 Hi everyone it's me again and I just wanted to make a quick video this time and talk to you about a hack. A hack for increasing your acceptance rate when you're applying for jobs because many of us have been in the shoes but many of us have been whenever we're starting out usually we're on these websites like Upwork or Pros or Translators Cafe or whatever they might be and you're just trying to get start out which means you have no referrals no ratings you don't have any of those stars next to you or anything you're just a name with a person there and you're trying to get people to accept you for their job and you don't know how to go about that unfortunately it can be very hard because you can say you have all the experience in the world but you have to put yourself in the shoes of these potential clients they see a whole list of names you know applying to their job 20 30 50 who knows different people applying for their job and they're trying to differentiate between all these people the best way the easiest way for them to do it is to look at the ratings that are given out by each of these websites those that are rated highly go to the top of the list those that are rated low go to the bottom or get kicked out but if you're first starting out you have no rating so how do you get the message across how do you get hired even in those situations and it's very hard the cars are kind of stacked against you and so you need to come up with other ways to be more attractive unfortunately what a lot of people do is just try to lower their price they try to lower their rates this very often look it can work sometimes but it very often doesn't work actually my first job that I got was a pretty high rate and just because I kind of didn't know any better but let's face it if you have a low rate people don't expect much but they might be on a budget and so it helps them to get started I've mentioned before that there are various ways you can try to game this system for lack of a better word you can write down I'm offering for a low rate just because as you can see I don't have any ratings yet so in exchange for a good rating obviously if you're happy with my work then I will do this job at a low rate if you can get that message across that's fine but remember when these potential clients are looking through 50 in fact some jobs that I put out there I've had more than 50 people apply when you're just trying to parse through all these different applications to see whose best chances are you're not going to be able to read that much so there are certain methods of trying to get to the top of the heap if you will now I've already made a video talking about how to get your first client it's called the chicken and the egg I think I can link to it down in the description below but here I just wanted to talk about a couple hacks of getting to the top of the list because unfortunately it's always going to be a numbers game you can have the best application ever and be the most suited person in the world for that job and you still don't get the job because the potential client never even got to your thing maybe they saw someone else at you know after looking at six seven fifteen different applications and chose them and they never got to your application or they chose someone else because that other person is from their same town they're like oh no you're from there too I'm from there too oh wow cool are you you never know these things are so random so it is a numbers game no matter what but you should use every method you can to get to the top of that list so aside from the usual methods you should use here are the couple hacks that you can do for yourself first of all when you well first of all if you don't have a photo definitely put a photo up remember the client here is trying to hire you and is based on experience but the main thing now at this point in time is trust because as I said you can list all the experience you want in the world but how do they know that it's real or it's true or that they can trust you about about that or anything so you need to increase your trust the first step is to put a photo if you don't have a photo on your profile put up a photo now there's no reason not to have a photo just put up a photo of yourself it doesn't it shouldn't be a glamor shot or anything and I talk about this more in my course but you know a photo of you wherever your workstation is turn on your laptop right now and take a photo of yourself then that's perfectly suitable you'll see some people put not a photo but more like an avatar something like that that can kind of work usually once you already have clients it's very hard if you don't have a client yet to get recognized if you don't at least have a photo they need to associate you with someone but if you don't want to share your photo there are various ways to do it you can show half a face you they're very I mean you can go you can go into it and you can see or you can try an avatar if you want but that's a bit risky and I think you just decreased your chance of getting hired at that point I think the best thing is always just to put up a photo definitely don't leave it black absolutely don't and don't leave the custom avatar of the of the website put up something but put up a photo now let's say you do have a photo already everyone else has a photo so how can you differentiate yourself even more well another way is to add a title you want to add a title that says more than what you do don't just say Italian to English translator if you have something impressive on your resume you went to a good school you've translated before for a well known company that's what goes in your title and you can say so Harvard educated LSE educated or past experience with UBS or Bank of America or whatever anyway something in that title tagline should go your most impressive thing because that's the first thing they see and very often they don't even look further than that so you want that photo and you want that tagline to show something impressive but what else can you do another thing again to increase the trust is to right away make yourself available over Skype or FaceTime you want to put your Skype there you want to put your FaceTime or whatever you have so people can chat with you face to face so they see you and because any client if they want to trust you and they're willing to take that second step to do some research into you you want to show that you're available right away and in the best way possible you can't physically go to their office well you're still available on Skype so they can talk to you face to face and that way they trust you because they see that you're a real person and believe it or not this helps them a lot obviously you're a real person but you know if you're sending emails or something or or sending out an application you're obviously a real person but in the mind of a client they never know that you know you never know if if it's an agency trying to masquerade as a person or if it's a person who then decides not to deal with it anymore or whatever it is when you're first starting out it's just very hard and it's very difficult to get through the door so making yourself available in any which way Skype FaceTime and phone number obviously but especially Skype and FaceTime so they can see you face to face that's definitely a good way to get ahead of the pack another way is to make a video of yourself if you can make a video of yourself and link it in your bio or have it show in your bio as a thumbnail or something like that that they can click on and then it plays then that's great as well because right away they can see oh I can see this person I can see how they speak how they communicate and it gives me a sense of who this person is because a photo definitely helps you definitely want a photo but if you can have a video of yourself actually talking about what you can offer if you can even personalize it for different clients I'm not saying you have to do that but on your bio it definitely won't be personalized but on your bio you can have something that talks about what you offer and gives you a brief rundown of who you are and what you can do if you can offer something like that then absolutely find a place to put a video find a place to link to it you know find a way to to make a youtube video and then link on it say this is the link to my youtube video that way clients feel that you're very approachable and definitely more trustworthy remember the goal here is you want them to contact you they might not contact you with the job right away but you just want them to contact you so leave every which way in which they can contact you and the more personal they are even if they don't use Skype or FaceTime or phone or anything to get in touch with the fact that you have it available says a lot to them and it gives a very good impression a more trustworthy impression and remember that just offering lower and lower lower prices is not the way to go it can help sometimes like i said but it definitely isn't the best way to get by it also because many times then you're stuck in that bracket of only offering low prices and in fact it can also backfire because if you offer an extremely low price they don't think you're serious or they think well that's obviously not someone we want to deal with because they're not going to give good quality even in the sense of you get what you pay for so be wary of that as well however these other ways of increasing trust and making yourself more transparent and trustworthy definitely help and definitely help to put you ahead of the pack when you're playing that numbers game and trying to get that client so that's about it i hope you found this helpful if you did please don't forget to subscribe and please click like if you found this video helpful because that always helps also next to the subscribe button you can click on that little bell so you'll be notified whenever there's a new video and once again you'll on this channel you'll see videos that help with freelancing and how to be successful as a freelancer as a freelance translator and as an entrepreneur okay that's about it thanks bye