5 essential tips for candidates in the digital sector

Gavin Holland
Aug 25, 2017 · 4 min read

I feel compelled to write this. Slightly out of frustration but mainly around seeing potentially good candidates fail at the first hurdle and not do themselves justice. I’ve been in the digital industry well over 20 years now and over half of those as a hiring manager for in-house and agency digital teams. I’ve been involved in countless interviews and seen hundreds of CVs. This blog isn’t strictly about the skills needed but more about 5 periphery things you can do to vastly improve your chances of at least getting an interview (with me anyway!). I sincerely hope this is useful and rest assured this advice comes from a genuine place of wanting to help you, the applicant, improve your chances of making progress in the digital industry.

1. What you bring along to an interview sets an important tone

You really need to bring a laptop. When we ask for a portfolio presentation for the interview stage and you say you don’t have a laptop I sit with the HR team and we have a collective sigh together. Regardless of level, if you don’t have a laptop it makes me feel like you aren’t a serious ‘digital’ person. There may be underlying economic reasons why you can’t afford one (and in that instance, I understand) but for me personally, it matters a lot. As well as a laptop please turn up with pad and pen too — yes, it’s old school but it tells me you are prepared, focussed and interested in what we might be telling you about the role. You’d be surprised even at senior level the amount of people who turn up with nothing at all. This is a huge bugbear of mine.

2. What makes you memorable?

This doesn’t mean come in doing the conga or wearing a funny hat. Any manager wants professional competent people but we also want people who are going to add something to the mix of their team from a personality and life experience perspective. Ideally this would be a creative pursuit that shows you have an active and vibrant imagination…painting, drawing, music composition, glass blowing….anything. Sporting endeavour is also a good one. If you are doing anything of this Ilk then tell us about it and don’t be a shrinking violet.

3. Make your CV clean and concise

The most common pitfalls:

· Don’t include pictures of yourself — they are almost always cringe worthy. We can see you on LinkedIn if we really want to

· Don’t add too much detail. We are busy people too and probably won’t read it all. Two pages is more than enough

· Check and check again for spelling and grammar mistakes. It matters a lot if we spot mistakes. For overseas or non-English speaking applicants please get help with this to ensure your intro paragraph reads well to a native English speaker

· Don’t use an overly wacky format. We are looking for solid and clean composition that presents the information using a legible font with adequate contrast. If your CV is hard to read and doesn’t show a degree of empathy for accessibility then how can we trust you to design for our precious customers?

4. Stay clear of Portfolio clichés

· Don’t add too much descriptive copy around your work examples. We’ll dig deeper in the interview if needed. Just tell us the client name, what your specific involvement was, deliverables & when you did it

· Don’t try and tell us what good process looks like. So often I see candidates include the same double diamond process flows copied from google. We know what good process is and we’ll dig deeper about your knowledge in an interview

· We see a lot of pictures of candidates pointing at walls of post-it notes. Think differently here and instead show us some of your working out — sketches, wires, prototypes…anything that shows your thought process

· Customer impact. It’s depressing when we have to prompt applicants to highlight where they have used customer insights as part of their design rationale. This is very important so make a feature of it where you have it. Show us pics of usability sessions or any other customer engagement as a prompt for you to elaborate on it

5. Do your research and surprise us with insight

I always throw it back to the candidates in an interview to tell me what they think are the key opportunities concerning the specific role and the company itself. This is a good barometer to see if you have thoroughly read the job description and are genuinely interested in the company. Take time to read the description and do your homework about the company and make some notes. Look at the wider landscape in relation to the company also. For example, if the company is in the financial sector, don’t just focus on the obvious suite of products and services but look at what else is happening in the wider digital landscape in this sector — what are the key innovation areas? Surprise us with your knowledge and insight.

I won’t go into job role specifics but these are the periphery things that have become real cornerstones of hiring for me in digital. One final thing — make sure you have taken time to get at least some LinkedIn recommendations. We WILL read them.

Good luck and I sincerely hope you succeed,
Gavin

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Gavin Holland

Written by

Head of Design at Sky Betting and Gaming

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