12 Secrets to Getting a Design Job When You Graduate

by Scott Allen

What You NEED to Know to Get a Graphic Design or Web Design Job When You Graduate From College

Simply getting a college degree is not enough to prepare you for a job in web design or graphic design.You may not believe it, but getting a college degree alone, will not prepare you for a job in web design or graphic design. “What!” you might exclaim, “Why am I spending all this money if it won’t get me a job!” Well, you do need the education, but to get a job in the field, you have to go the extra mile. There are many things I had to learn the hard way. To give you a head start on the career of your dreams, I’ll pass on 12 secrets I wish someone had told me when I started college.

1) Never give up on your dreams and goals. This needs to be said before anything else as it will be a foundation for everything else you do. Persistence will take you far, and the people who eventually get their dream career are the ones who hang in there. :) Stay dedicated, and stay focused. Don’t get distracted (many opportunities will tempt you), and don’t cut corners. Keep in mind that your first job most likely won’t be your dream job. You have to work up to that and pay your dues along the way. If you’re patient, and persistent, it will come. One of my dreams in college was to own my own web design firm, and now I do. Was it easy? Heck no! Thomas Edison once said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Wow…You never know when you might be around the corner from success. Never give up.

Excellence requires hard work.2) Whatever you do, push yourself to excel. Do your best, and then go and do better. Go the extra mile, and then another. I can’t stress this enough. Many nights during college my friends found me up late, working all night on web sites or graphic design concepts. I was exploring new ideas, new concepts, new directions, new skills, and loving what I was doing. I was pushing myself to excel. It may be tempting at times to sit back and take an easy ride through college. Do that and you’ll end up finding another career. There are plenty of other people in the workforce who are extremely motivated, talented, and willing to put in the effort it takes to get jobs in web design and graphic design. (Make sure to take some time to have fun though - we all need time to regenerate, or we’ll burn out.) Many of my classmates in college who were graphic design majors are now pursuing other careers because they didn’t push themselves to excel, and they didn’t want it enough. Some of them were very talented, but talent isn’t enough. If you push yourself to excel starting now, you will reap the rewards later.

Find a source of inspiration, and you will find your style.3) Find a source of inspiration, and you will find your style. This piece of advice was given to me by a senior design student when I was a sophomore in college. It’s one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received. He told me go to Barnes and Noble, spend some time in the Art section, find a graphic design book that inspired me, and buy it. He said, then to keep it with you at all times, and make it your Design Bible. Spend time studying the designs, examining them, deconstructing them, recreating them, altering them, creating spinoffs, and don’t worry about copying - just get inspired and start designing. He promised me that through that I would find my style. He was right. I found a book about Neville Brody, who became my all-time favorite graphic designer. I followed this advice, and quickly found my style. You might think that this would only lead you to become a copycat. (Well, maybe if you don’t have ethics or creativity.) When you start designing, it is perfectly legitimate to copy a great designer, while you are learning. (Educational projects only - not for commercial projects.) If you have any creativity in you at all, before long you will be creating completely unique designs in the style that inspired you, but with many unique twists and variations that you alone could come up with. Trust me, this works.

4) Design with precision. It’s easy to get so caught up in a great concept for a project that we don’t complete it down to the last detail. Businesses hire designers and ad agencies because they want work done with professional polish. Early in my graphic design training in college, it was easy for me to start design projects, but not finish them. I would show off my “great concept” and then leave it unfinished, or finish it roughly so I could move on to my next “great concept”. After all, it is a great concept, right? Wrong. My graphic design professor shared a quote by famous modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “God is in the details.” That statement changed me. After I heard that, I resolved in my mind that from said point onward I would execute designs with precision. This is the mark of a professional designer. Avoid sloppy coding and unresolved visual designs.

5) Learn to respect deadlines. Deadlines exist for a reason, and even in your college classes, start taking deadlines seriously. During my last summer before graduating college, I worked a 4 month temp job with a Fortune 100 company. This was not a summer job or internship - it was a professional temp job and I got paid very well. It was a great experience - a hybrid position of print and web design and we cranked out projects by the truckload. During this job I was determined to singlehandedly improve their corporate image and be the Neville Brody of their company. After all, I thought to myself, “I’m a great designer and I know better than these people.” Well, it goes without saying that I had the wrong attitude. The people at this company knew their business much better than I did and there was a reason they had deadlines. For most projects I got them done with no problem by the set deadline, but there were a few where I simply took too long because I putting too much time into the design of it.

