Social mobility | Squarespace CMO advises Gen Z to be willing to 'work for free' - isn't this dated?

When I graduated from university in August of 2019, it was just before a pandemic was about to sweep through the world. After four years of studying, including doing a Masters, I thought I would leave higher education and find a job easily – this absolutely wasn’t the case.

I took odd jobs working in warehouses until I eventually built my own online portfolio and was able to secure my first journalism job. Some of this work a part of my portfolio, admittedly, was work I did for free. However, I am acutely aware of the privilege of doing ‘something for nothing’ - which is very prominent in creative industries.

However, Kinjil Mathur, the Chief Marketing Officer at website building platform Squarespace has recently advised Gen Z they should be doing whatever they can to get experience in the professional world, including working for free.

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In a conference interview, she said: “In my freshman year—and this is dating me—but this is when we used to have telephone books where you had yellow pages that had the name and number of every business and every person in your city.