NO MATTER YOUR BACKGROUND YOU MUST HAVE CONFIDENCE.

VIRTUAL CAREER PART 10

Chapter 10 of Virtual Careers takes us deeper on how a virtual professional gets clients and the preparation before one starts entertaining clients, and the importance of showing what you can do. Jomar Hilario entitles the chapter “Proof of your Proficiency” the Virtual Career Blog he calls it.

He shared in his previous chapters that unlike regular resumes, what virtual professionals should be focusing on is their presentation of their past client’s works, or projects that showcase your skills. And where is this presented? on a blog post. Here he brings back the importance of building a blog as well as what to do when you finally get clients. But before that a point I would like to highlight is creating your rate.

I was always iffy about how to do this so reading this portion was settling. He basically says to total your expenses and then just double it. If you worry about your client’s reaction to the rate, remember that this is for you, and that your clients would usually understand as you need to pay for electricity to charge your gadgets and to gather other equipment needed for the job. In addition to that, following “big names in your industry” be it following their work, books, podcasts and more helps you when your client wants to get to know you as well. This builds credibility when your clients ask about where you learned what you do, and a little bit about you as well.

Another point that I thought was noteworthy was this thought again from chapter 9, that when your client asks you to create a proposal not to say yes to it. Why? He shares that creating a proposal is not a virtual professionals job, as doing so is done by project-based freelancers, unless you are running an agency of many virtual professionals. Creating a proposal is already time consuming and you’re not being paid to do it yet. So what one should do is remind the client of what you can do for them instead and showcasing your blog once more.

He writes that many start feeling a sense of fear writing their first blog, and I can agree with that, as starting on my blog I wasn’t entirely sure what I should be writing, and if what I wrote would reach anyone or if anyone would care to read it. This thought leads me to another one of Jomar’s points, where starting off we may be worried about presenting ourselves during interviews, but he pushes the reader with a short backstory. He too started with almost nothing, he even shared in his first interview he borrowed a nice polo from his Tito and just did his best to present himself well. Jomar shares not to over think it, all one needs is to put on that confidence and let your blog or portfolio speak for itself. No matter what background you have, you must have confidence and simply show the client why they should hire you.