When I moved to Switzerland, everyone told me that being a freelancer is not safe, that that’s not how it’s done here. You needed a minimum of $6k in order to live comfortably here. So, I applied to over 100 jobs. I got friends to internally refer me to Facebook and Microsoft. This all lead to 102 rejections.

Thankfully, before that, I was a freelancer for around 5 years. So my mind was programmed that a rejection has zero effect on my mentality. I looked at my bank account, noticed that I’m zeroing out at the end of the month; meaning I will have the amount of $0 in all my accounts.

Here’s what I did:

• I gathered all those thoughts.
• Thought 1: Most companies rejected you. They even internally referred you for heaven’s sake…
• Thought 2: You will starve at the end of the month.

You see, the best catalyst for good work is sometimes negativity.

I ended up this month closing in a freelancing profit of $11.6k from two new freelancing channels, and it keeps improving ever since.
There’s always another angle. It was freelancing for me. For others, it might be that successful 103rd application that I didn’t do…

Job labor has always been and always will be competitive. Humans are an organization. We need to work, and we need structure accordingly. This creates the job labor market.

You can read millions of posts about people not finding jobs and struggling to get hired. Let’s turn the table and look from an employer perspective. You get 1000 applications for a single position. You want to succeed; hence you’ll have to pick the fittest option and reject the other 999.

I don’t take this personally, and neither should the 999. Does this mean that the single person chosen is the right one for the job? Obviously, we can’t state that for a fact. It’s a possibility, but it’s unlikely. It’s unlikely that the employer would have such an accurate prediction. After all, these are 999 other life paths that are unknown. One of them could become the next CEO of the company.

I put that in mind when I applied for all these jobs. Truth is, I know for sure that I was capable of doing the job in a perfect way. I would have had the dedication and persistence to become one of the best. Yet, the judging criteria of the employer are only for them to decide. They have their own journey, and I have mine.

However, the matter of fact is that it’s demotivational.

Society is telling you that it’s competitive and that you’ll not be easily accepted. But, when you get rejected all these times from different jobs, you start doubting yourself.

Yet if this was my present, I had a past and will have a future. I was a freelancer for quite a long time. Everyone learns, actively and passively. What I’ve passively learned freelancing was the only tool that I had to get out of this. So, I used it. I used it very well. Day and night, I worked on enhancing my freelancing game and had one of my best earning months.

Then I’ve reached a conclusion. These freelancing platforms are enlightening the abilities of freelancers. In a sense, the biggest winner in those platforms is the freelancers, not the platform. The platform is a business that has stages, and will eventually die. However, the freelancers are affected and gain skills that they’ll teach to other generations to come.

Nowadays, my sole focus is on freelancing.

I aim to improve what I do and how I do it in all sorts of ways. I’ve diversified my work on different freelancing platforms including Fiverr, Medium, and LinkedIn.

I constantly remember that there are billions out there having the same doubtful situations. They have their own journeys and obstacles to face. However, one must not forget that with every moment that passes one learns something new, actively or passively. In the end, I cherish the environment that made me realize this is the right thing to do by pushing me to do something else.

---

I’m Al, a business consultant in Zurich, Switzerland. I believe in the power of delivering value to you, the reader. I’m focusing my content to be more and more on Medium, and Linkedin. Hence, follow me on both channels to keep in touch and connect.