Why New College Grads Should Consider Freelancing as a
Career 
 
Making it in the big wide world is a daunting prospect for anyone, but in these tough economic times the difficulties and hurdles facing new graduates are bigger than ever. With rising student debt, youth unemployment and cutthroat competition for the small number of jobs available to hundreds of thousands of graduates, the prospects for university graduates may seem quite grim.

Nevertheless, there are opportunities for those tech-savvy graduates who are comfortable with social media and the online world. For those who are anxious to get their first foot onto a career ladder online, freelancing may be a great opportunity.

While the online world has a lot to offer new freelancing graduates looking for work, there are some fundamentals to learn first before diving in and losing your head.

What Freelancing Can Offer Graduates

Many of us are familiar with the stereotypical freelancer–the individual who was sick of their boss, their 9-5 job and the lack of creativity in their career. There is also the individual who chose freelancing in order to spend more time with their family or to become their own boss. The idea that freelancing could also be an ideal career choice for a new graduate may be new to some people, but in reality, it’s the perfect option.

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If you are a graphic design graduate and have ambitions of joining a professional agency, you’ll discover that the competition for these positions (even lower-paid junior positions) is extremely high. Thus, no matter how passionate you are, you simply may not have a diverse enough portfolio of work and satisfied client recommendations to back up your credentials as a graphic designer.

Freelancing on a variety of jobs, working with a diverse clientele, is the perfect way to expand your portfolio when you’re fresh out of college. Moreover, to the client, opting for a graduate freelancer may be the more economical choice over opting for a big-name agency or other seasoned professional.

Building Trust as an Online Freelancer

Some clients may feel that choosing a seasoned professional presents less risk to their project than selecting a newly graduated freelancer. However, for small to medium sized projects the skill and passion of the freelancer can make or break the success of a project.

Of course, when it comes to convincing clients to select you (the new graduate) for their project over another freelancer, you do not have years of experience to compete for the job with. Nevertheless, remember that a professional agency made up of many employees cannot offer the client the same personal touch that you can.

Plus, if you are fresh out of university and haven’t got dozens of clients to work with, then you are in a much stronger position to work on a one-to-one basis with any client. As we all know, a glowing testimony from such a satisfied client can work wonders for future project prospects.

How New Graduates Can Succeed

If there’s anyone able utilize social media and online communication for their career success, it is recent graduates.

Today’s generation of graduates has literally grown up with Web 2.0 technologies. The opportunities for graduates to use their internet skills to impress potential clients, win projects and conduct client management are there for the taking.

Online mediation and freelancing platforms can offer freelancers of all stripes the chance to upload their portfolio and list their skills in order to find exciting and diverse projects in all fields. In fact, graduates can take advantage of these online platforms to create an international client base, and there are not many traditional agencies who can say that they make a living from globetrotting for new clients!

Moreover, online project platforms or not, according to a joint study by Dr. Mansour from the University of Denver and Peter Kuhn from the University of California, searching for work online can cut time spent unemployed by up to 25 percent. That benefit is even greater for younger people.

Also, learning to effectively use online tools to freelance may come more easily to recent graduates than it would come to middle-aged professionals. For instance, if a new graduate wanted to create clear channels of communication between themselves and the client, they would probably have no trouble at all using Twitter or Skype to communicate during business hours. Plus, expanding social networks to include business contacts and clients is second nature to the generation who had their teenage years defined by Facebook.

So Get Out There and Freelance

Overall, whether freelancing brings you success, or not, rests on your ability to do your own marketing by reaching out to others in your field through tools like Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs. You will also need to impress potential clients with your passion and know-how with an online portfolio that can be easily accessed.

Recent graduates may have to learn the hard way that they must fight for every freelancing project they win. Yet, they are well placed to get the best out of what the online world has to offer.

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