Getting Started on Colance Africa
You want to get started on Colance Africa but have no idea what to do? This page will give all the insight on how to navigate through Colance Africa pages.
Creating an Account
To create an account, click on the “Login/Register” button in the main menu bar. This button will redirect you to Login and Register forms.
The form has a clickable Colance Africa logo as the main heading which directs you back to the home page. Below it are two clickable buttons; the Login button is for those that already have accounts on the platform and the Register button is for those that do not have accounts, yet. Click on the register to access the registration form.
The registration form asks you to fill in the following details;
Your Full ID Names,
Preferred Username (one that you will be using to login to the platform,
Email Address,
Password.
When you are done filling these fields, click on register and the platform will redirect you to a sellers dashboard.
SETTING UP YOUR ACCOUNT
Congratulations, You are now a registered member of Colance Africa! You have landed on the sellers dashboard and this is your profile’s control panel. The next step is for you to set up your account in a way that attracts your buyers. Please follow all the steps to create an outstanding and unique profile.
The Dashboard Explained
The first thing that you will see is an empty dashboard. This is because you haven’t filled in your information yet. Here you get to upload your CV, ACT and completed services and they will show up once the upload has been successful.
Underneath is an area marked ‘Views’ which shows graphical analysis of your profile’s workability. This shows up once you start working and earning on the site.
The Sidebar
To the left is the side bar which contains categorized fields of your profile. Click on each button to edit and fill in where required.
Profile
Clicking on ‘Profile’ redirects you to edit your profiles information. Below are the definitions of each field
- Username – This is the name that will be displayed to other Colancers. This can be any name of your choice. Make sure it is unique. This name could be similar or different from the one that you used during registration. For Example, Ann-Marie Banda.
- Profile Title- This is your job title. Although you might have a lot of skills in different niches, there is however one title that you are proud of (could be a writer, researcher, graphic designer, software engineer, etc).
- Gender – This is your personal and social identity as a man, woman or a non-binary person.
- Seller type – Keeping in mind that Colance brings different freelancers to work together, you can either belong to groups of freelancers or you can choose to work as an individual.
- English level – This evaluates your proficiency in English.
- Language – This lets you choose what other languages you know aside from English.
- Location – State where you are currently at, geographically (City/District),.
- Bio – This is where you tell the recruiter about yourself. When people view your profile, they will see this part first. Make sure you highlight your qualifications, what you can offer, and other information you think will be useful and influence buyers to hire you.
- Choose profile picture – Set a profile picture that represents you as an individual. Make sure it is professional and clear. Logos and other graphics are prohibited.
- choose cover photo – This is a larger banner that introduces who you are. This can include logos, graphics, and anything else you think represents you and your brand.
- Address- This is your personal address. It is private from other users.
- Skills – Choose all the skills that you possess and rate how much you know them (in percentage).
Messages
This section displays all the personal messages that you have with other Colancers; could be recruiters or other job seekers asking you to team up and co-work.
Projects
This section has two categories:
- Ongoing Projects- This displays all the projects that you are currently working on.
- Completed Projects – This will display all the projects that you submitted on Colance Africa.
As a new Colance Africa user, this section will be empty, hence the display message ‘no results found’ when clicked. However, once you start getting hired for and submitting projects, they will be shown here.
Experiences
This part has two categories
- Experiences – This is where your past work experience will be shown. You will be able to upload your CV here.
- Create Experience – This is asking you to create additional work that you may have done that is not included in the CV that you have uploaded in Experiences.
To create an experience (Also called CV), you have to fill the following parts
- Title – This is the title for that particular experience/job. Colance Africa is designed in such a way that you can have more than one skills and be able to sell them all.
- Category – This is where you choose a category that best fits the job title.
- English Level – This is an evaluation on how much you know English as a language from basic to proficient/professional.
- Location – Here, state where you are (City/District)
Past Work
This is where you describe and showcase your skills under the job title that you have given.
Please note that you can have as many experiences as possible.
For example, if you said (in the title above) that you are a Graphic designer, you can share all the times that you designed graphics
- Title – This is the job title under the general job title. In this case, Graphic designer. You can then proceed to define exactly what kind of designs you made such as; “Logo Designer” or “banner designer” or “social media post designer”.
- Description – This is where you describe exactly what you were doing for the job title provided.
Education
- Title – This is where you put name of institution, year and what you studied. For example; “Computing and Information Systems, Chancellor College, 2020”
- Description – Here, briefly describe what you learned. You can include courses you took and other relevant information.