Some international students indicate that they struggled to find work in Australia. In addition to barriers to employment, the job roles had to fit in around their studies, and many of them find it difficult to land a job in the first few months after graduation.

With the rise of AI, international students are moving towards freelancing to earn money and gain valuable skills while they study. The post-covid shift towards remote work has made it a more accepted and trusted practice, and changing technology empowers the practice. Around 37% of Australians worked from home at least once a week in 2023, compared to 25% in 2019.

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) has amplified this trend, with collaborative and productivity tools helping employers and employees get the best outcomes.

Freelancing allows you to set your own hours, take on work to fit your workload, and work from anywhere. It provides the ultimate in freedom and flexibility. If you can freelance and add AI into the mix, you have supercharged your offerings and abilities.

How AI Tools are Opening Doors for Freelancing

AI is more than just a set of tools, it is an entire suite of services that are redefining work. Utilising AI has made freelancing a much more viable option for some. Tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Midjourney are enabling students to develop their own remote work opportunities.

Content Creation

While AI writing is prone to inaccuracies, it can be a very useful tool. AI can help with creating content outlines, coming up with ideas, blasting away writer’s block, and researching. It can be used to help generate blogs, website copy, social media posts, sales copy, and product descriptions. Tools frequently used include:

How to use it: Write in a detailed prompt and ask it for a specific task. For instance, a blog about writing content creation using AI. Specify the voice, tone, word count, and target market. Remind it to reference all claims and include links to these statistics/ reports. It will then produce an article that can be used as a basis for your writing.

From there you will need to re-write it. Check every claim it makes (it thinks that Reddit is a factual source of information and can’t be trusted), and make sure to include relevant case studies, stories, and ideas.

Graphic Design

If you have an eye for design, then using AI-based graphic tools can help you turn this into a viable income stream. AI can help you to create professional and eye-catching visuals and advertising collateral. Tools include:

How to use it: Let it create some or part of your graphic design tasks. Remember that images created from these tools can look very similar, so it’s great to put in time to manually change and adjust them to make them unique. Also, there is no trademarking allowed on these generated logos and images, if your client wants to retain their intellectual property, you’ll need to make substantial changes to it.

Automation for Productivity

There are a range of tools that automate repetitive tasks, allowing you to focus on higher-level work, improving your productivity, and adding to your income potential. These can help you keep tasks organised, streamline workflow, and create far higher quality work.

They also can help you with your university assignments and work; produce better quality work, automate what you can, and get better grades.

  • Notion: A huge tool that can help you manage projects, goals, calendars, and automate tedious tasks.

  • Reclaim: This calendar helps you to schedule everything in your life. Uni assignments, freelance work, meetings, all can be easily managed so you can keep work-life-uni balance.

  • MailButler: Are your inboxes groaning under the weight of unread or spam emails? This app organises your inbox for you, taking another worry off your mind.

  • Descript: Edit videos and audio files easily. Simple to use, has loads of inbuilt features like adding AI speech or subtitles, and just makes creating video or podcast content a breeze.

  • Zapier: Think you can automate a process but not really sure how? Zapier uses natural language to create workflows that connect apps together.

  • Grammarly or Hemingway: These are excellent tools to help you refine and edit content, whether it’s a blog post, email, or pitch. While you shouldn’t automatically implement all the suggestions, it’s great to help weed out complex sentences and awkward phrases.

  • Decktopus: Useful for uni assignments too, Decktopus makes beautiful slide presentations with just a few clicks.

AI in Post-Graduation Freelancing: Skills For Your Future

By utilising AI in your freelancing, you’re future proofing your career too. These tools, whether we like it or not, are part of our landscape. Employers are looking for employees who can work alongside AI, incorporating it into workflows and tasks to produce better and faster outcomes.

By June 2023, AI terms were being mentioned in LinkedIn profiles at fifteen times that rate to 2022. Searches like ‘prompt engineering’ and ‘ChatGPT’ increased by 25%, month on month since ChatGPT’s November 2022 release. The trend is not slowing.

AI intersects with almost every role, every field of study, every industry. There are huge opportunities to work at that intersection, whether it’s AI ethics, AI sales and marketing, AI solutions, or non-technical AI researchers. Also, freelancing gives you valuable work skills, and shows you can manage a varied and demanding workload. It can help you when you start looking for full-time work.

Best Places to Find Freelance Work

The best places for international students to find freelance work are Upwork, Fiverr, and sometimes even your university job boards.

In order to get good roles, create your own niche. Using industry-specific knowledge can mean you become a liaison between AI and that business. Always add more to what the AI produces, refining and adding value.

Work on your soft skills; read the entire post and follow their instructions. Often there are specific instructions in the posting to ensure you’ve read and understood the ad: they’ll specify a certain email subject line, for example.

Populate your profile or portfolio with examples of work. This could include university essays, or samples you’ve created for the purpose.

Start off with a job that’s way easier than you think you can do, and get it done in time. Be selective about the proposals you make. This is a great way to get positive feedback to start with, and also helps you to see what the industry wants and if you can truly provide it.

AI Offers Huge Opportunities for International Students

AI might be the game changer you need for employment while you study. Used correctly, it gives you an edge over other people and allows you to maximise your productivity without burning the midnight oil.

While some apps are paid, it’s a small investment, and they all offer some degree of free trial. This makes initial setup costs low and allows you freedom to experiment a bit before committing to any purchase. Most tools can also be used in your studies too; the ability to easily create a slide presentation or check your grammar can help you work smarter- not harder.

Freelancing, when done well, can be a viable and legal way to earn income while you study. It also offers the added bonus of supporting future goals and opening up new employment opportunities once you graduate.