Upon first impression, freelancing might sound overwhelming and stressful. Let me settle your thoughts with an explanation of how I find work to meet my financial responsibilities! Also, I mentioned a referral link to sign up for Staff Me Up... I think I may have mixed that up with some other site!! But nonetheless, the link to sign up is also below, there's just no promotion attached.
0:34 Episode Introduction
1:25 Job Boards
2:20 Upwork and Fivver
3:08 Staff Me Up and FB Groups
4:35 How I go into each month
6:10 The biggest PRO
7:19 Prepping for the upcoming months
7:48 Using FB Groups
8:56 Wrapping Up
Links mentioned in this episode:
Staff Me Up
Alex Fasulo's "Freelance Fairytales"
Social Media:
Instagram
YouTube
Connect With Me!
Instagram
Website
Catherine 00:08
Hello there. My name is Catherine and I am 23 years old, working as a full time freelancer in the media and entertainment industry. And welcome to the How I Diaries podcast. This podcast is a diary of how I am currently going about my life and career, and I thought it would be cool to just post these and have them as a resource for any other people wanting to get into freelance or the media and entertainment industry or as a overall behind the scenes of this alternate way of living and working.
Catherine 00:34
This episode we are going into detail of how exactly I job search as a freelance gig worker. My other episode, how I organize my work schedule, is more of an overview of how I structure my schedule and layout all of my streams of income. So give that a listen to as they're both pretty much related to each other and highlight different aspects of the reality of this lifestyle.
Catherine 00:56
So yeah, to start off, I want to again state that my career and interests are in the media and entertainment industry. And one of the reasons I wanted to make this podcast is because if you are also in this industry, I'm sure you've also had the same frustrations of job searching on the typical job boards like indeed and ZipRecruiter, you know, etc. and the amount of entry level jobs are very sparse and highly competitive on those sites, or they're looking for people with decades of experiences on their sites.
Catherine 01:25
But on the other hand, luckily for us production people, there's a few sites that are specifically for our industry, and I'm sure there's other niche job boards like the ones I'm about to mention for other industries. But here are the ones that I've tried and used and the ones that I actually like and find useful that pertain to media and entertainment.
Catherine 01:46
First off, we have Mediacom and Media Match.com each have their own respective payment options, all of which I think are worth it. You can do it on a monthly basis or yearly. I personally don't recommend these for entry level applicants. I'm not sure if it was just because I didn't have much luck as an entry level applicant or what.
Catherine 02:07
But if you've got some standout credits and years of experience on your application like resume, give it a go. I would see a lot of gig work part time and full time opportunities on both of those sites. It just didn't work out for me. Next, I tried Fiverr and Upwork and I keep recommending Alex pursue those podcast Freelance Fairytales, and this is a direct attribute to her inspiration to try these two gig gigging work sites.
Catherine 02:32
I've had more success on Upwork than Fiverr, but I'm still trying to figure out some of the kinks out of my gigs on Fiverr to optimize it they can to these sites as they take a percentage of your earnings. But when you're just starting out, it's great because of the exposure to customers they offer. So I did have one big issue with Upwork though, and it was just the amount of scams that gap posted, etc. are just really annoying, but they're pretty obvious to point out and avoid.
Catherine 02:58
It's just annoying that you have to filter through them, but the fact that it's free and I got some interviews out of it, it's worth adding to my irritation when I sit down and job. The most success I've had is actually through Facebook groups for my local area and the site staff me up I will link my affiliate link for staff me up in the show notes and then if and then, you know, for wherever you're living, you can just go on Facebook and look up Piggott, pay Facebook groups or, you know, L.A. gig, work opportunity, you know, stuff like that.
Catherine 03:30
But yeah, Staff me up has the same structure as a typical job board and like Mandy and Media Match, they offer payment plans for monthly and yearly. But I would say it's a little bit more friendly to entry level applicants and the overall interface is a lot more attractive and easy to navigate. I'm not sponsored by them or anything.
Catherine 03:49
I'm just giving my straight up opinion and my affiliate link is just like the, the standard thing of like, hey, refer to a friend and you get well, whatever it is for my job hunting workflow, it's really become such a habit that I do it in my spare time. But I do also have designated times that I do do it too.
