Bumped into this site today - Ask the Recruiter - and more specifically this post.

Joe Grimm is a recruiter at the Detriot Free Press and answers daily questions from people wanting to get into journalism. Good questions, too.

Todays question caught my eye, mainly because of the title ‘Freelance writing career?’. OK, so it’s more journalism than creative media, but some of the advice he hands out is definitely relevant.

I spent five years in journalism — the last as a religion and diversity reporter at a mid-size daily — but circumstances and a family move lead me to quit five years ago to work as a staffer in the California State Legislature… …How do I make a move back?

I took away three important things from Joe’s answer…

1) You need to work consistently. If you’re on a payroll, you’re always going to get paid - even if you’re so hungover from the night before that you’re not even going to make it to work, let alone do anything worthwhile when you’re there. Or, actually, if you are genuinely sick. If you have a day like that as a freelancer, you’re gonna go hungry that day.

2) Choose your clients carefully. Like Joe says, the ideal client scenario is to try to secure at least one major (reliable & dependable) freelance client that provides the bulk of your income. Then, fill the rest of your time with smaller clients, lots of one-off jobs, and other stuff that’s fun to do. What I’m saying here is that you shouldn’t rely on just one income stream as a freelancer. Think about it: what would happen if that one client of yours found itself in trouble? You’d automatically be in much the same spot.

3) Don’t underestimate the office. Yeah, yeah, we all know how strong the lure of working from home is. You sit there in your PJ’s with a big fat breakfast in one hand, and the TV remote in the other. Then, when the ads come on, you squeeze a few minutes of work in. Because, like, yeah, that’s really what its like. Not. The reality is that you’re going to spend much of your day cramped into your home office (read ‘tiny spare bedroom’, ‘corner of garage’, ‘understairs cupboard’ or ’shoe box’) with no-one to talk to apart from, well, yourself. The reality is that working from home, for yourself, is tougher than you think in lots of ways. Joe mentions that reporters might miss the newsroom. As someone who’s worked in ad agencies and design agencies, I can tell you that I miss working in the middle of a busy creative department. A lot. But there are ways around it - I spend half the day on the phone to agencies, there are always plenty of briefs and meetings to go to, plus the occasional day where I spend working in-house at an agency. Something to think about, though…

Anyway, back to the point. I think I’m going to check out Joe’s site regularly. It just goes to show that even though you’re working in a pretty specialised industry, good career advice can pop up all over the place.

You’ve just got to know where - and how - to look for it.

Technorati Tags: Career Advice, Freelance