I have won a contract on a small design job and could use some help as it may quickly get over my head. At the same time, I am a student with a decent portfolio (how I got the job) and would love to get my foot in the door with some design firms in my area.
Question: Should I offer the job to one of these firms in return for letting me intern and work on the project?
It’s not much $ and basically amounts to paying them to let me work there.
So you intend to walk into a firm and offer them a job? Doesn’t make any sense. I bet their first reaction will be “Are you kidding me?”.
Anyways, keep the freelance job. You shouldn’t have a problem finding an internship with your portfolio(since you said it’s decent), and your freelance experience will add to it.
I have a feeling that your overhead is nowhere near the design firms’ you would approach. So they’d probably not even want it unless you scored a job paying you in the neighborhood of $150-200/hr and up and with enough meat to make it worth the effort. And besides, it is a bad idea. It has the feel of trying to bribe your way into a job.
If this job is over your head you shouldn’t have applied for it in the first place.
If you know that you are going to get into trouble and be unable to deliver what is expected within the budget or time frame that you won the contract on, you should do the responsible thing and let the client know that now
Having a bad rep will destroy twice as many opportunities as you can gain from having a good rep.