How To Maximize Your Talent Profile and Portfolio Samples

Anne Joldersma

September 2, 2021

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Earlier this year, we announced our exciting journey toward becoming a creative services marketplace. We started with some updates to our talent profiles at the end of January, and we introduced the ability for talent to add the new services of Audio Production, Music, and Translation to their profiles. Within those services, talent can add new skills, like audio editing, music composition, or English-to-French translation, among many, many others. 

In July, we officially became a creative services marketplace, and clients were able to post jobs in the new services. 

It’s been exciting to see in reality what we already knew—that the talent on Voices are a very multi-talented group and that there are other multi-talented freelance creatives out there who are looking for a platform where they can put all of their skills to use.

Why You Need Portfolio Samples

If you’ve added new skills but haven’t yet uploaded portfolio samples, now is the time. Portfolio samples demonstrate the quality of your work to clients and are essential to showcase your expertise in the skill you’ve added. For those of you who are already experienced in voice over, you’ll know that quality demos are invaluable. Your portfolio samples in other skills are the equivalent of what demos are for voice over. They are meant to showcase the best of what you have to offer in a particular skill—whether that skill is audio editing, songwriting, or translation. 

Having portfolio samples added allows you to have visibility in search, which means clients can find you and invite you to respond to jobs. Without a portfolio sample attached to the skills you’ve added, you won’t be visible to clients when they’re searching for talent by specific skills. You want to give yourself the best chance to get noticed! 

For our guest members, this is even more important since being found by clients in search and other areas of the website is the only way for guest members to be privately invited to respond to a job.

For our premium members, having portfolio samples added gives your skills the visibility necessary to be matched to the jobs best suited to what you have to offer. Without those samples attached, the skills you’ve added are essentially invisible to clients unless they are browsing through your profile.

The bottom line is, for anyone hoping to be hired on Voices for their new skills, you need to have portfolio samples—without them, it’s much less likely clients will be able to find you.

What Makes a Great Portfolio Sample

The demos that talent upload to Voices are integral to success on the platform and act as fantastic highlight reels. When it comes to portfolio samples for translation and audio production, it may be less obvious what you should be uploading. 

Here’s a higher-level look at what makes a strong portfolio sample in our new services/skills.

Audio Production

We recognize that there are many different skills that fall under audio production. We encourage you to think about adding audio samples that are not only the highest audio quality (this goes without saying), but also showcase what you brought to the table to make that project successful.

Then, use the overview field to really expand on the role you played in bringing that particular project to life. If it’s audio editing that you provided, lay out for the client what the project was like before you started working on it, and what you brought to the project to really improve it, leading to that final finished sample you are sharing. And, just to emphasize this point once more, make sure the files you upload are high quality.

Here’s a few examples of strong talent profiles with audio production samples: 

Audio Editing:
https://www.voices.com/profile/natewalsh/#skill=audio-editing

Audio Mixing:
https://www.voices.com/profile/charlotteann/#skill=audio-mixing

Foley Effects:
https://www.voices.com/profile/paulcarter/#skill=foley-effects

Music

Adding samples to showcase skills that fall under the service of music is pretty straightforward. If you’re a singer, you want to include a variety of samples that demonstrate the full breadth of what your voice can do. If you can perform country, folk, and pop styles confidently, include samples that showcase each of these. Don’t expect that a client will be able to hear your voice in one style and translate that over to the style they are trying to hire for. The easier you make it for the client, the better.

If you’re a songwriter or a composer, the same idea applies. If you’ve written rock songs, pop songs, and jingles, include your best example of each.

Alternatively, if you only sing folk songs, or you only write rock music, put the full weight of your portfolio samples behind that and really showcase how good you are at that one style. There will be clients out there who are looking for what you have to offer.

Make sure to maximize the portfolio sample overview section to expand on what you brought to the project and why you’re including it as an example of your skill.

Once again, it goes without saying, only upload the highest quality audio files as your samples.

Here’s a few examples of strong talent profiles with music samples: 

Singer: 

https://www.voices.com/profile/allysonbriggs/#skill=singers

https://www.voices.com/profile/chloetaylor/#skill=singers

Music Composition: 

https://www.voices.com/profile/zachhoffmanvoice/#skill=music-composition

Jingles: 

https://www.voices.com/profile/davidwbrewer/#skill=jingles

https://www.voices.com/profile/miriam/#skill=jingles

Translation

For translation, what clients want to see is a before translation and an after translation piece of text (source language and target language) in the same file, ideally in a side-by-side view, so they can see your skills in action. Make sure this is labelled clearly in either the .pdf or the .jpg you upload as the client may wish to have it reviewed before they hire you.

If you’re uncertain what’s best to include as a translation sample, we recommend visiting this blog post, which has great script samples you can use for translating and creating samples. These would be a perfect jumping off point for showing your skill in the type of translation that will often need to be done with jobs on Voices. These scripts are organized by industry, so if you’re not sure where to start, you could choose one short script from a few industries you feel you’re the strongest in, to showcase your ability in those areas. 

Make use as well of the portfolio sample overview section to further expand on any language or cultural nuances you had to address when translating this piece of text, any specifics related to the industry this translation falls under (medical, advertising, etc.), and anything else you feel you brought to this particular project to give the client a true sense of the unique skill you bring to the table.

Here’s an example of what the side-by-side layout for translation samples looks like, along with the skill description section filled out:

Below are a few examples of great translation profiles with solid translation portfolio samples:

English to French Translation:

https://www.voices.com/profile/marianne6742/#skill=translate-english-to-french

English to Spanish Translation:

https://www.voices.com/profile/dianas/#skill=translate-english-to-spanish

You can also browse translation talent on our website to get an idea of what others have done.

A Quick Refresher on How to Add a Portfolio Sample

Want to Learn More?

If you have any other questions around profiles and adding portfolio samples, you can review our article on talent profiles or you can check out this blog on creative portfolio best practices. Your My Home dashboard also has tips and resources. If you run into trouble, you can always contact a member of our Customer Support Team at [email protected].

Don’t forget, if you’ve got any feedback regarding this or any other feature on Voices, please send it to [email protected].

Thanks for reading, enjoy this new feature, and upload those portfolio samples!

Anne Joldersma

Anne Joldersma is a product marketing manager at Voices. She graduated with a combined honours degree in English and History from King’s University College at Western University and has since taken her love of words to build up a portfolio career across academia, publishing, music, and tech. Anne is also an active songwriter with songs signed to licensing agencies in L.A., and she is currently working on a private detective novel. When Anne was first starting out, she worked as a barista at the very best Starbucks in Toronto—College and Dovercourt.

Connect with Anne on:

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