Freelancers have the skills clients want but often need to tweak their profile in a way that shows this.
At GigsRemote, we see thousands of talented engineers, analysts, and tech specialists who struggle to stand out simply because their CVs are unable to capture their specific experiences.
Here’s are our 5 tips to craft a high-impact freelance profile that helps you qualify faster and attract better projects through GigsRemote.
1. Lead With Your Business Impact and Achievements
Your employers or clients’ names are definitely interesting to include; some brands you worked for may even land you new projects just because of their name. However, the impact you had in the project may often be more interesting to read.
Project A:
- Description: Senior software engineer for the leading space rocket company. I wrote new functionality and fixed bugs. The project was successful.
- How I read it: I had a cool employer, and the company did really cool things, but I was there because there was budget and I committed some code once in a while.
Project B:
- Description: Senior Software Engineer for a family-owned small law business. I proposed, consulted and implemented a new approach to handling 80% of the paperwork in the company, through implementing AI-based system with agents, handling the different types of law cases the company overtakes. I analysed the business with the owners, research the best solutions, created an architecture that would support the business for its desired and foreseeable 50% YoY growth. The solution fully automates case digitalization, it saves 80% of the time for case analysis, 50% of the time for brainstorming possible case resolutions and lead to a 50% higher ratio of won cases. The tech stack I used was XYZ because of ABC.
Maybe not everyone has such an example, but here is a simpler one: I developed a concept for an AI-based automated quality assurance framework to my team, which lead to a PoC for the C-level management and then lead to a cross-company implementation. Or: I developed a script, which automated XX% of our effort in deploying XX.
Clients care a lot about what you achieved. Instead of simply listing employers, focus on the industry (finance, healthcare, retail, logistics, etc.) and what your work delivered. Focus on your results and impact for the project and the achievements.
It is sometimes harder to measure the real business achievements and results, in this case try to measure your own “technical” statistics or impact. Like, delivered XX features for a period of YY time, with minimal need for bug fixing or refactoring. Increased system performance by speed/quality/cloud usage etc.
- Reduced processing time by 30%
- Delivered MVP in 6 weeks
- Improved platform stability to 99.9% uptime
If you’re under NDA, just describe the type of client and project instead of the name.
2. Highlight Your Role and Responsibilities in Each Project
In addition to the business impact it is quite helpful to understand what your approach to work is by explaining what you were responsible for. Your actual role and what you were responsible for in each project outside the business impact:
- Did you lead a small team or mentor others?
- Were you responsible for architecture design, client communication, or delivery milestones?
- Did you manage releases or CI/CD pipelines?
These details show ownership and accountability, which clients value greatly. Try to show the spread of activities, list the standard ones, but make sure to include some interesting and non-standard ones, especially if they lead to great results.
3. Show Industry Experience
If possible and if you actually have it industry experience will give you a great advantage for many clients! To our experience, the more consultancy a role is, the more industry expertise is desired by clients. Needless to say, the greater the rate for the role.
If you’ve worked on a payment platform, healthcare app, e-commerce system, or audit software - say it clearly! Go a step further in explaining shortly what you feel comfortable with in the specific industry.
Many freelancers lose opportunities because they skip this part. Clients often prefer someone who already knows their industry, since it reduces onboarding time and improves delivery speed.
You can start with a simple description: “Built and maintained payment gateway APIs for a fintech startup, integrating Stripe and Klarna.”
4. Polish Your Tech Stack and Skill Level
Balance your skill table or matrix or however you decided to present your core and non-core technical capabilities. Meaning that you should include as much as possible technologies but make sure they are relevant. MS Word and Excel are rarely interesting for a Senior Front-end Role, but that one framework D3.js you used for a specific table visualization a while back may land you your next gig. By the way this is a true story – no one else included it in their profile, even though some had used it, but only one of our freelancers... and he got the job.
In any case, make sure to list what your strong technical skills are, what your are focusing on (if you are somewhat deviating from the core technologies and expanding your expertise) and what you had some general knowledge and experience in.
Remember the term Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) - one of the greatest things in Human Resources and one of the worst nightmares as well. When you apply to a posting changes are your profile goes through an ATS. So, you need to adjust for it. They work with keywords, they hardly understand complex constructs of using 1 to 5 stars for experience, but would understand some meaningful sentences or phrases like “10+ years of experience with Java Enterprise”.
5. Add Challenges and Wins
Clients want freelancers who can handle real-world pressure. So, make sure you show them that you can handle a challenge!
Add one line on what was challenging about the project. How did you solve it? Then, share a win you’re proud of. You could even share a loss, but make sure you include the valuable lesson you learned from it!
It shows confidence, problem-solving ability, and self-awareness — qualities that make the top freelancers stand out!
6. Add Relevant “Pet Projects”
Often times learning a new technology starts with a test project or a side hustle or simple pet project. Make sure to include it if it has relevant technology fit to what you are doing or shows leadership potential or relates generally to the role you are applying for.
You don’t need to have a certain commercial experience, but if you have invested time in learning and applying something, or it is a volunteering work that is interesting and relevant, please add it.
It shows your experience and interests and can add value to your CV.
7. Bonus: certificates, certificates, certificates
Certificates deserve their own dedicated section in your profile, not a throwaway line at the bottom. Hiring managers and tech leads skim fast – they’re looking for quick signals that you know what you’re doing and that you’re up to date with the tools they use. A clear “Certifications” block with the technology, level, issuing organization and year instantly reduces their risk: “OK, this person has actually gone through AWS / Azure / Salesforce / security exams, not just copy-pasted buzzwords.”
It’s not just about listing certificates you already have – strategically getting the right ones is a business decision. Many serious clients, especially in cloud, security, AI and data, either explicitly require certain certifications or use them as a filter when they’ve got 50 similar profiles in front of them. If you’re one of two senior cloud engineers and only you have an up-to-date AWS or Azure certification, you’ve just made the decision easier for them. Certificates also help justify higher rates: it’s easier to sell yourself as a “specialist” when there is a recognized badge to back that claim.
Finally
You are a freelancer! You chose to be one, because the traditional employment labour contract is not you sexy or preferred way of going about your day. The reasons may vary, but being a freelancer means you need to take extra effort with your job – extra in finding it, in keeping it, in presenting yourself in everything.
And just like everything a freelance job requires you need to balance it out. A simple recommendation, but a hard one to implement is to balance it. Include relevant information, but don’t overshare. Focus on achievements, but don’t brag.
We are sure you got it in you to build your perfect profile. If you are hesitant get in touch with us. Let’s build it together for the right role.
