Hello, everybody and welcome back to my channel, Jennifer Marie VO, where I teach you different
ways that you can make money online working from home. In the past few weeks, I have released a
series of different tutorials on how to become a freelancer on upwork.com. If you're a subscriber
to my channel and you have watched some of these videos, you'll know that I think becoming a
freelancer is one of the best ways to make money online. As of the time of creation of this video,
I am a top rated Freelancer on up work and have earned over $70,000 on Upwork since 2017,
but there are 1000s of different types of jobs that you can apply for on upwork.com.
So I recommend you create a profile and browse all of the different jobs available to get an idea of
what sorts of jobs are out there. If you go to the description of this video, you'll see links
directing you to all of my different videos on upwork.com how to apply to become a freelancer,
how to create a profile, how to apply to jobs, how to accept offers, and in today's video, I'm
going to teach you how to respond to an interview invitation. This video is also helpful if you just
want to apply to a job because I'm going to show you how I write cover letters when I respond to
interview invites. And also when I apply to jobs. So a couple days ago, I received a really exciting
invitation to interview on Upwork for a job that I really want. So if you keep watching this video,
you'll see the interview process and how I respond to invitations to interviews. And then less than
one day later, I actually received a job offer for this job. So all I did was write a really simple
cover letter telling them a bit about myself what I could offer them and attach to custom sample as
an addition of their script. Of course, these requirements will vary depending on what type
of job you're applying for. In this video, I'm also going to show you why it's important to
respond to interview requests as soon as you can. And basically everything you need to know about
the interview process. Once you have been sent an interview invite by a client. I also want to make
it very clear that I am not sponsored by Upwork to create this video, nor am I affiliated with
Upwork in any way, other than the fact that I am a freelancer on upwork.com. Before we get started,
if you're not one of my subscribers, make sure to subscribe for more videos just like this one where
I teach you all sorts of different ways that you can make money online working from home. So let's
get started. Okay, so if you go to find work and click on profile, you can view your profile here.
And I want to show you this because I want to stress how important it is to respond to interview
requests as soon as you can. So once you start working on Upwork, and you start to get feedback,
people will start to recognize you as being a quality rated freelancer. And you'll start to
get interview requests. And you want to respond to these interview requests as soon as you can.
Because if not, you'll end up getting this, which is what I have, I oftentimes completely forget
to respond to an interview request, or I just never do. And this is not good. Because you can
see under my availability, it says three plus days response time, it says this Freelancer often takes
several days to respond to invitations. So this is not good to have on your profile. Because a lot of
times people will send you an interview request for a job they want done that exact same day.
So for me, I really should be working better to respond faster to my interview requests,
because I'm probably missing out on opportunities. You know, there have been a few times when people
have sent me interview requests, saying we need this job done within two hours, we'll pay $200,
can you do it? And if I'm on my computer, I'll respond right away, say Yes, I can. Let's do
it. So by having this three plus day response time, I am potentially losing a lot of really
good job offers. So I'm going to show you how I respond to an interview, you can decline offers
or you can accept offers. But it's important to just respond to these interview requests.
So you can get you know, improve this right here and have a faster response time. So I'm going to
do that. Now. Let's go to upwork.com just click on this icon here. And on this side under proposals,
you'll see that I have seven invitations to interview. So I'm going to click on that.
So I have one that was received seven hours ago, six days ago, 11 days ago. So obviously this one
two months ago and I just didn't respond to them. This is not good. So what I'm going to
do now to clear this up, so I can try to get a better response time rate is click on the
job offer that I didn't have time to respond to. And then just click you
can either click Accept interview if you're interested in discussing this job or decline.
So it says we will politely notify the client that you are not interested the client will be
able to view the reason you've declined the invitation. So you can say it's not a fit
for your skills not interested in work described too busy and other projects. The client has too
little up work experience, the proposed rate or budget too low spam or any other reason
you want and you can choose to add an optional message to share with the client when they are
notified that the invitation has been declined. I'm just going to put too busy on other projects
and then decline. You can also go Lock future invitations from this client,
then I'm going to press decline. Okay, so now I'm going to go through the other ones as well.
So for example, this invitation I received seven hours ago, I want to apply to this job.
