Ask most students what they're aiming for and the answer is the same: "a job at a company." That is one real path, and it is the hardest one to enter from a standing start with no experience. It is not the only path, and treating it as the only one narrows your options for no good reason.
| Route | What it looks like | Getting in |
|---|---|---|
| Full-time at a company | Salaried, structured, a defined role | Hardest to enter cold; usually needs a portfolio, referral, or standout interview |
| Agency or studio | Building sites/apps for various clients | Often more open to juniors with a decent portfolio, since the work is varied and the training is on the job |
| Internship | Fixed-term, sometimes paid, sometimes not | Lower bar to enter; the point is experience and a reference, not the salary |
| Freelance | Direct clients, project-based | No gatekeeper at all — the barrier is finding clients, not passing a screen |
| Contract / part-time | Defined project, defined period | Often found through people you already know |
Each route rewards a different kind of preparation. A company job rewards a strong CV, a clean portfolio, and interview performance. Freelance work rewards being findable, being trustworthy to a stranger quickly, and pricing sensibly. An agency often cares most about whether you can be handed a task and get on with it.
Preparing only for the company-job path, and only for that one, means the other routes — several of which are genuinely faster to enter — never get tried.
These routes are not ranked by prestige here, and that is deliberate. A freelance project that pays and produces a happy client is not a lesser outcome than a full-time offer — it is a different outcome, and for many students starting out, it is the more realistic near-term one. Later lessons in this course cover freelancing directly.
These paths are not walled off from one another. An internship becomes a reference for a full-time application. A freelance project becomes a portfolio piece and a case study. A contract role becomes a full-time offer once someone sees the work. Very few careers move in a straight line from "finished a course" to "salaried job" — most zigzag through two or three of these first.
Do not pick one route and ignore the rest. Build a portfolio strong enough for a company application, and simultaneously stay open to a small freelance project or an internship if one appears first. The first income, the first reference, and the first piece of real experience matter more than which category it falls into.