Many freelancers have more than one skill to offer. Specialized profiles make it easier for you to market multiple skill sets to clients who are looking for different things.
With a specialized profile, you can tailor your unique skills to your audience on Upwork and create variations of your profile that showcase your experience within specific categories. For example, you can separate out the work you've done as a mobile game developer from your work as a translator or graphic designer.
Create a specialized profile
To add a specialized profile:
- Go Profile settings > Specialized profile and choose Add a specialized profile
- Choose a speciality by searching through the dropdown options
- Follow the flow to select all the skills that apply to your work, choose a title, and draft your profile
- Choose previous work that is relevant to this specialty by selecting the boxes next to each contract. You can toggle between completed or in progress work
- Review and save your profile. After saving, the profile will be live for clients
Edit a specialized profile
Keeping all your profiles up-to-date helps you attract clients, You can update your profiles with more recent portfolios, new certifications or experiences, and more. You can also remove or replace information that is no longer relevant. There may also be times when you want to focus on certain types of projects and skills — you have the option to hide profiles for other skill sets at those times. You can always update or edit your profile information.
Each section of a profile will have options to edit or add (a pencil or +) that allows you to make updates and changes. You can switch between profiles at the top to edit the parts that are customized to that profile view.
Perhaps you want to switch your profile listing from "Accounting" to "Bookkeeping." Under profile settings, select the option to Switch Specialty, then confirm with the Unpublish & Continue button. You’ll be guided through the update.
When you unpublish a specialized profile, it will stay on your profile as a draft, meaning only you can see it.
To unpublish a specialized profile:
- Go to Profile settings > Specialized profile
- Select the (...) menu and choose a new category, then press Unpublish & Continue
If you have two or more specialized profiles: You can delete one of them by going to Profile settings > Specialized profile and choosing Delete from the (...) menu.
If you have one specialized profile:
- Go to Profile settings > Specialized profile
- Select the (...) menu and choose a new category, then press Unpublish & Continue
- Choose the trash icon next to the draft of your specialty profile. Your profile will be deleted immediately and cannot be recovered
- Exit the window without continuing the prompts
Frequently Asked Questions
A general profile shows all the projects you have worked on in Upwork. We designed this type of profile to show all the skills you offer to your potential clients. A specialized profile only shows the work history for the projects you choose to feature. It gives you the opportunity to describe one skill or service in more detail. On each specialized profile you’ll set:
- A title, overview, and rate
- Which of your portfolio and work history items show
- More detail about the type of skills you have within a particular job category
The rest of the parts of the profiles (except those listed above) will be the same across profile views:
- Educational background, employment history, certifications, other experience, languages, availability
- Portfolio project details — titles, attachments, and other details will be the same everywhere they appear
- Job Success Score
If you edit a shared part of your profile, the changes will show across all profile views.
Your profile will contain an indicator that you have other specialized profiles, and the client will have the option to switch between those versions when viewing your profile (similar to how you switch between versions when editing your profile).
While viewing your specialized profile, you can use the Copy link button to send a unique link to your specialized profile. This link is unique to each of your specialized profiles.
