Getting Your First Junior Creative Job After Graduating

Its that time of year where the market gets a huge influx of fresh creative talent from the newly qualified graduates.

However, once the celebrations have finished the cold reality of the real world starts to sink in. Unfortunately, from my observations, what most of the creative courses out there seem to be lacking in is probably one of the most difficult challenges a graduate will have - getting a job!

It’s a competitive world out there so we thought we would write a few pointers that may need help getting on the first rung of the ladder:

1. Decide what you want to do! Sounds crazy but this a really hard thing to do – especially if you have never worked in the industry before. Sometimes a “suck it and see” approach is all you can do but watch out because there is so much competition about it is very easy to be pigeon holed. The best advice I can give you is to do what you love doing – if you like being creative then become a designer, if you love the detailed technical aspects then you prefer to be an artworker etc.
2. Make a great CV. Ok so you don’t have a great deal of experience – neither do the other thousands of Graduates joining the job market every year. If you don’t have any work experience then go and get some. Volunteer to work for places for free, design for yourself / friends / business associates. Get involved with organisations, schools, competitions etc. It all goes down to experience and can come under the guise of freelance experience of necessary. It is this initiative which will separate the wheat from the chaff.
3. Portfolio – Every creative candidate should have one and the best CVs have some portfolio samples on them or even better – a link to a website that holds your samples. This is your lifeblood and will be the difference of you getting an interview or not.
4. Campaign – Getting a job is a job in itself! Of course, we will be there to take away some of the leg work but don’t forget that a lot of clients like to hire their juniors directly. Normally they will use agencies if the role is urgent or the job is more specialist / hard to fill. Graduates don’t normally come under this banner. This means you are going to have to get out their and promote yourself too – use email / e-shots, create some flyers, join all the jobsites and scour the internet.
5. Get in touch – get frustrated that you don’t get contacted very often by agencies / companies. You would be surprised how many candidates are looking to get a job at anyone time – especially graduates / juniors. You need to understand that there is a lot of competition out there and you need to make yourself standout and be remembered. The internet and email is a great method of communication but there is nothing more effective than a phone call.
6. Keep going! Perseverance and common sense will always prevail. Once you are on on the first step of the ladder you will find things get a lot easier. Don’t sell yourself short, have confidence in yourself and work hard and the rest will fall into place…

Nike's amazing football advert by Guy Ritchie

There is no escaping the amazing amount of sport we have this summer and its started off with some more footy (is anybody actually watching it?)! We really love Nike's latest football advert which is creative effort between Nike and 72andSunny as well as Guy Ritchie, who actually directed the short clip and will continue to direct a series of short clips for Nike.

Nike has always been one of the leaders when it comes to marketing and branding itself and a lot of it is due to it’s healthy relationship with various media companies such as W+K and now 72andSunny. Now we have the latest from Nike and 72andSunny, a Nike Soccer (Futbol) commercial looking to, “Take it to the Next Level”.

It really takes you back to the days when your ambition were slightly different and is one of the best commercials we’ve seen to date!

Check it out: http://www.nike.com/nikeos/p/nikefootball/en__EMEA/index.html

Getting a job you love as a designer.

For our first blog I thought it would be most appropriate to write about a topic which seems to be a common problem most designers – a strategy for getting a job they love. Unfortunately, this is not usually because the right job is not out there or that you are not right for the job but, more often than not, the opportunity is missed right from the beginning because the right approach is not being taken.

To quote one of our clients, ATTIK, “you can dress it up as much as you like, but what ATTIK tries to do, along with every communication company worth its salt, is to get the consumers of our clients’ brands to do something – buy.”

In order to do this, a good designer must be able to create something that can appeal and compel the end user to influence their will and make them purchase their brand. A great designer must know its target audience and make their clients’ brand be perceived as being right choice instead of others.

Why is it that so many good designers that can do this for their client but struggle to do this for themselves when it comes to job hunting? I believe this is because they don’t view themselves as a recruitment consultant will view them – as a brand of person which is to be sold.

If you can think of yourself in this way and approach job hunting in a similar way to a marketing campaign for one of your clients then would you do things differently?

If you can campaign your job hunting, making your CV and portfolio pitch perfect, making it standout from other CVs, bespoke for the focused target audience you want hit the success won’t be far off. If getting the perfect job is a priority then you must use all the communication mediums any full service agency would (web, print, phone, email etc.).

There is now more competition now than ever and getting the right job requires motivation, focus and competitiveness. Of course you can always get your friendly neighbourhood recruitment consultant to give you a hand….

Welcome to our new blog!

Gloss now have a new blog, from now on we'll be using this blog as one of our main communication tools, you will find a wide range of news here. Feel free to leave comments and let us know what you think, your opinions are important to us.

Please visit www.glossrecruitment.com for more information about us and our services.