At the end of the job, the people I worked with gave me some constructive feedback. The marketing director said that I was one of the nicest people she had ever worked with and that she loved my design style, but that if she could give me one piece of advice for the future, it was to be a little more conscious of deadlines. The creative director said something very similar, “When it comes to design, you kick ass and take names, but it may not get appreciated if you miss deadlines.” That was very good advice. The ambitious artist in me came down to earth a little. Granted, I still think they could have put a little more value on design, but I took the kernel of truth and learned from it. I fully believe that designers have an obligation to make our creations as artistic as possible, but it’s important to also accomplish the purpose of the piece. If it’s a monthly marketing piece, then it doesn’t do much good if it’s late, even if it’s incredibly eye-appealing. I also don’t believe designers should sell out and lose their artistic soul, as many other artists accuse us of. Just keep in mind that everything we create whether print or web, has to achieve a purpose, and if a project misses a deadline, then there is a chance it may not accomplish its purpose.

Start taking on freelance clients.6) Start taking on freelance clients NOW! Don’t wait till your senior year. Do as much freelance work for targeted clients (pick clients that are what you want to design for) as soon as you can, even as a freshman. That has helped my career more than anything. When I entered the workforce, I first had to take design jobs that paid the bills but weren’t exactly what I wanted, because I didn’t have the experience yet. My first few design jobs were print graphic design, but I’ve been designing killer web sites as a freelancer since my second year of college, and that’s gotten me where I wanted to go. You have to show employers what you can do for them…so you have to have something that represents your style…whether it’s from your full-time job or from freelance work. If you don’t have clients in the right category, design quality “fake” projects and call them “Conceptual work”. That is more acceptable these days. At my very first professional full-time job after graduating college, everyone thought I was 27 years old and mid-career, because I pushed myself to excel in college, and had gained experience through freelancing and working professional temp jobs in the field. (Which leads me to my next point.)

Make your summers count.7) Make your summer vacations count. See your summers as an opportunity to build a foundation for your career instead of taking easy “summer jobs”. A very practical way to gain some real-world experience before you graduate, is to take professional temp jobs during summers in your specific field of graphic design or web design. Contact web/graphic design talent agencies (like AQUENT, Creative Group, etc) and meet with them. These people are in the business of connecting businesses and job candidates, so they know what employers are looking for, and what employees want in a job. Doing temp work is a relatively low-risk way to find out what your weaknesses are, so you can improve before you graduate. Also, working with staffing agencies will give you the opportunity to greatly improve your resume. See point #10. When you graduate and are ready to start your career, staffing agencies can get you jobs fast, and can get your resume in the hands of more companies than you could alone. You may want to start off doing temp jobs for a year or two and see what it’s like at a variety of companies, risk-free. I got to work on short projects at a variety of ad agencies and see how they worked. Or, you may choose to jump right in, and commit to a full-time gig. Either way, these firms can be a huge help.

Some creative staffing/temp agencies to get you started:

Directory listings of creative staffing agencies:

Don’t forget to in Google, Yahoo, and local directories online. Here’s a few examples:

These are by no means complete lists. These are merely here to get you started. If you really want to succeed, do more research on your own to find even more leads to follow.

8) Networking is essential. You’ve heard this before, but it’s often not what you know, but who you know. Or, more accurately, you can know all the right things, but if you don’t know the right people, it won’t do you any good. Start networking now. Build relationships, seek out professionals in your field that you already know and ask them for advice, attend local events in your field, talk to your professors and ask them for contacts, advice, etc. (CareerBuilder Campus has a quick guide to networking.) Here are some specific steps that will make your networking more effective:

  • Get your own web domain so you can have a custom email address and home for your portfolio site. (They are very inexpensive, so its well worth it.) Having a free email address doesn’t present the most professional image when you are going for a web design or graphic design job. Employers in these fields expect you to be web-savvy and a custom email address (yourname@yourdomain.com) gives a little extra edge.
  • Design professional-looking business cards and get them professionally printed. (VistaPrint.com is very affordable, easy-to-use, and has some high-quality options.) That way, when you network, you can hand your new contact your great-looking business card, and watch the smile on their face as they get impressed. If you are a graphic designer, the expectation level will be higher, so it better look good. (If you’re a web designer, have a good graphic designer you know design your card. You both can exchange services and help each other out.)
  • Get your portfolio up on searchable portfolio sites like CreativeHotlist.com, Portfolios.com, Coroflot.com, etc. Companies can find you through these sites.
  • Get networked on sites like LinkedIn.com. (Again, start with professors and professionals that you already know in the field.) LinkedIn is both a great way to network, and to look for jobs. Definitely install and use their LinkedIn JobsInsider and other free tools.

