oDesk is the marketplace for online workteams, with the best business model for both employers and contractors. Our unique approach guarantees to employers that an hour billed is an hour worked, while guaranteeing to contractors that an hour worked is an hour paid.
This win-win approach attracts more work to oDesk than to any other online work marketplace. Each month, thousands of companies of all sizes post jobs on oDesk, representing more than $65,000,000. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of top-notch professionals, including web developers, software programmers, graphic designers, writers, customer service representatives and virtual assistants, offer their services through oDesk.
With an average job size of $5,000, oDesk is the best place to find meaningful work and top-flight talent. More than doubling in size each year since 2004, oDesk is where companies are building their entire organizations online and is the primary source of income for thousands of contractors. oDesk is truly changing how the world works.
oDesk is quite literally changing how the world works and we’re looking for exceptional individuals to join us in our mission.
We help contractors all over the world grow their careers on their own terms. And, we enable businesses to expand and thrive by building a workforce in a flexible, affordable way. We're the largest and fastest-growing global employment platform. Positioned squarely at the crossroads between Globalization, Remote Work, Distributed Labor, and Crowdsourcing, oDesk has doubled in size each of the last 4 years and is poised to accelerate that growth.
When you join the oDesk team, you get to have a big, positive impact on people's lives. And, you get to have fun doing it, side-by-side with a great group of colleagues.
How do I find someone to hire?
It's pretty easy. You start by posting a job — you fill out a well-rounded description of the kind of work, and the kind of contractor, you're looking for. You can post it publicly, or keep it private. If it's public, you'll quickly have skilled contractors from around the world sending you applications.
Hiring works pretty much like the in-person process for in-house jobs: You read cover letters and resumes, and here at oDesk you also have the contractors' portfolios, test results, oDesk work histories and feedback ratings to consider before you even contact anyone. You select candidates to interview, invite them to set up a time with you, and conduct your interview via phone, IM, email, webcam — however you're comfortable. Once you find the right contractor, hiring is a simple click.
If you keep a job private, you can search our contractor database to find candidates you'd like to talk to. You invite them to view your job post, and then you can set up the interview process.
Some employers are initially worried about hiring someone without a face-to-face interview, but the information and tools oDesk puts in your hands can actually give you a better idea of what an oDesk applicant offers than you'd get sitting across a table from someone while you scan their one-page resume.
What kind of work is done here?
Pretty much anything that can be done remotely — we're often surprised by the ever-increasing variety of work performed on oDesk. You can hire talented web and software developers, writers, graphic designer, customer service representatives, marketers and much more. You can see the full list here. Drop a relevant keyword into the contractor search bar and you might be surprised how many people worldwide are offering the services you need.
How good are the contractors?
There are a lot of really good contractors here — we know because we hire them, too. You have a far larger talent base here than you'll find within commuting range of your office. oDesk's hundreds of thousands of professionals offer a broad range of skills and capabilities. Finding the best contractors, and the ones best-suited to the work you need done, is easy. oDesk gives employers tools including free online testing, feedback scores, portfolios, job preferences and more to evaluate contractors. These tools have helped thousands of employers and contractors form long-lasting work relationships of a year and more.
Do I need to post a job to use oDesk?
To hire a contractor, you must first
post a job. Jobs can be posted privately if you do not wish to make your posting available to the entire oDesk network. You can also
sign up with oDesk to use some of the free
tools without posting a job.
How do I write a good job post?
It's not too much different from writing an ad for an in-house job — except that the job form and the examples oDesk provides with it make it easier to narrow down just what you're looking for, in clear language that should attract the kinds of contractors you need. Being specific about the work and communication skills you need, your timeline and other details helps attract more contractors who can work within your requirements. You might browse similar ads already posted and decide which would attract you to apply and which you'd be inclined to skip.
Should I post an hourly or fixed-price job?
It depends. oDesk recommends hourly jobs for most ongoing work efforts, but fixed-price jobs can be appropriate for smaller, well-defined projects.
