What Agencies Look For When Hiring Entry Level Designers
This post is inspired by a great article written by Chris Brogan titled be the President of your Career. My post goes in a slightly different direction. Whenever Shawn and I talk with students, the question of what we look for when hiring designers seems to come up. I thought I would give a brief narrative of what is important to us in a designer.
Raw Talent
I know it seems obvious but raw design ability is probably the most important factor in selecting a designer. This doesn’t mean you have to be an expert with every program you might use during your career. Nor does it mean you have to have designed creative for fortune 500 companies. It does mean you have to have some readily apparent design ability. It also means that this talent needs to be evident from your resume and portfolio.
Great Resume & Portfolio
The vast majority of the portfolios we review come from students. Most of those students have done a very limited amount of real work. Many students have portfolios of work they did for assignments and internships. Often these portfolios lack enough depth to gather a good perspective of that students design abilities. If you’re in this boat I would suggest doing some other work you can include even if it is for fictitious clients. If you want to make some money doing it you can try websites like 99 Designs where you can do some design work for actual clients. Your resume and portfolio are the only tools we have to judge design ability. Make sure they demonstrate your design abilities, your interest to be part of the industry, and your ability to be creative and innovative.
Industry Immersion
We love what we do. To be part of our team you have to love truly love what you do. We look for team members who live their job. We look for people who design for fun in their free-time. We look for designers who subscribe to design magazines, read design blogs, read forums, and participate in forums and blog themselves.
Show Personality
Since we have the option we choose people we want to work with. We try to make our company a fun and happy place to work and we seek people who like to have fun. Everyone at Zipline is very different but we all get along well and whenever we’re adding someone to our team we are careful to make sure they have a personality that will mesh well with our organization.
Be a Good Communicator
Good communication is important in a professional environment. Make sure to proofread all of your projects, your resume, and any other communication with prospective agencies. Hiring an employee is tough and with a very limited amount of interaction prior to making a decision it is important that all of your communication properly represents you. We use your ability to write creatively and accurately as a gauge to judge your ability to effectively and professionally communicate with our clients.
Be Original, Be Innovative
There are a lot of designers looking for jobs. Try to be original. The last designer we hired (Kate) presented her portfolio on t-shirts. We work with a number of different clients and in a number of different mediums and it is important for our designers to be able to think outside the box. Any designer can look up a design in HOW or Print and copy it. We want designers who can create fresh and original designs on their own.
Be Knowledgeable
If you’re writing a cover letter or going to an interview make sure you have researched the company, understand what they do, and include information or references to that in your cover letter or during your interview. Be prepared to defend your work and explain why you made the design choices you did. Also be prepared to explain how you can benefit the company that you’re interviewing for. Even if these questions are not asked directly I suggest working in these explanations into your descriptions.
What it All Means
I know that many of these seem obvious but my experience shows they’re not. We have reviewed a lot of design portfolios and resumes and very few have shown the level of effort we require. Simply throwing a few of your assignments in a binder does not show either your ability as a designer or your level of professionalism. If you truly want to find a job you must realize that the industry is competitive and you have to stand out in a positive way to get the job. If you do love what you do you need to immerse yourself in the industry, participate, and demonstrate your love and abilities. Also, remember you don’t need to be employed to be part of the design industry. Join forums, participate in blogs, join social network sites and network with the leaders of firms you want to work for. It is never too early to start making a positive impression.
If you’re a student looking for advice on your work, resume, or portfolio I am always available. Here at Zipline we believe in open source technology and we apply that same strategry to knowledge. You can find me through my blog Stemkoski.com or you can find me at Zipline Interactive or you can find me on LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, or LaunchPad. I am also a member of many other forums and websites.
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