Three ways to help you find the right design role for YOUR needs
Looking for your next gig, opportunity, or followed a long chain of clickbait in the “More from Medium” suggestions? Looking for your next design role in today’s digital world can be confusing and time-consuming. We often shoehorn skills into our portfolio to suit what companies and recruiters want to see from us. It is not often we address our own design needs and interests to help find the right role for us.
For many of us, there is an abundance of platforms, design disciplines, and recruitment agencies to interact with along your journey in finding the perfect design role. Varying experience levels, industries, and generic design jargon in job specifications make this a much more complex process than first thought.
So let’s keep it simple…
Rule of 3.
3 themes, 3 points, and 3 links to aid you in finding a design role that suits YOUR needs, as opposed to tailoring your skills and experience to suit their job requirements…
Chapter 1
Assess.
Analyse.
Adjust.
Assess
A good way to start, before you even look at the matrix that is a job board, is to analyse what you have done over the last 3 to 6 months.
- What projects have you worked on?
- What have you achieved?
- What skills and tools have you used on these?
Without taking a look at what you have enjoyed and disliked in previous roles, it will be difficult to find what you are looking for in your next one. Assessing your previous role can even open up good ideas for questions you might want answers for in an interview.
“I see you put Powerpoint as a requirement in your Digital Design job spec, how much of this role will require that?” Hmmm.. 🔔
Analyse
How should I go about this, you ask?
You can start by taking all the notes you jotted down in your analysis and divide them into Pros and Cons. You may have enjoyed a crowdfunding campaign, generating the creative and designing the landing page (Pro)…. but thoroughly disliked altering, tweaking and iterating on the email template to send out to those new investors… (Con).
Adjust
The assessment should give you a good idea now of what skills, processes and programs you enjoy and those you don’t. Now you need to ask yourself a question, what are you looking for next? Are you looking for a refresh in projects, company and culture doing the same stuff you like… or… did you really enjoy something in a previous project that you very rarely get to do?
It could be time to adjust your portfolio with projects tailored more to what you want to do. Did you get a taste for motion graphics and video editing on the crowdfund brief?
Chapter 2
Creativity.
Culture.
Career.
When you get to choosing roles to apply to, it may be worth thinking about how to find that perfect fit. This is more than just the job specification and more about the company or organisation you will be joining. Are you looking to be in a fun, creative, dynamic culture or finding the right place to thrive and grow to great heights on your career path? Here’s a brief overview of what you might find and where…
Corporates:
Larger teams to grow in with plenty of individuals to learn from, often working on projects or brands that are widely recognised.
Pros — Big brands out there with lots of career paths to progress on.
Con — Could lack the opportunity to work on a variety of products using a wide range of skills (often more specialised). Small cog in a big wheel.
Start-up or Scale-ups:
These organisations provide plenty of opportunity for proactive designers. Have an idea? Go try it! A business that offers flexibility and fosters curiosity by trial and error to learn fast and acquire knowledge.
Pros — Opportunity to grow within and define the business with great reward. Learn fast, fail faster.
Cons — Job security… 9 in 10 Start-ups fail. Can have growing pains, shifts in culture and business proposition. No job is beneath you; everyone needs to muck in.
Agencies:
Huge exposure to different brands, projects, people, networks. Fast-paced design environment to deliver for clients with plenty of case studies for your portfolio.
Pros — Accelerate your skills and portfolio on different brands and projects to find out what really makes you tick.
Cons — Your work can be just for a pitch, or not go live. The battle of ‘Client expectations’ vs ‘Client budget’ and the deadlines to deliver it can lead to some late nights.
Chapter 3
Tools.
Tips.
Tricks.
Tools
There are some great sites out there that provide design industry-specific roles. Whether you are choosing to be a UX Designer for a technology company or a Brand Designer for an e-commerce agency.
Awwwards — Web & E-commerce roles
Dribbble — Technology
DesignJobsBoard — Everything design
Tips
Tailor your portfolio to the jobs you are applying for. If you are looking at applying for a few different roles as you’re more interested in the company and culture, make sure you hit multiple touchpoints that show a good range of overall design principles.
Stay humble, know your limits. 2 years of experience will make it difficult to land a senior role. If you want more help and guidance on expectations at different levels of seniority, check out our TOIL framework.
Job boards, reviews and Glassdoor should all be taken with a pinch of salt. Often only the disgruntled will leave reviews and they may not have read this post in order to find the right role…
Instead, look deeper into the company for facts.
- Who are their clients, investors and what is their involvement?
- Can you see their client case study projects live?
Tricks
Do you have anymore questions..? — Interviewer
One to always prepare for, but often you have done your due diligence and asked so many already. So how might you round it all off you ask? Well, to find out if they have really valued your time and portfolio presentation. To find out if they are the perfect role for you… you could ask them this?
“Now you have met me, seen my work and what I have to offer… what do you think will be my biggest challenge in your role?”
These are based around my own personal experiences, so I would love to hear if there are other ways out there. How have you tackled finding the right design role? Please let me know in the comments below.
