CHAPTER 5: GETTING EXPERIENCE

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Task: make notes in your business plan about the tactics you will use to get some initial experience.

Learning goal: to give yourself practice, beef up your CV and generate those first testimonials.

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Getting experience is the hardest part of the game, and it is more important when you’re starting out than worrying about the price you’re being paid.

Most clients want to take on editorial freelancers who can demonstrate that they know what they’re doing. Having a blank CV and no referees won’t make you an attractive prospect. Publishers, in particular, get hundreds of prospective letters every year from freelancers. They also have established banks of editors and proofreaders with whom you are in competition. Businesses are a different entity and may not be aware of the value of your services. Being able to show that you have some experience and that people are prepared to endorse your work will make them more likely to give you a break.

It’s therefore worth spending some time bouncing around ideas and tactics for getting some hands-on experience.

5.1 Mentoring

Mentoring is an excellent way to gain experience under the wing of a practising editorial professional. Linzy Roussel Cotaya summarizes the value of mentoring in regard to the PR industry, but the point is just as applicable to editorial work: ‘The mentor/mentee relationship provides the newbie [with] exposure to skills beyond the textbook teaching to help that person fast track his or her career with advanced skills that will separate them from the piles of résumés for a job’ (‘Why Mentoring is Important to the PR Industry’, Ragan’s PR Daily).

Mentees may work on ‘live’ projects with their mentor, or on material that has already been edited or proofread but cleared of the markup. In the case of ‘live’ work, the mentee gets to experience the process of working under professional conditions but with the safety net of a tutor. In the case of completed projects, the mentee is able to compare their work with that of their tutor. Be sure to check with your mentor as to the terms and conditions around how you can ‘sell on’ this experience when you come to promoting yourself.

Associates and members of the UK’s Society for Editors and Proofreaders can apply for its mentoring scheme, though some previous initial training is required. Bear in mind that there is a waiting list so check their website in advance to ensure you meet the criteria. If you live outside the UK, check your national or regional editorial society’s information board to see what’s available in your region.

In the next Practitioner Focus study, Janet describes the process of the mentoring role she takes with the Editors’ Association of Canada (EAC).

Janet, who is a member of the Editors’ Association of Canada, as well as an associate of the UK’s Society for Editors and Proofreaders, is a great believer in mentoring. She is a member of the Toronto branch of the EAC’s mentoring committee and has been a mentor through that programme since its inception. In addition, she enjoys informally mentoring new editors in Canada and the UK. Her informal mentees come to her either by word-of-mouth referral or by asking her directly (usually already knowing her from one of the editing groups to which she belongs).

With formal EAC mentoring, it’s up to each mentor what they do with their mentee. Janet adapts the process to fit the needs of each person. Initially, she asks the mentee for a CV and a list of questions and areas they want to cover during the mentorship. She often requires her mentees to carry out specific tasks on pieces of work she’s already completed and then offers feedback on the quality of finished assignments. Later in the programme, for advanced mentees who have demonstrated high competency levels, she might, with a client’s permission, subcontract a few live jobs to her student in order to give them genuine work experience. Janet checks the work carefully before it’s returned to the client. In this way the mentee is able to get a feel for the pressures of real-life editorial work, but benefits from the safety net of knowing that a qualified professional is on hand through the process to offer guidance and evaluation.

5.2 Gratis work

Another method is to offer to carry out a few free pieces of work for your target client groups. For example:

~ Small, independent publishers who can’t afford to contract out work to freelance copy-editors/proofreaders are a useful avenue to explore in order to garner experience.

~ You could offer to proofread a student thesis for free on a one-off basis by making contact with someone at your local university – perhaps via a competition.

~ Is there a local/parish magazine that you could offer to edit for a set period of time, at no cost?

~ Do you have friends who regularly write expansive business reports that you could offer to proofread?

~ Might you search online for Google+ hangouts where aspiring authors look for help at a token price?

~ Are there social networking sites that you can explore where you might pick up a few leads?

~ Can you make contact with a local business and offer to do gratis work on their website or some printed reports?

~ Is there a local charity whose aims you support and which might be grateful for some proofreading help?

When Louise started out, she did three pieces of gratis work for a couple of small, independent publishers. Her bank account didn’t see a penny, but her CV looked a good deal stronger and she was able to acquire excellent references to sell on to prospective publisher clients. Indeed, one of Louise’s now-paying clients has told her that he commissioned her on the basis of one of those testimonials. Some years on, one of the tiny independent presses for whom she’d done a couple of freebies grew rather larger. They still do most of their proofreading in-house but during busy times they’ve needed to contract out work. They call Louise, but now they pay her!

Some critics of this approach argue that doing a few pieces of free work for a tiny independent publisher or a student will affect your credibility. I don’t agree – your future paying clients won’t know you worked your backside off for nothing; they’ll just see the work you’ve completed. Furthermore, those clients who offer free work do so because they can’t afford editing services and usually have to do it themselves; those who can afford to pay do so because they want trained, experienced professionals. The lesson here is to get the experience from the former to make yourself attractive to the latter.

Ignore the power of the testimonial at your peril. A good testimonial tells potential clients as much about your ability to deliver as a training course and membership card. It demonstrates that you can do the job you were commissioned for, in both theory and practice. Testimonials are ultimately about building a sense of trust with the customer.

Take a look at the following example to see how Nick uses the power of the testimonial.

Nick built up his business by advertising his services in FreeIndex, a UK free ads directory. Go to freeindex.co.uk, put ‘proofreader’ into the search box and look at who comes out on top. Nick’s business, Full Proof, has more reviews than any other proofreading service on the site, 133 at the time of writing. Full Proof is the business that visitors see before any other.

5.3 Getting out there and making your pitch

If you plan to work outside the publisher market, you could decide to just get yourself out there and make your pitch. This may be the most productive way in the case of clients for whom proofreaders and editors are not the first people that spring to mind when they are considering the presentation of their printed and online material. The business sector is an obvious example of this, so use your business plan to consider how that pitch might sound.

Kate decided the face-to-face approach was the best way forward in making those initial contacts with businesses, so she decided to get out there and pitch direct. ‘I braved early-morning networking meetings, did my 60-second pitch, attended regularly and built relationships. For many businesses, having their documents proofread isn’t something they’ve done before, so they’re taking a gamble on paying a freelancer for something they often think they don’t need.’ Kate presented herself as ‘one of them’ – a fellow professional business owner and service provider with a skill set that would add value to her colleagues’ enterprises.

KEY POINTS

~ It’s not about the money at the beginning – it’s about planning how you will acquire experience in a particular field and a strong reference to sell on to other clients.

~ Don’t forget, when you come to executing this part of your business plan, to ask politely for a testimonial. Don’t be shy about this – it’s perfectly acceptable business practice.

~ At the planning stage, the aim is to draw up a working list of targets whose praise will speak to the sector of the market you want to focus on – the kind of people whose recommendations will be recognized by your future clients. So if you’re thinking about targeting publishers, you want testimonials from the same; if you’re planning on working with independent authors, then references from satisfied writers will work well.