Your first interview will be intimidating if you don't know what you're worth.9) Research salaries for your experience level and geographic location. Go into your interviews prepared. Really prepared. Most employers will try to get the best talent for the lowest price. That means taking advantage of those new to the professional world. You can earn a decent salary even at your first professional full-time job if you do your homework. You can find all the salary info you need on Monster.com at http://content.monster.com/salarybenefits/ Prospective employers will also be impressed if you know what you’re worth. That shows initiative, and confidence. When I entered the workforce, I knew what I was worth, and got paid $10K more than most of my friends in the same field at their first job after college.

10) Optimize your resume. Get advice from your professors in your field, the career center at your school, and any professionals you know in the field. Then meet with corporate recruiters at a web design or graphic design staffing agency, and get as much advice as you can. When I graduated, I had pretty well-written resume, and I got a good amount of phone calls from prospective employers. After a couple of years, I updated my resume, and followed some advice on respected job sites. I got no calls…at all! How was I getting fewer calls then when I was fresh out of college? I showed my resume to a recruiter specific to my industry and they gave me some great advice for rewriting my resume. I implemented the changes immediately and within a week started getting a TON of calls.

Barnes and Noble sells a handy to guide to writing you resume that can get you started: SparkCharts Resume Guide. (If you prefer, you can buy the PDF and print it yourself.)

11) Don’t exaggerate your work experience. This is important because I’ve noticed many college graduates tend to do this. Unless you have had significant professional work experience before you graduate college, then the “work experience” clock starts ticking the day you graduate. In other words, as the interviewer sees it, you have none. Employers don’t generally count jobs before you graduate when they are considering your work experience, so don’t go in telling them you have a lot of experience in the field, when you’re going in for an entry-level job. (That is, unless you actually do.) They’ll see right through it (annoyed with your lack of perspective), pat you on the head and say goodbye. It’s ok to be honest, because it’s an entry-level job, and they are hiring you based on the potential they see in you from your portfolio. On that note, never refer to what you “learned in college”. Just quietly put it into practice and be willing to learn from those more experienced than you. They most likely got where they are for a reason, and you need to have the attitude of humility and willingness-to-learn when entering the workforce. In my case, I actually had some good experience when I graduated, because I had started two web design companies, designed some great web sites for freelance clients that are still in my portfolio, and worked a 4 month temp job with a Fortune 100 company before finishing college. That put me ahead of the curve.

Have others review your portfolio extensively.12) Have a killer portfolio. “Wow, great advice,” you might say (sarcastically). No, seriously. You need to have a killer portfolio, whether web or print, that shows you’re heads above the competition. How do you get a killer portfolio? This is only possible if you have something to put in your portfolio. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if your portfolio includes mostly student work, you probably won’t be getting a job. See points #2, #6, and #7. Once you have assembled a portfolio of brilliant work (whether web or print), have it reviewed by professors, classmates, and professionals you know, and ask them to be extremely blunt. Then make the changes and do it again. Repeat until their faces light up with wonder at your amazing portfolio.

Additional resources for your web design or graphic design job search:

Job Search Sites:

Job Listings:

Freelance/Gig Sites:

Career Advice Sites:

Other:

  • Remember to use search engines as a tool to help you find interesting companies in your area, and be sure to include local search in your strategy.

Final Thoughts

I put this guide together for college students because I wish someone had been there to share these things with me as I went through college. It would’ve saved me from learning things the hard way. I’ve also watched some talented friends of mine with the same major in college pursue other careers because they didn’t know these principles. In the early part of my career path I had some speed bumps, wrong turns, and detours until I figured things out. Hopefully this quick guide can give you some tips to get you on the path to your dream career. There is much more I could share, but it would be a book. Feel free to leave feedback and make suggestions as I’ll be updating this from item to time. Best of luck to you in your career. :)

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