And I've been looking at these ones from 11 days ago, 12 days ago, and a month ago. And
these ones I am considering still applying to, even though it was posted 11 days ago,
if you want to check to see if they have already hired someone for that job, click on the job. And
then you can scroll down and it says activity on this job. So here, there have only been five to
10 proposals, and they're only interviewing one person. So I have a chance at getting this job
because here it would say hired one if they have hired someone for this particular job.
So I'm going to go ahead and apply to this later on. So when you want to respond to an interview,
you will not be spending any of your connects, it's free to apply to the job because they have
requested that you apply. So you have nothing to lose by applying and everything to gain.
So I'm going to click on the one I received seven hours ago, because
I would like to get this job, I think it would be a great opportunity.
So I'm going to click on it. And I'm going to tell you how you can respond to the interview.
So here, they're going to tell you what the job is. Here. They're saying what they need,
they've got this script, and then they're giving samples of the kind of voice they want. This is
a voiceover job, you can see there have been 20 to 50 different people who have applied for this job,
you can right click here on view job posting, and go open link in New Tab. And then you can
get an idea of more about the job, what exactly is required. If we scroll down, you'll see a little
bit more information. You can see they sent out two invites, and both people haven't responded
to the invites, I am one of these people. So I want to make sure to respond because you can see
the client last viewed this five minutes ago. So I want to make sure they see my interview. So I'm
going to do it right now. You can also see here it says upgrade your membership to see the bid range.
So what that means is that if you pay for the freelancer plus plan, which is 1499 a month,
you can see the range of how much people are the highest amount people are bidding for the job
and the lowest amount. I always have the plan, but I changed my credit card numbers. So I need
to update my payment method in order to activate that. So to apply to the job, you can go back up.
And when it says submit a proposal, this will be blacked out like this. So you have to actually go
to the invitation to apply to the job. So you'll click on View invitation. And then
you're going to see the original message from the client. So oftentimes, the client will have their
name right here. So then when you respond, make sure to call them by their name. Hello, Thomas,
thank you for the interview request. In this case, they don't have a name, they just have the company
name. So I'm going to click Accept interview, you're going to accept an interview for this job
by replying and proposing terms. After you click submit this invitation to interview will become
an active interview, you will discuss the job and the client will decide whether to hire you.
So first, you can choose to apply with a specialized profile. So if you have different
profiles, so you have a video editing one, or you know graphic design one, you know you can apply
with your specific or specialized profile. So I'm going to choose voice talent. Here you can
choose how do you want to be paid by milestone or by project, I'm going to click by project,
then you can put in the amount you'd like to bid for this job. They have a budget of 250, I think
that the script is quite long, so I'm going to put 300. Now again, I'm taking a risk here, because if
the client does not want to spend more than 250, and someone who has a better voice than I do,
or they like their voice the same, and they're willing to do the job for less money, they'll
probably we'll go with that person. But I think the job will take me a long time. So I want you
know 300 for this job, then you can see the Upwork service fee. Again, you can see it's a 20% fee
for the first $500 10% after that. So this there they are taking a 20% fee. So I would receive 240.
And then you're going to put How long do you think this project will take? I'll put less than one
month. And then here we have the space for a cover letter. So what I always like to start off is,
you know Hello, and thank you very much for the interview request. Okay, so I finished writing my
cover letter. Again, you want to keep it simple. You don't want to write paragraphs and paragraphs,
because no one has time to read through 50 different proposals with five paragraphs
each. Keep it simple. Tell them about yourself, what you can offer them, and basically why they
should hire you for the job. So always make sure to thank them for the interview request.
