The Freelancer’s Interview

Many of my friends are now going on interviews that will hopefully land them a job, giving them a start on their new future as a functioning person of society. My brothers and their friends are going on smaller scale interviews to land them a summer job so they can make some spending money. Amidst all of this, I sit at home, programming, doing my own thing to make money. That doesn’t mean that I don’t go on interviews. As a matter of fact, for a freelancer like me at least, I go on a lot of interviews.

You see, the freelancer has a job interview every time he gets a new client. That interview manifests itself in the first meeting or proposal that secures the job for him. As a freelancer, in that first interview you not only have to prove to the potential client that you can in fact do the job they want to hire you to do, you also have to justify your methodology for doing it, the amount of time you will take to do it and of course, the price you will charge them for it. You have to sell yourself every time a new client walks in that proverbial door.

I’m not saying it’s harder for a freelancer, just different; something I hadn’t really thought about until a few days ago when I thought to myself I haven’t been on a “real” job interview in a while. Of course, when my friends land a job they really like, they won’t be interviewing for a while, assuming they can keep their job. For me, I’ll be interviewing for as long as I decide to freelance. But that is a price I am willing to pay, because quite frankly, freelancing is awesome.