Upwork profile main text overview

Note: this article is a part of our Upwork series. See the first article here and the next article here.

What is the profile’s main text?

Profile main text or overview is a summary of your experience. This could be really long based on Upwork field restriction - five thousand symbols. Such text could be your biography.

I advise to keep the overview section as short as possible to sell yourself.

Common practice tells us to keep our resume under one-page size. Here you have even less. This text should sell you to a client who is interested in the project proposal. Do not let 5k symbols fool you. A client will see much less.

Here how the profile is looking for the public:

Here is a preview from the client point of view:

You have a few lines to get under the client’s skin and sell yourself at a good price.

You also have more space if you could make a client push the ‘more’ button. Let’s leave this only for some detailed information, which is useful for you to share. Do not worry about writing here something that you want to tell a client, not to sell. You are already in a safe place if the first lines interested a client. Write here about your job rules, specific requirements, or something sweet.

As I mentioned, the first part of the overview should sell you fast.

The first marketing line here is your title. The title is the only thing shown with your proposal.

Also, Upwork uses the title to return your profile in search results.

You can have two strategies here.

The first one is adapting your profile for highly specific jobs. Let’s assume you are an expert in building sites based on Jekyll. The profile title, such as Jekyll developer, helps you stand out from the crowd and get the job. This also helps you to be in the search results for any request which contains Jekyll.

The second is keeping the generalist title. It’s also valuable in a freelance market. Many clients are looking for a profession that could close a few areas of expertise. You have to avoid an awful mixing, meanwhile. It’s hard to imagine a client who is searching for a UI designer with SQL knowledge. The better strategy here is using industry spread combinations.
You can often do it using positions names from big companies - Senior Software Engineer, Backend Developer. You can extend a common name with a specific technology if you want to show up something special - Senior Java Developer, Software Engineer, Python expert, etc.

The trick here is the new Upwork feature. This feature is specialized profiles. It allows you to set up different profiles to catch a specific job.

Tips for the begging of overview text.

• Show your relevant experience;
• Show your communication skills;
• Use numbers to prove you are good;
• Write clear.

Don’t do the following, NEVER:

• Don’t be wordy;
• Do not use CAPSLOCK (just don’t do it, EVER!);
• Do not use common cliches (Hello! I’m a developer… -> a client already read your title);

Write, read, compare, test, rewrite. An iterative approach is the best way to find your style and express your unique experience and knowledge. Don’t be afraid if it takes a lot of time in the beginning.
Don’t be shy to share texts before posting with someone.

Grammarly helps a lot to avoid typos and mistakes. This makes your profile more professional.

The profile should sell you. But the money is not a target.
A passion to make people’s products better makes you the best possible candidate.

Write. Sell. Make money.
Make clients happy with Shardik.