Q: I am having a little panic attack! The local chamber of commerce puts on an “After 5” gathering of businesspeople for networking. It’s like in-person cold calling! I just attended my first one and claimed I was a writing jack-of-all-trades, but I haven’t yet decided where I’d like to specialize. I have a meeting on Monday with a media production company who want to see my samples, and this is where my panic starts to creep in!
I have six months of a locally published column, a massive project plan on opening hotels and some pro-bono work I did at my daughter’s school’s newsletter. I am in the process of writing another newsletter for a charity organization to build up my portfolio, but other than that, that’s it! No video or scriptwriting experience.
Do I just take a few deep breaths and try not to look or say anything totally ignorant, with a quick Hail Mary for good measure? As this will be my first official meeting with an actual client who might actually pay me, I must get my breathing back to normal without hyperventilating prior to Monday.
A: Careful what you ask for, right? For starters, what’s the worst thing that could happen? You don’t get the job because, in their opinion, you’re not experienced enough. End of the world? Hardly. Just be okay with that and then you won’t come across as desperate. Also, you need to be making a massive number of contacts so that any one particular one won’t hold some power over you (as this one is obviously doing…).
All you can do is the best you can do right now. You can’t fabricate a portfolio between now and Monday. It’ll either be good enough for them or it won’t. If they’re specifically looking for video scriptwriting work and you have none of that to show, then there’s a good chance they won’t feel you’re qualified enough to help them out. And that’s life. Find people who ARE comfortable with where you are right now, get work from enough of those and you’ll have a good enough book to get hired by most anyone.
Be honest with them. Tell them you’re starting out in this field. But be confident and enthusiastic. Tell them you know you can do the work. And then, it’s out of your hands.
You might also want to double check with them as to the kinds of work they’re considering you for. If it is indeed scriptwriting and they’re thinking you DO have all this experience and then you show up Monday with none, it could make for, at worst, an embarrassing waste of time and at the least, a garden-variety waste of time. If indeed they ARE considering you only for script writing, you might want to clue them in in advance to save major irritation on their part.
If nothing else, and regardless of the outcome, I hope this experience at least opens your eyes to the fact that, lo and behold, people really do hire freelancers out there and where’s there one, there’s a whole lot of others.