New Year Advice for your Career
The start of the New Year brings on our renewed focus to improve our working lives and what we want in a career now and in the future. Whether you are looking to move up in your current field or find a brand-new role, we hope the advice given by industry leaders we have interviewed over the year, will give you the inspiration you are looking for.
What advice can you give to individuals looking for jobs right now?
“Be passionate, do your research and dare to be different. Having spent a significant amount of time in my career going through CV’s and interviewing people, you see the same information time and to me again. Similar CV templates, similar covering letters, similar key skills and text used. It’s important to think outside the box, be different.” Laura Coleby, Director at 67degrees
“Go deep and specific. Don’t spam your generic CV out to 5000 places. Come up with your top 3 dream places to work, and do a customised, bespoke application for the number 1 place. If that doesn’t work, do the same for number 2, and so on. Think shock and awe, make your application so unique and amazing the recipient and surrounding team will want to gather around and look at it. Get creative, have fun with it. Make it so good/thoughtful they can’t not invite you in for a chat.” Tom Ross, CEO Design Cuts
“If you are entering the creative industry think of ways to creatively stand out – that can be in tone of voice, tenacity or design. Also do look for the culture of a company that you really think you will love being a part of. You will never do your best work if you don’t love what you do and who you are doing it for.” Tina Keeble Founder Valiant Design
“I really feel for aspiring animators because finding jobs in our industry is incredibly difficult. It’s so competitive that we get between 30 to 50 applications every week from graduates/artists who want work experience or unpaid internships. We employ our artists and animators based solely on the quality of their showreel and my advice would be to invest in this and showcase work which is going to be attractive to an employer, rather than showing off weird stuff that you like or which you think demonstrates technical competence.
When I look at a showreel, I’m always thinking about specific client projects that would be appropriate for that artist. Showing off a 3D dragon or some dark animated film you’ve made, and love is fine, but it’s not typically the sort of thing that I need to see as an employer. Keep yourself and your work front of mind by staying in touch with studios and networking at events like Festivus (look it up on Facebook). Lastly, as long as you’re in a nurturing environment where you can hone your skills, don’t worry too much about the money. Take junior roles, internships and apprenticeships where you can, and the financial benefits will come around really quickly.” James Hill Director Fudge
“You need to be either:
A – outstanding at what you do, one of the best in your field.
or
B – have a genuine and insatiable passion to learn to be “the best you can be” in a specific task/field/role.
If you aren’t the best at what you do, then you must have the eager-want to learn to be the best!
I meet so many people who “claim” to be “budding” or “junior” designers/developers/marketers but have never done anything in their own time to learn the very basics. The people we hire run their own online campaigns (just for fun or to test theories), build or design their friends and family’s websites, and help out local businesses with their burgeoning talent.” Graham Darracott MD DPC
