews cites in their article, Buyer Viewpoint on Information Technology Outsourcing that “45% of the respondents claim that their ITO projects are either unsuccessful or partially successful.”

While nobody can ever completely avoid the chance of failure, there are plenty of things you can look for as ‘early warning’ signs. If you ignore these, chances are that you’ll soon be throwing good money after bad. If you heed these warning signs when you see them, you can adapt quickly and increase your chances of successfully course-correcting.

Now, please don’t let these issues scare you off from pursuing remote contractors to work on your jobs; these are intended to help reach successful outcomes. And fact is, these warning signs are relevant for in-house jobs as well as outsourced ones.

1 - Slowing response time - in my opinion, it should never take more than 1 business day to respond to email. If it suddenly starts taking longer, all is not well on the other end. Press the issue, find out why the responses are taking longer. Demand a faster response and make sure it’s just a temporary blip.

2 - Hesitation to show work - a manager should always be able to see the work in progress. There’s no such thing as “it’s not ready for you to see yet”. You’re an understanding manager, ask to see the work in progress and make sure you like where it’s going.

3 - Missed milestone - not the end of the world (I’ve heard some development projects aren’t always delivered on time), but if a milestone is missed, make sure you understand why. Probe into the root cause of the missed deadline. Was it too aggressive? Were new issues or requirements discovered? Were the reasons valid? If one is missed, discuss the issue openly with your provider and come to an agreement about why it was missed.

4 - Dramatic increase in hours per day - If the number of hours worked per day increases unexpectedly, it could be a sign of trouble. Maybe it’s crunch time and you don’t realize how far behind the development is on the job.

5 - Rapid decrease in hours per day - Same goes for rapid unexpected decreases in hours worked. Is there another job or other commitments that your provider has? Inquire. Make sure you know why?

6 - Increases in offline time - Only applies to work done on oDesk: has your provider been logging all of the time online with detailed work memos. Is this changing suddenly? Do you see more requests for offline time or less detailed work memos. As a manager, you should dig in and find out why.

7 - Requests for additional resources - working with an IT firm? Have a team working for months and then unexpectedly get a request from the company to add additional resources or change team members or even the team lead? This is often a bad sign. If it’s additional resources, it may be necessary to meet deadlines, but make sure you know why the initial plan isn’t working. If it’s a change in team members, this could lead to further delays as a result of a new ramp up time.

8 - Growing tensions - the worst possible flag. Are tensions increasing in your communication? Conversations shifting from chat to email to faxed correspondence? Tensions between manager and provider can flare up if a job is danger of failing. It’s critical to keep an open line of communication and maintain mutual respect to work together through the issues. If tensions are increasing, course correct immediately.

So, how do you identify these potential problems? Stay active in managing your team. Don’t be hands-off. Schedule a regular weekly or even daily meeting thru chat, phone, or web conference. Monitor work, progress, and productivity on a regular schedule. Set expectations from day 1 about how you and your providers will work together.

I have worked with hundreds of IT companies that are outsourcing some or all of their work. They don’t hesitate to call me when things are turning sour. I often tell people to “trust their gut”. If you have that funny feeling that things aren’t going well, investigate and find out what’s going on. If you’re not happy, make the tough decisions quickly rather than waiting and waiting for things to get worse.