Personal contact providing creative opportunity

I'm a great believer in the line - it's not what you know, it's who you know. Whether that be for getting your first part time job, or finding someone who can do something for you, it's normally a friend of a friend. 

The experience that I can recount is a bit of work experience this summer, that I gained through my sister. She worked doing a part time admin job for a small educational resource company. Through the grapevine, they found out that I was doing a Multimedia degree and so could turn my hand at creative, visual stuff. 

OK, it still required the boss to look me up and check my online portfolio, but without my sister and that shared connection, I would never have thought of contacting such a company for some work, and probably likewise for them.

And the personal contact paid off, literally. My first flyer design I did for free, a tester, but since then, I've done a video montage package for them, chopping together footage, images, sound, and there's more to come. I'd still do it for free, but it's nice to be paid, nonetheless!

Furthermore, the great thing is, doing work for them means they then share my name with their other associates, and I could also ask, using their contacts for more work / experience.