Reply To: Breaking into a new Market

[Andrew Garulay, RLA]

Since you are very interested in getting hired by someone else at some point, another thing that you might want to get advice about is whether you are helping or hurting that possibility by doing your own thing at this point. I’m not going to claim that I know that answer, but does it make sense for another firm to hire someone who clearly is on a fast track to open his own firm? I’m thinking that if all else is equal on a resume, I’d be more likely to avoid training my next competitor. On the other hand you will get on-site project management experience that could be very valuable to a hiring firm.

No matter what we do there are benefits and consequences.

Balancing your day to day survival and advancing your career can be at odds with each other in times like these. One alternative is to have an unrelated job for stable income, whether full or part time, and then do design work on the side. I do that, although my job is not unrelated. One advantage is that I can pick and choose what work I take on because I don’t have to take anything to keep money coming in. That keeps me from getting referrals for more jobs that I really don’t want.One reality is that you’ll get higher numbers of referrals from lower end jobs than from higher end jobs simly because there is a bigger pool of work the lower you go. It is very easy to be consumed or displaced by lower end referrals when you need to fill a schedule and you can become synonomous with being as good as your worst job. Having the ability to not take on a job eliminates that. Doing it on the side shows a potential employer that you are dedicated to the profession, but may not seem as someone who will be using them to gain a foothold in their market by using their firm.

I hope others chime in on this aspect of the dilemma that faces people in the post school/ no job limbo that so many are finding themselves in.