*Check out my post “Freelance Writing Stock Characters: The Annoying Client” over at FreelanceWriterville.com. Do you have a Debbie Disagreement or Quentin Questioner in your client cast of characters?*

Yesterday Laura over at Freelance Folder posted “Learning to Say ‘No’ Nicely – How to Keep From Burning Bridges.” Sheepishly deciding that maybe someone could learn from one of my big freelancing mistakes, I posted my story. To save you the trouble of going over there (though it is a great post and I highly recommend it along with Yolander over at FreelanceWriterville’s post “Maximizing Your Business With the Word No,”) I will post the whole story here as an object lesson about how NOT to please a client.

Last year I was a rookie freelancer and extremely proud of myself because I had managed to score two whole semi-regular clients. Oh yes, I was flying high and on my way to riches and stardom. But then one of my clients asked me to do something that was completely outside of my area of expertise – write his resume. And actually, this wasn’t even a resume. This was his curriculum vitae. The grandfather of resumes. I had never written a resume before outside my own and my husband’s and in fact I quite dislike the whole process. But, being a starry eyed rookie and unsure what would happen if I turned down this request, I told my client that I didn’t have much experience at CV writing but would give it a shot.

That night, I wasted hours trying to spruce that thing up but it quickly became apparent that I had no idea what I was doing. CVs are long documents, not like the dinky one page resumes we use here in the States, and the information the client gave me was full of jargon from his specialized industry. I burned up Google that night, but sadly, let the CV defeat me in the end.

I went back to the client the next day to tell him the bad news. Luckily, I had had my resume professionally written right after my corporate layoff so I was able to recommend him to that writer. And even more luckily (I must have had a leprechaun in my pocket or something that day), the client hired me again for more work after the debacle.

Here’s what I did wrong:

1.) I accepted a job I knew I couldn’t do or, at the very least, would have a hard time doing. Even if I had pulled through and created some semblance of a CV, an actual experienced CV writer could have done a better job in less time. This would have given the client a better product in a shorter time frame and would have been the all around better choice.

2.) I got greedy. I knew someone who wrote CVs, for Pete’s sake! But instead, out of fear of losing my livelihood or at the very least one of my two regular clients, I failed to pass this client on to her and instead tried to gobble up all the work for myself. This, of course, backfired.

3.) I wasted my own time doing something I wasn’t interested in. Perhaps if I wanted to break into CV writing this would have been my big chance. But I’m not interested in that particular field, so what did I think I was doing spending valuable time learning how to write CVs?

What I did right:

1.) I admitted right away that I did not have much experience CV writing. I didn’t lie to the client and say “Oh sure. I’ve got this. Piece of cake.” Instead, I did let him know that it would be a new experience for me, and he was still ready to go along with me. Unfortunately, this also ties into something I did wrong. If I wanted the very best for my client, I shouldn’t have attempted the job in the first place. Simply declining the job and passing on a referral would have been much better form.

Opinions? Thoughts? I would love for you guys to treat this as a freelancing case study and tell me what else I did wrong or right. For example, should I have demanded pay for the hours spent on the work since the client did hire me even though I admitted I was inexperienced? Should I have pressed on, learned CV writing on the fly and then added a whole new skill to my portfolio? Am I missing something else I did wrong (or right)?

And don’t forget to run over to Freelance Folder and FreelanceWriterville and read those other two posts about the importance of saying no. There’s valuable advice there that will hopefully keep you from following in my footsteps and regretting rookie mistakes you made a year ago.

For more like this:

“No! I Just Won’t Write It!” – Where Freelance Writers Draw the Line