It appears that every freelancer finds that next job or move because it came through a friend, colleague, friend-of-a-friend, someone who met them at a party or event, or found them in one of the professional bodies or online networking services. Who ever gets an advertised job these days? The down-side of this means that there’s a lot of luck and variables out of our control in running a career, but the upside is that we can make our own luck by increasing the chances of good things coming our way. Essentially, our own network is the most powerful professional tool we have, I am certain that mine is.
I do the standard stuff, I have a Twitter account (good for quick professional reminders that I’m out there), Linked-In (almost an online CV), personal website (definitely an online CV), Facebook (a bit too up-close-and-personal) , Google+ (still an enigma), TVWatercooler persona (essential), and I rely heavily on the 1,300 contacts I keep on my computer and my phone. The trick is working out how to keep in contact in a real living way with as many as possible without just being a spammer. These are the people I can look to for new work, or to work with me or to help me put together my own new projects. Back to the old Venn diagrams, there are thousands of careers to be lived between me, my friends and contacts, and their networks too.
The funny thing seems to be that if you decide that you want to do something, or work in a particular role, tell enough people about it, and stick to your story for long enough, it may well become a self-fulfilling prophesy. I’m not quite sure why this works, but its something to do with your extended network of people understanding where you want to go, so when someone hears of something suitable, its you they direct it to even if they don’t know you personally. You would do the same for the people in your network.
And then there’s just going out there, and meeting as many people as possible – this has a massive impact on the serendipity that can happen to you. I’ve been to 15 Edinburgh TV Festivals over the years, usually without an agenda, and good things have come from every one of them (including meeting a girl in the queue for a screening 17 years ago, I’m still married to her now). If you don’t go to all the parties, festivals, drinks, screenings, union meetings, BAFTA seminars, RTS events, awards ceremonies and similar that offer themselves to you, think of all the lucky breaks you will never know that you missed! Unless, of course you hear that they went to someone else.
Networking isn’t just a buzzword, some relic of 1980’s metropolitan hubris. It’s not even just to the tool we use to find work. For many screen production freelancers, their network of people that they trust to work with is a working tool in itself. You may find that it’s not just you that a company is hiring, but your ability to bring in the right people to do the job with you from your former colleagues and friends. To paraphrase Mae West on diaries, ‘keep your network and one day your network will keep you.’
