You just graduated and you want a design job? Neat. Here’s some stuff to think about as you apply.

1. If you are addressing another human being who can give you a job, spell that person’s name correctly. I don’t care if you have to spend half an hour Googling and crawling through the sludge of LinkedIn to ensure you’ve got it right. Do everything within your power to spell that person’s name correctly. If you misspell a job giver’s name, that person can safely assume you have little regard for details, and design is often all about the details.
2. Your resumé needs to be clean and well organized. Don’t overdesign. Yes, your resumé should be an expression of who you are, but “person who goes nuts and overdesigns things in a way that is gimmicky and difficult to navigate” is likely not who anyone is looking to recruit.
3. You have to be able to talk about design. As designers, many of us are most happy when we can plug in our earbuds and design without having to fool with anyone else or explain what we’re doing. But when you are trying to get a design job, you are going to have to talk about design. When you are up against other candidates, the ones who can speak about the work they do — their process, their inspirations, their method, their favorite projects, their background, etc. — are going to get a leg up. If you have not given much thought to the things that drive you as a designer, or why some design is good and some design is bad, or how you approach projects, then do that now. Practice your spiel. Be able to speak about space, balance, hierarchy, color, composition and how those things affect the viewer/reader experience.
4. Know some things about the company you’re applying to. It’s OK if you don’t know every idiosyncratic thing about the place where you’re applying. But you should have a certain baseline level of knowledge. At least do some research before applying so you can ask intelligent questions if you get a call back. I recruit for a place with “design studio” in the name, and I sometimes get applicants with interior design and fashion backgrounds who have absolutely no idea what they just applied for. They are wasting their time and mine because they did not even so much as Google the place where they were going to try to get a job.
5. Know some things about the city you are applying to work in. Cost of living differences can be huge from city to city. Do your research before you start discussing salary requirements. (See No. 6.)
6. Put your stuff on the internet and don’t make anyone work too hard to find it. You want a job designing and you need to be able to show your skills off. Design is visual. Job givers want to look at what you’ve done. It’s OK if it’s not perfect or if you’re still learning. We need to be able to easily access it so we can gauge your skill level and envision how you might fit into the team. It’s also a helpful gauge of just how proactive and communicative you are. Show your work and make it easy to find. Put a link to it on your resumé. Don’t make a recruiter ask to see examples of your work.
7. Don’t put someone else’s work in your portfolio. I once interviewed a young designer who was two years out of college and had a really great looking portfolio. Very colorful and creative, and stylistically varied throughout. I thought I had really found something special. When I talked to her, however, it became clear that she hadn’t done any of the colorful, creative illustrations or treatments in her portfolio. They had been done by the illustrator on staff. She had simply placed the type on the page around the illustrations. That wasn’t clear at all from this designer’s website, where the pages were presented as being her work entirely. If your work relies heavily on assets created by others, make sure you are noting that clearly in your portfolio somehow. And then go a step further by noting or talking about the collaboration that went into the overall presentation, as that might be a strength an interviewer will want to know about.
8. Don’t start negotiating a salary from your low point. Recently I had an applicant who, in her application, listed a salary requirement of 100 Pokédollars. (Let’s use fake money for this example, because I know most of you are addicted to Pokémon Go right now.) I took a look at her work and interviewed her, and thought 100 Pokédollars was a fair deal for someone with her experience and skill level. I offered her a job that paid 100 Pokédollars, the amount she had requested. She replied with a counter! She said she had done some research on cost of living and decided that she should actually ask for something more like 150 Pokédollars, which is what she was currently making at her job. I found that to be exceptionally odd; applicants should do that kind of research before supplying a salary requirement, because once you state a salary requirement, it’s difficult to convince an employer to go up from it. Never start out with your lowest number. Never. But, I decided to work with this applicant and up our offer to 140 Pokédollars, plus a good chunk of Pokédollars to help her move across the country. She did something so strange then that I am still having trouble understanding it. She countered again, and asked for 165 Pokédollars, saying that 150 Pokédollars had been her baseline this whole time. That is not how negotiations work. You don’t start low and negotiate up.
9. Have an attitude that lets your potential employer know you are up for challenges. This is especially important for young designers trying to break into the industry and gain experience and get some footing. Design is about creative problem solving and thinking on your feet, sometimes with limited resources. If you get spooked easily by change or evolution or uncertainty, you are going to have a hard time being a good designer. Find a way to, instead, be fueled by these things. Some of the best design work I have ever seen has come about in unexpected situations where people were innovating on the spot. Being able to do that is so crucial for not just designers, but employees who wish to stand out among their colleagues.
10. Be open to working sometimes crappy hours. This is especially applicable if you are getting into an industry that functions 24/7 (cough journalism cough). You might not get a gig with cushy hours for a long time, if ever. Don’t let that keep you from fully jumping into an assignment that is going to challenge you and make you a better designer, and give you a chance to shine.