Recording a video intro that helps you

A video intro is the only part of a profile that a client cannot skim. That cuts both ways, which is why it is worth doing deliberately rather than quickly.

The mechanics

• Sixty seconds, maximum. Landscape.
• Recorded in the browser, on a phone or a laptop. There is no upload path, by design.
• Record as many takes as you like. Only the one you keep is uploaded.
• You choose the still frame it opens on.
• A person reviews it before it goes live, and if it is rejected you are told why.

Before you record, the meter beside the camera shows your microphone level. Watch it move. The single most common way this goes wrong is a perfect sixty seconds into a muted microphone, discovered at review.

What to say

Sixty seconds is about a hundred and fifty words. That is four sentences, not a biography.

1. Who you are and what you do.
2. The kind of work you are best at, with one real example.
3. How you like to work with a client: hours, updates, tools.
4. Nothing else.

The recorder shows a rotating prompt while you talk, for exactly the moment you run out of things to say.

What it looks like to a client

Anyone who has not subscribed sees a blurred still, and the blur is produced in your browser before the file is uploaded, so there is nothing sharp in the public version to recover. Subscribed clients see the frame and can play it.

What not to do

• Do not read a script. It is audible, and the point of a video is the part a written profile cannot carry.
• Do not list your skills. They are already on the page, rated, with dates.
• Do not apologise for your English, your room or your camera. Nobody had noticed.

Somebody watching this has read four profiles that look like yours. They are deciding whether they want to talk to you.

It is optional

It raises your profile score and it blocks nothing: you can publish, apply and get hired without one. It is step seven of onboarding and it is skippable, and coming back to it later costs nothing.