Showing off your skills is one of the best ways to stand out on Elance. You can list your skills, offer a “self-assessment” telling the world how you rate yourself, or best of all, get your skills tested by taking one or more Elance skill tests.

To take an Elance skill test, log in to your Elance account and follow the steps below:

1. Click on ‘Provide Services’ at the top of the page.
2. Click on the 'FIND WORK' tab in the top navigation bar.
3. Next, click on the ‘My Profile’ link located on the second row of the navigation bar.
4. On your profile you will see the Skills section on the left side. Click the ‘Edit’ link to the right of the Skills heading to get to the Edit Skill page.
5. Click the button titled ‘Add Skill(s)’ on the Edit Skills page. If you need to retake a test, click on the 'Edit' link next to your skill. You will then see a link to retake the test.
6. Select one of the skills from the ‘Add Skills’ dropdown menu.  Once the skill is selected, click the button titled ‘Take the Skills Test’ and then the button titled ‘Continue’.
7. On the Test Landing page, click the red button labeled ‘Start Test’ and then click it again on the resulting page.  The test will take a moment to get configured and then ask you to click another button ‘Click here to start your test’ which will start the clock and display the first question and set of answers.

Once you have passed a test, you will see the results in your profile. When you choose to show the test score on your profile, the average mark of all test takers will be shown to indicate where you are compared to the average. If you score higher than 30% of all test takers, you will receive a special indicator next to your score bar (Top 20%, Top 10%, etc.).

For team accounts, the company skills are the skills that are approved by the administrator of the company account and are the skills that the company markets to the potential employers on Elance. The administrator can follow the same steps listed above to edit the skills on a team account. Members of the team can only take the skill tests that are approved by the administration the team account.

To view all available skill tests, click here.  

A few items to keep in mind

• Skills tests are free for all providers.
• You must wait 14 days in order to re-test the same skill (with the exception of the Elance Admission test which has a 24 hour waiting period between re-takes).
• Tests are timed and the test syllabus will indicate the duration as well as other important details surrounding each test (e.g. content, prerequisite knowledge, etc.).  
• In order to pass the test and display the results in your profile, you will need to answer 60% of the questions correctly (with the exception of the Elance Admission test which requires an 80% pass rate).You can choose to show the self-assessment score or delete the skill if you are dissatisfied with your tested score.
• You are in control of which skills you want to test, from the wide range of tests offered.  After taking and passing a test, you can choose whether to display the score or not.  
• If you pass the test and decide to try to get a better score, you can retake the test after the 14 day waiting period. If you pass the test on the re-take then the score you received on the most recent test will be displayed, even if it is lower than a previous score.
• Once each month the percentile scores are updated to include the results of the most recent test results from other members of the Elance community.