Calling all 'Slashies'... what's your experience? Do you struggle to compete with specialists for freelance gigs?
To call someone a 'jack of all trades' in this day and age would be considered insulting to most. But not me. Not a lot of people know that the phrase was originally used to describe a playwright who spent every waking second hanging around theatres; helping with the staging, the set and the costumes โ trying his hand at everything from acting to directing.
That so-called jack of all trades was none other than William Shakespeare. So, far from being an insult, it is in fact a massive compliment.
However, in my relatively limited expereince as a freelance creative, I've found it hard to compete for gigs when I'm up against people who specialise in a single creative discipline.
I understand why that would happen. I just wanted to know if there are any other 'slashies' out there that can share any hints, tips or advice for increasing your chances of landing work?
Thanks :)
Replies8
- @ษษนoแก ษuuโ หฅ Hi Anna, thanks so much for your detailed reponse. Your site is great by the way - some fantastic and varied work on there :)
- Hi Graham,How I personally approached this forever question based on one thing I heard on a portfolio review when I was a junior. A veru edgy, cool design duo said they simply have two portfolio, one of the commercial one that would fit into a bit of everything category and an other with their more artistic and personal work.I do put on my site the works where I do pretty much everything as a creative agency does and call myself a one women agency. From the other side, I do post on social my very niche artistic stuff that clearly shows my speciality. And guess what, it work perfectly well to advertise my more diverse work with my niche.Of course its just something that works for me but I do think it comes back to point that ypu get the kind of work that you do. If you have a speciality they will want you for that, if you have a general overall knowledge they will want you for that and if you have both than you will get the opportunity to do both. There is no really competiton if someone wants to hire a special kind of skill they won't compromise for something else and opposite of that if you have a speciality you have a limited amount of projects to be considered for.
- Great question @Graham Forbes, I've just sent you a DM!
- @Graham Forbes thank you for talking about it ๐
- @Alice Roseberry-Haynes Great advice, Alice - thank you
- @Keva Epale Great response, Keva - thank you so much for taking the time to share that
- Hey Graham, I do resonate with the multi-skills funny how even though freelance gigs want specialty they still involve you being a "Jack of all trade".Companies look into portfolios that will abide by the style and company culture, the more diverse you are the more challenging it is for you to fit at first.I have made peace with that and when an opportunity comes that I feel aligned with, I share the specific area of expertise needed but you cannot fully comprehend my work without the rest. Therefore, I share some add-ons. I understand more the freelance/entrepreneur Valley.Being a specialist accelerates the focus, you have one target and you go all in. With a multi-disciplinary trait, you are orchestrating a song using growing skills and talent, you have more notes you want to play with in direction of a 360 goal.
- Hi Graham, I consider myself a slashie. So I specialise in motion design for both 2D and 3D but I also have my own style of animation/illustration that I persue separately to this. The way I've worked around it is to just make sure my website is very organised to showcase these different areas of work and then when applying for freelance jobs just being direct and clear with what they should be looking at, whilst mentioning I'm multidisciplinary. Not sure if that helps at all but I've found this works for me!
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