Catch 22: No job, no experience. No experience, no job.
Welcome back to another career banter with your girl. As promised in my previous newsletter, (if you haven’t read it, click here to read it before you go on) I will be showing you how you can get the experience you need to land your dream job.
The first time I saw the comic up there, it really hit close to home.
I wanted to focus on a specialisation of my career, which I actually did. But if I was going to get a job in that specialisation, I needed experience. My generalist experience wouldn’t do much.
It was a classic Catch-22 situation.
So let’s get to it.
To gather the experience you need for that job, one way to go is FREELANCING.
When people hear freelancing, the next thing they think about is Upwork, Fiverr, or one of the many other freelance platforms. While it is an okay place to start from, freelancing can be taken a notch higher to set the right tone for your professional career.
Let’s start with LinkedIn. Rather than applying to jobs on LinkedIn blindly, start by being strategic.
Let’s assume you are looking for freelance recruiter opportunities.
First thing to do is go to the search bar and type the keywords “freelance recruiter”. It is very important to type the keyword in quotes.
Next is to filter result by ‘posts’ and not by people. What this does is to filter through posts of LinkedIn members for anyone that contains the keyword “freelance recruiter” as seen below:
Next, create an engagement around each of these posts. Drop a like, or a comment (definitely not the cliche “I’m interested”).
Then, send a well-crafted personalised invite to the poster. Something like the screenshot below:
When the connection accepts your request, you can further expatiate your request to the poster.
While this may not give 100% results, it’s worth the try. A realistic conversion rate would be 30%, that is, probably 3 out of 10 job posters you reach out to will respond. I didn’t have high hopes when I did this, but I got a couple of meaningful gigs.
Another method to try, also on LinkedIn, is cold pitching.
Make a longlist of companies (either local or international) who are currently recruiting for your position of choice.
Next, create a spreadsheet of potential managers and talent acquisition leaders who work in those companies. These people wield the most influence in getting you that job, because the potential manager for that role mostly turns out to be the hiring manager.
Then send a personalised invite to the people on this longlist. It may be tedious at first, but it’s definitely rewarding. Your personalised invite is mainly to let these people know that you are interested in the vacant role in their department, but because you do not have the required experience, you’re willing to work for them as a freelancer (with/without pay) in exchange for experience.
For those who respond, be sure to send a link to your portfolio or resume, if you have one. Be sure to project yourself as valuable and let them know that you are open to any kind of arrangement, as long as you get valuable experience.
And there you have it! I hope these tricks work for you, as they worked for me. I would love to hear testimonials about these tricks, and to hear more about any trick you may have up your sleeve as well.
Till my next, sending loads of love and light your way :)