Sir Freelance Alot

So for those of you that don't know by now. I have a job. Woop woop! It may have been a long time in the making, but I have one and that's all that matters. Halleluljah!

If you read my joyous post about the great tidings of good news then you will also realise that I'm not going to go all flaky on you and stop blogging about being unemployed, even though I'm not unemployed. I will still blog about unemployment, but this time from the other side of the fence.

Now we've dealt with that, I'm going to hop back in time to when I was unemployed. If people asked, I hated admitting I was unemployed - there is such a stigma around unemployed bums that especially with new people I would say I freelanced.

Now freelancing is just like being a handy person - you may have read about my stint as Handy Hannah - you take all the jobs you can and don't earn enough money to even remotely bother the tax man. I've been a photographer's assistant, an Italian tutor, a babysitter, a copy writer, and a personal shopper, to name but several.

I think this is quite a heroic occupation - taking all the jobs that no-one else does, being thoroughly taken advantage of, getting paid next to nothing or just nothing. I genuinely felt like a medieval knight - I was Sir Freelance Alot.

But why did I do it? Why did I metaphorically go into battle and fight with nasty foes for little gain? Simply put, I did it because of what I could achieve at the end of it all. Employers don't like to see you sitting on your unemployed bum and not doing anything. If you can prove too that you've done the less desirable jobs then they know that you're not above doing menial work and you care about your career enough to make those sacrifices.

If you take the initiative and get out there and get freelancing you literally have no idea who you're going to bump into and where that might lead. Pull all the contacts you know - nepotism certainly isn't fair, but make it work for you.

Some people love freelancing - they do it all their lives. I'm not cut-out for temporary contracts and tricky tax returns - for me it was a means to an end. A lot of media employees end up freelancing for at least the early parts of their career - it's the way it goes: very rarely do you walk into a permenant job in TV on your first attempt.

Freelancing is about intiative - yep, just said that - but it's also about thinking outside the box. If I can't get a job as a runner in TV, I'll get a job as a runner in radio. If I can't do that, I'll call my friend and see if they can let me do a day of workshadowing. There are a plethora of opportunities on offer ready to be snapped up - the catch is having to work for nothing (or very little).

If you don't want to do that, that's ok. Get any job you can, but I can guarantee you, in ten years you won't be as near to your dream job as the people that sacrificed that easy money early on so they could get the experience that mattered...