Hourly jobs are more flexible — you can add to a contractor's work, even retain her for an entirely different task after the first job is complete, without having to renegotiate or repost a job. You have full access to oDesk’s time tracking and Work Diary functions, and the "hour paid is an hour that was worked"
guarantee behind it. We've found that the most talented and in-demand contractors gravitate toward the hourly work, and that hourly jobs have led to long-lasting, very successful relationships.
Fixed-price jobs may work best for shorter tasks with a very defined scope. They can also be used as test tasks to give contractors as a trial run before hiring them to longer, hourly work.
What is the difference between independent contractors and agencies?
A key difference in the oDesk network is that all work is completed by individuals rather than companies, but many of the individual contractors are associated with larger agencies. Independent contractors work by themselves, while agency contractors work as part of an agency. Click on the agency name in the profile to see details about the agency.
Do I hire a contractor as a 1099 contractor or W-2 employee?
U.S.-based companies hiring workers can classify them as either 1099 or W-2. While most U.S.-based contractors on oDesk are classified as 1099 workers - if you are interested in hiring W-2 employees at no additional cost, you can do so through
oDesk Payroll. This service also allows you to use oDesk's high-visibility billing and management tools with your existing workers.
Managing:
What is the oDesk Guarantee?
oDesk is the first and only service to guarantee that an hour billed is an hour worked and that an hour worked is an hour paid. Hourly work done using the oDesk Team collaborative software lets us take a lot of the uncertainty out of remote work. To learn more about the oDesk Guarantee, click
here. And please read our
oDesk Manifesto to see how we define — and celebrate — the rights of online employers and contractors.
How does oDesk make remote work work?
The problem with remote work is the remoteness. You can't sit in the same room for the job interview. Managers can't walk around and check on a worker's progress, and workers can't easily check in with their bosses or consult with colleagues. Payment is usually more complex and slower than internal payroll, and billing and record-keeping is a hassle. What oDesk does is eliminate all that.
oDesk brings robust assurances to the hiring process—each contractor can create a profile that's much more detailed than a resume, can upload portfolio pieces and take any of our dozens of skill tests. Feedback and work history are very clear, all giving you a better idea of a candidate's record and reputation than most in-person recruiting processes.
We also bring transparency to the management/work process. The oDesk Team application accurately logs hours and adds screen shots to the contractor’s Work Diary, giving an employer as good an idea of a contractor's progress as strolling around the office would. oDesk also offers have tools for chatting and sharing code and other information, all geared to foster greater confidence and collaboration.
The payment system is streamlined, swift and secure. After the timelog is reviewed, you're billed one total amount for however many contractors worked for you, in however many countries. We handle getting the money to those contractors, who in a matter of days can withdraw it by their chosen payment method.
How do I know the contractor worked all the hours billed?
An hour billed is an hour worked. You can review a contractors' Work Diaries at any time. They start each session with a work memo that lets you know what part of the job they're tackling, and you get desktop screen shots six times an hour, along with a graph charting their activity level. Learn more about the Work Diary
here.
All of this information is also aggregated in the weekly
financial reports, which you can review before signing off. For more in-depth information, you'd have to be a mind-reader.
Can I limit a contractor's hours?
Certainly. You can set a weekly limit on the number of hours that any contractor works for you. You can also modify this limit at any time if you and your contractor change the workload or expectations. Hours worked over the limit will not be billed to you.
Read more about weekly limits
here.
How can I manage a team spread across a continent, or separated by oceans?
The
Work Diary lets you keep up with their activity and see how team members are progressing. You can use your own email and chat systems, but oDesk also builds chat functionality into the oDesk Team application, along with tools for assigning and tracking tasks and and exchanging links, desktop images and other information. Basically, you can have at your fingertips as much information as you could get doing a cubicle-by-cubicle check-in around your office.
Read more about tools
here.
How do I know I'm getting quality work?
Quality is in the eye of the beholder, but oDesk gives you unprecedented ability to behold it. oDesk makes it possible to hire candidates with proven track records and to manage as closely and collaboratively as you like. Remote work offers many advantages over in-house hiring, such as a global talent pool, quick scalability, less overhead and greater rate flexibility. With oDesk, you get that without sacrificing the transparency and ability to manage that you'd have with everyone under one roof.