So I wrote something like this. Hello and thank you very much For the interview request,
I reviewed your script and sample videos and believe I have just the voice tone that you are
looking for inspirational, calm and engaging. I am a professional American voiceover artists
with over seven years of experience in the voice over industry and produce all of my voice work
from my sound booth in my home studio. This is actually a little wordy, I might cut this out
and produce all my voice work from my home studio, I have recorded a custom sample of your script
and attached it as a WAV file to this proposal. I look forward to discussing this project
further with you warm regards, Jennifer. So in this case, I decided to do a custom audition
and actually record a sample of the script. A lot of times for interviews, you don't have to do that
you can just you know, share links of your past work. But in this case, I thought a custom sample
of their script would give me a better opportunity of getting the job. So if you do want to attach
something if that is, for example, a sample of a graphic design that you've done in the past,
or a video that you have edited or something like that, you're gonna click on upload to upload a
project file, then you'll click on the file that you want to upload. And then that will be attached
here as a WAV file to this interview. And also, you're going to want to make sure that there are
no grammar and punctuation errors in this script. I also recommend you use the Grammarly extension,
and you can just use the free version. I'll link that in the description below
to make sure that your cover letter is free of any errors. And it will pop up here if you have
any errors or you'll see them underlined if there's anything that you have spelled wrong.
Another thing that you may want to do in your cover letter is tell them how much you will
charge. So you know, at the top here, I have put the bid of 300. But sometimes I might want to say
I'm happy to do this job for a fixed rate of $300, which would include one round of revisions, you
know, depending on the job, you might want to tell them what you're willing to offer and the price
that you will charge them. And that way, it's very clear, you know what they're going to get for the
amount for this, I'm just going to leave it as it is keep it short and sweet. I've attached my
custom sample. And then here, I'm going to click Submit. So now, it will bring me to this screen
here that says proposal details. If you scroll down, you'll see it has my proposed terms. And you
can also click Change terms. If you've decided, listen, I want to do this job for less now
or for more. And you can click withdraw proposal, if you decide you no longer want to work with
this client or to you know, be in the interview process for this job. Now, because this client has
sent me a interview, this will now appear as an active interview. So I can click on messages.
And the client that has sent me the interview request will pop up right here, because they have,
you know personally invited me to this job so I can discuss more with them if I want. Now after
I've sent a proposal, I typically, you know, let the client message me, I don't want to annoy them.
But if you really are, you know passionate or excited about the job, you maybe want to
message them a couple days later and say, you know, hello, I haven't heard back from you.
If you have any other questions or you want any other examples of my work, I am happy to offer
you that I would really like to work with you on this project. So normally, when you're applying
to a job, you don't get the opportunity to discuss with the client like this, because otherwise they
would have so many different messages. But if they personally invite you to apply to a job, you do
have them pop up once you accept the interview, so you can discuss the job with them here. So again,
I recommend you respond to all your interview requests as soon as you can. And that way,
you won't have this three plus days response time. And you will be more likely to get more interview
requests. Because you know, clients a lot of times don't want to wait three days. So I really could
be missing out on a lot more interview requests if I responded faster. So that's something it's
a good practice to keep on top of respond as soon as you can. And that way, you will always
look like you're available to work. You can also see here that under my availability, it says as
needed open to offers. And you can change this by going up at the top here going find work,
click on profile. And this is going to allow you to edit these all of these different icons
with the pen or pencil icon. So if we scroll down here under availability, and I click on this icon,
I can say I am currently available or I'm currently not available.
And so say you're going on holiday for a week and you could put when you're going to return
I always just leave it on available. And then you could say you're willing to work more than
30 hours a week, less than 30 hours a week. And I like to just keep it as needed open to offers.
So I responded to this interview request yesterday on February 28 at around 5pm. And today at seven
in the morning I received the offer. I quoted them at $300 for the job when their original budget
was 250 and they've decided to come back with a count offer of 270 saying that that's the maximum
they can pay. I am perfectly happy to accept that because this is an excellent opportunity for me to
do this voiceover for this company. So I've gone ahead and accepted the offer. So this just shows
you that you don't need a really big, long fancy cover letter. In order to get a job offer. You
just need to write a short and sweet cover letter telling them why you're a good fit for the job,
and then provide them with a sample of your work or in my case, a custom addition that I did for
this job. And responding as quickly as you can to an invite also increases your chances of getting
the job offer. So I hope that this video has helped you guys out if you liked this video,
please click like make sure to subscribe to my channel for more videos just like this one.
Let me know in the comment section. If you have any other questions about Upwork check out my
other tutorials on Upwork as well by going to the description below and clicking on the links there.
And thank you guys once again for watching and I will see you in my next tutorial.