You may be surprised to hear that not all Home Improvements Taskers start out on the platform being ‘handy’—many have grown into it! Being a Tasker provides you with limitless possibilities to upskill. The Home Improvements category in particular offers the opportunity for you to be a generalist or a specialist—i.e., you have general ‘fix-it’ skills and enjoy doing a variety of tasks, or you are skilled at a particular type of task, such as window repair or wallpapering and only do those tasks.
The many ways Taskers learnt Home Improvements skills:
- Raised by a family of DIYers who built their house from the ground up
- Worked in the restaurant industry and had to learn on the fly
- Learned through military training
- No formal background
- Apprenticeship
- Watches programmes like ‘DIY SOS’
- Watches YouTube videos
- Asks other Taskers or friends, by sharing a photo or asking how they would approach something
- Worked on a task with another Tasker
- Was hired by a condo association and learned on the job
- By doing!
Tasker James C. told us that as a student, he had a job in a locksmith’s workshop where he learned how to weld, hang doorframes, change locks and other extremely handy skills. But he also noted that he learned to clean up after the job is done, a hallmark of quality that is part of his personal brand as a Tasker. Other success factors have less to do with the hard skills (i.e. tools you know how to use) and more to do with soft skills (i.e customer service orientation).
Home Improvements Taskers’ top advice:
- See everything as a challenge to conquer. You’ll find that there are repeat themes within the category, so once you’ve mastered one skill and can add it to your portfolio, you can move on to mastering the next.
- Get as much information upfront from the client to ensure you’re the right Tasker for the task. Offer full disclosure to the client—if it’s something you haven’t done before but that you are confident you can do, state that in the chat thread.
- Maintain an up-to-date profile. For instance, include examples of your work in the Business Photos section, and in the Home Improvements category description add a list of new skills and tools you’ve acquired. The more keywords in your Skills & Experience description, the more you will come up in search results for relevant tasks!
- Offer a ‘free estimate’ so you can properly scope the task before accepting it.
Top Home Improvements Taskers feel an increase in confidence and a sense of accomplishment with every Home Improvements task completed. Resoundingly, Taskers said that while learning by doing is great, don’t wing it on a task. Seek out the skills you want to build and practice at home or shadow someone before committing to it for a client.
For this series, Home Improvements Taskers have shared their diverse backgrounds, skills, and experiences. Throughout the series, you will hear from Greg S. (San Francisco Bay Area), Joe A. (Indianapolis), Iulian D. (London), SueAnn M. (Portland, OR), James C. (London), Miguel Q. (Los Angeles/Orange County), Lester R. (Boston), Anthony F. (New York City) and Bandele P. (New York City) who were so generous with their time and sharing of pro tips with the Tasker community.