Can I use the oDesk tools with non-oDesk users?
Yes. You can register for an account without posting a job, then utilize the tools yourself, and even add some of your colleagues to your new oDesk account. You can have in-house staff logged into your oDesk team room to improve collaboration between them and your remote team. Just keep us in mind when you need additional resources—you can always
post a job!
Paying:
How much does it cost to join oDesk?
Nothing. Neither the contractor nor the employer pays anything to sign up with oDesk. There are no fees for posting jobs, creating profiles, applying to jobs, conducting interviews, nothing. oDesk makes money only when you pay for work done by your contractors.
How does oDesk make money?
What you see is what you pay.
Contractors get 90% of the advertised rates and oDesk retains the remaining 10%. This is true for all payments, whether they are hourly rates, fixed price jobs or bonuses.
oDesk
does not charge registration, membership, job posting, application, or interview fees. It is absolutely free to join and
always free for contractors to apply to and work on jobs. Employers only pay for time worked (hourly contracts) or for work delivered (fixed-price contracts). Contractors never make payments to oDesk.
How do I pay oDesk and my contractors?
You make the full payment to oDesk, and oDesk pays your contractors. The most common payment method is by credit card. Under some conditions, employers may pay by check; see the
Payment Methods page for information.
When you pay for work, no costs are added to the rate you hired at; the contractor receives 90% of the payment and oDesk keeps 10%. This keeps the process simple, and the employer's paperwork to an absolute minimum — there's no difference for the employer between paying one contractor in Miami or three in Mumbai, Manila and Munich. It's also how we can make the
oDesk Guarantee, and to stand firmly behind our
dispute resolution policy.
Also note that you can set a limit on the number of hours your contractors work, to help keep jobs within budget.
Do I have to pay upfront?
No. Hourly jobs are paid weekly, after you've had three days to review your contractors' timelogs. Fixed-price jobs are paid as you and your contractor negotiate it—generally once the job is complete, though you may negotiate upfront or milestone payments along the way. oDesk does not ask you to put money into escrow, nor to make payments before the hours are worked or the related work is done.
What if there is a dispute?
Disputes are rare, thanks to the oDesk Work Diary feature, but we take resolution of any conflicts very seriously, and we live up to our guarantee that an hour worked is an hour paid, and an hour billed is an hour that was worked.
When there is a disagreement between employers and contractors over the number of hours worked, we first encourage them to work out the problem. If that fails, oDesk will step in to moderate. We do not evaluate the quality of work, but will focus on a careful review of all time logged to ensure the contractor was working on the job and following all policies and best practices. Fixed-price jobs are paid solely at the employer's discretion, and there is no dispute resolution process in such cases — the employer has the ultimate control.
See more about our dispute resolution policy
here, and about the oDesk Guarantee
here.
Can employers pay US-based W-2 employees through oDesk?
Yes. While most U.S.-based contractors on oDesk are classified as 1099 workers, W-2 employees can also be hired through
oDesk Payroll.
Getting Hired:
What's the pay rate for a contractor like me?
Pay rates vary, of course, based on the type of work, your skill level, work history and reputation. Check out what other contractors with similar skills are charging, and price yourself accordingly. New contractors often find it effective to price themselves a little below the average market rate at first, until they've landed the first few jobs that will give them the work history and feedback that can make it easier to find jobs at a higher pay rate. You can search contractors profiles
here.
For help on searching contractors, go
here. You can find more advice on "giving yourself a raise"
here.
How much money can I make? Can I get full-time work?
You set your rate, and you determine how many hours you're available to work. As you build your reputation through feedback scores and work history, you should find it easier to increase your rate and find more work, whether it be full-time with one employer or through a few. There is a lot of opportunity on oDesk, and how far you take it is up to you.
What kinds of employers are here?
Most oDesk employers are managers at small to medium-sized companies that are looking for contractors for everything from small fixed-price projects to long-term relationships of a year or more. They're looking for web developers, writers, graphic designers, call-center staff, data entry professionals, marketing experts, business consultants and more.
For join click here:
www.odesk.com
