At its really simplified core, oDesk, helps match professionals with freelancers. I mentioned a couple days back about becoming a virtual assistant. Well another plus of this occupation is that you don’t even have to be in the same city, state, or country, and ODesk helps pair the two parties.

Essentially jobs range from web design to IT consulting to creating presentations. Labor is paid for by the hour or at a fixed price, with everything being easily documented so its pain-free to use and monitor. ODesk takes a nice 10% fee of course.

In order to ensure qualified and competent work, the labor must take an aptitude test in fields they would like to work on. After all who would hire some random person online without feeling confident they could get the job done. Some of the test include: Ajax, CSS, .Net, DHTML , ASP, and even a new Facebook test.

If you buyer, then the goal is to try and build a team of providers that can get the job done. You can monitor the labor through the oDesk application, which takes screen shots of the provider’s desktop. Inevitably you save them and money, while others do the work.

On the other hand, if you are a provider, then the idea is to build your profile like a resume. Take some of the 100 test offered, receive feedback from clients, and basically create a desired portfolio.

The company just finished raising $29 million in funding, so services should only get better.

It is really and interesting project overall, and I’m interested to see some results of this service. Still on the fence? Then take the tour over at their site.

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