FreelanceFolder: Most people don’t realize it, but freelancers frequently face interviews.
Unlike a traditional employee, who may go years without being interviewed once they have been hired, a freelancer may face an interview nearly every time a prospect considers them for a project. So, good interview skills are an important part of a freelancer’s arsenal.
14 comments:
These are some good tips. I think the biggest take away from this is always about how to manipulate your response to a question... How to turn a negative into a positive. How to deflect a question about your inexperience, or your communication, and how to reassure the client that you will be the right choice for them. It is a bit of improv. It's the fastest I ever have to think on my feet. The biggest think you can do is come prepared. Show your work ethic by being an expert on the client and their needs.
this article has a lot of really helpful advice, interviewing can be one of the most stressful things to go through. I still get tingles thinking back to my interview to get in. The biggest thing though that i think this article misses on is having confidence. nothing makes interviewers happier is someone who is confident. Be proud of your work and confident in what you are capable of. If you show them your confident then they can be confident in you. To add to confidence would be to be excited, if your not interested and excited at the chance then neither will they. 90% of interviews are actually not run by the interviewer but by the person being interviewed.
At first I thought that this article was just listing some common sense approaches to preparing for an interview, but this article actually did contain a lot of useful advice. Being able to quickly and confidently respond to those tricky interview questions is so important. Being able to take a negative question and transform it into a positive response is an incredible (and difficult) skill. For a freelancer, interviews are a crucial part of the job and being able to successfully go about them is a necessity. It's also helpful to be reminded of all of the different physical things to bring to an interview, even if it may seem like common sense. This is an important article for everyone to read.
I am not sure why, but one piece of advice really stuck out in a weird way for me. While I admit to being resistant to the tablet trend in technology, the idea that the tablet has become an acknowledge interview tool is a little bit baffling, especially after how much cautioning I have heard about integrating technology like laptops and video into your interview. I get that tablets can be a bit more stable, but it seems like an odd item to make a high ranking interview tool.
I agree with Charles about the art of manipulation in an interview. Sometimes, being about to be on your toes and responding well while still maintaining a positive attitude in an interview is like asking a cat to balance on it's tail. But I appreciate this article for consistently pushing the idea of a positive attitude in interviews. I feel like that can either make or break you, both before, during, and after the interview itself. However, from personal experience, that positive attitude produces a positive success rate when the work is put in before. Coming prepared and doing your research, as the author suggests, make the positive attitude more genuine.
These are good general interview tips. I fail to see how these are specific to a freelancing job. There are some good tips that should be followed here. The answers to the 6 interview questions are a clever way to avoid answering the actual questions. This is something that I would always be carefull of. Employers want you to be honest they will know if you are trying to pull one over on them.
The tips in this article are great. Especially in how to respond to questions. Interviews are both for the interviewer as well as the interviewee. The interviewer wants his interviewee to succeed. As this article points out, it's best to take each question positively.
I think that the thing that is forgotten in interviews is the fact that both parties are interviewing the other. It is as much the person interviewing the company to see if it is a good fit as the company is trying to see if the employee is a good fit.
This is important especially in the world of theatre. A good fit is imperative to any sort of creative process, and ensuring the new hires fit within the existing world is equally as important for the employer as the employee.
Many of the "how to interview well" posts seem to have a common theme, that is to be professional and be sure the interviewer sees you in the best possible light. Everything else beyond that seems to just be a bit of customization for a specific market. I've had interviews where I was completely unprepared and had to wing it (running into a potential employer while doing something else and having them suddenly want to talk about you working for them is hard to walk away from, promising to schedule something later might not happen while the option to talk then and there is real) and while they're hard, having enough content ready (on an iphone, or even drawn on a napkin if appropriate) can be enough to still land the gig.
I think these this tips are good and fairly standard. I like the responses to the sample questions, especially "Can you devote all of your time to my project?". I like the spins on the answers. I always get stumped because I want to be honest, but then sell myself short. i think practice makes perfect with these types of things. Like pageant interviews. It's not even always a matter of what you're saying but how you say it. I think you should walk in knowing what kinds of things you'd like them to take from the interview and shift the question to fit the answers you already have. Like college applications. you know the traits they want and you can make your same 5 best traits fit into any essay question.
I think these are good interview tips for any kind of job, not necessarily a freelancing job. Researching the client, having notes about what you want to talk about, dressing appropriately, etc. These are all things that can be applied to whatever kind of job interview you are doing. Knowing how to think on your feet and answer questions that interviewers throw at you is really important, and some of the questions in this article are some particular good ones that interviewers might give to you. This is a good article on interviews, it's just not one that is just limited to freelancing interviews.
This is a very helpful article that addresses a lot of things that people typically mess up on in interviews, often without realizing it. Anyone could benefit from this article, not only freelancers. I think the most important information in this article is when the author identifies what the interviewer REALLY wants to know from his questions. Like, if they ask if you can devote all your time to a project, they care less about all of your time and more about you meeting your deadlines.
These suggestions don't seem to be specific to freelancing. They are good standard procedure for any job interview. The one that always catches me up is reading between the lines and knowing what they are actually trying to ask, as apposed to what they actually say. Molding your answer to answer underlying concerns of the employer is definitely an important skill that can be difficult to get a grasp of.
In most small freelancing markets and even in big ones like NY or LA a good interview will get you the job but what is way more important is how you network and your previous work experience. I am at the point in my career and I have spent enough time in one place (8 years) that I almost never go looking for someone to hire. From playwrights to plumbers, if I need someone, I will always ask the people in my network for recommendations and higher almost exclusively on their recommendations and the freelancers previous work.
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