Catherine 04:08
I find it fun to do in my spare time, so it's all part of a personal preference, whether or not you want to have to deal with that sort of thing. But yeah, it goes hand-in-hand with the lifestyle of freelancing. I guess like I mentioned in my other episode about scheduling it's very important to be proactive to alleviate the stress of the inconsistencies of freelance work.
Catherine 04:28
It's great when you find gigs that are posted weeks in advance to when they need you to work, but the only way to find these is to constantly looking at applying. I'll give you an example of how I structured my current month, which is May I teach piano on Saturdays? And I hold any dates other gigs give me.
Catherine 04:44
So for this month, all my Saturdays are booked for every month, all my Saturdays are booked. And then the dates that I was told to hold for this month were May 3rd and May 11th. Those are my held gigs that I already had going in to me. So then every morning and evening I log in to staff me up and do my typical search.
Catherine 05:02
I enter my location and just sift through what has been posted and I submit about five to ten applications each time I go on and I would say my ratio of getting messages is about one out of ten, which isn't terrible. But again, I will stress I'm pretty entry level and I would say it's better success that I had on Mandy and Media Match.
Catherine 05:23
Luckily, I got a message and scheduled a phone call with that first batch of ten applications I submitted earlier in the month. On Call went well and I confirmed a gig for May 25th through May 31st, and I did what I needed to do to reschedule my one Saturday for piano teaching and I'm all set for the month of May and it's not typical.
Catherine 05:42
Like I really try and keep my Saturdays left alone because I don't want to, I don't want to bother my students with rescheduling just because you know, I don't know. That's a customer service thing, I guess. But yeah, so that is it for the month of May. And obviously there are some budgeting techniques that go along with knowing how much I need to make every month, etc. to be confident.
Catherine 06:03
I'm meeting all of my financial responsibilities and you can listen to my episode on how I budget, which goes in-depth on how I approach that aspect. This month was also special because I had the freedom to also plan a birthday weekend trip to Florida, which is another pro to freelancing and a high priority on my list. So for instance, today is May 12 and I was able to secure confidence in my financial responsibilities for this month by this day.
Catherine 06:32
But this doesn't mean I stopped job hunting. Of course, I'm so looking to fill in gaps for me and even planning for June etc. but there's more leniency for me since I have all my other gigs I do during the week anyway, which I haven't even included. They're just on call basically. So I have the things that I schedule from the job boards and then my dates held for gigs I knew going into May and then my every Saturday and then yeah.
Catherine 06:57
And then I know throughout the week I'll either be dog sitting or going to the post-production house. I work out and doing one of three things there for a couple of hours or for a chunk of hours every week. For instance, but also within the month of May, I was connected with another person through a colleague that recommended me, and I will be speaking to them within a month to see what other kind of collaborating we can do.
Catherine 07:19
And then in preparation for the summer, I also had a gig come up for a position working on a film slash production camp for kids that I also found via Staff Me Up and I am interviewing for. I actually interviewed for last week and now I'm on to the second round of interviews, so who knows, I could be set for the summer with this one and no stress all for the price of just being, you know, proactive and spending an hour to two each day just submitting job applications.
Catherine 07:48
My workflow for job hunting through Facebook groups is a bit different, mostly because posts and gigs that get posted there are often very short notice or sometimes the day I'm in about ten different groups and between all of them there's probably about 100 posts a day. Not all of them I am qualified for, etc. Basically looking for production assistant like driver pay gigs when I'm on staff me up and these Facebook groups.
Catherine 08:14
And since Facebook is just an app on my phone, I mainly do it in my free time when I'm just like sitting around. But I'll also like if the feed on staff me up isn't super populated, I'll sit and then spend the rest of the time going through each Facebook group. But like I said, they update constantly throughout the day, so I'm constantly going through them every day.
Catherine 08:35
The Facebook groups and I would say with the Facebook groups, I apply to about two to 15 over the course of a full seven day week. And I usually get a message or email back about three out of ten. My rule of thumb is to not book too far in advance unless it's a big event. And this is just because I don't want to have to bail on too many of my current commitments.
Catherine 08:56
And I typically only look a month out and I don't bookings that are longer than a month. I'm always checking my emails and making sure I'm easily accessible to my phone at all times except when I sleep or if I'm actually having free time in a social life. So that is it for this episode. Feel free to take a listen to my other episodes and topics and if this reaches you and you have any other burning questions or stories, I'd be happy to use this as an outlet, conversate, and learn from one another.
Catherine 09:24
And as always, thank you for listening and talk to you next time