Support Session Summary

So it’s been 2 years since I started offering pro bono support sessions to undergraduates and recent graduates from design courses (and wider creative courses). In truth, I could have sworn it was 3, but I’ve checked the dates and it’s just 2. Probably the COVID vortex that twists time and reality affecting my memory and judgement.

I decided to take a break from these support sessions over the summer – more to focus on support of my daughters who were at critical points in their education – and I’ve been thinking a great deal about how I should either reinstate the existing system, stop altogether or find a happy medium. It actually mirrors my thoughts on A-Level teaching which I’ve been supporting for the last 2 years.

So I thought it might be interesting to capture some of the key topics of conversation that tend to crop up in most of these support sessions. Admittedly, they are all different, but I invariably end up discussing one or a combination of any of the below. For those who may find seeking out such advice in a direct conversation tricky, I figured it might be useful/interesting.

Many of these points have been made in different ways in other articles I’ve posted over the last few years, but these are the ones that are most prevalent in conversations.

In no particular order…

1. Start making connections.

Most of my conversations with either undergrads looking for placements, final year students looking for jobs or recent grads scouring the jobs market result in a conversation about making connections. It astounds me (and yet simultaneously doesn’t if I remember how wracked with fear I was about having a phone conversation with a potential employer when I was 19) that so few of those looking for opportunities actually reach out to individuals for either a chat or advice. Pretty much without fail, most students/grads tell me how many applications they’ve sent out, what their contact list spreadsheet looks like and how many companies have “simply not responded!” And yet, none of them have thought to seek out the people in the businesses they wish to work in and get in touch.

Unlike many generations beforehand, you have the most amazing, instant tools at your disposal to find the people you need. With LinkedIn alone, you can pretty much find the exact person in the exact role in the exact company you need to get in touch with. However, most simply make a VERY long list of all the design consultancies found on a certain website, they make a note of all the hello@ or jobs@ or getintouch@ email address for all the aforementioned consultancies, spend far too long crafting their portfolios (see later point) and then blanket bomb ALL the assimilated email address with an asinine or vacuous opening email which they expect to secure a job from.

THIS. DOESN’T. WORK.

There are myriad reasons why, but it just doesn’t.

Unless you are very, very, very lucky.

The best thing to do is start having conversations with people. This isn’t about spamming everyone of interest, sending them spurious connection requests and then asking them for a job. This is about building your network of influence. Starting to seek out the right people to start having conversations with. Discovering their industry. Asking for recommendations for other people to talk to. Being interested in what they do and how they got there. Seeking advice.

If you are interesting and courteous and passionate about what you do, this will come across and decent people will acknowledge and respect this. They will invariably support you along your journey if they can’t support you directly. They all know you need a job. You don’t need to spell it out. These people are all veterans of the industry and will have been in your position themselves at one point, if not a few.

The more you put into building genuine connections and relationships, the more you will benefit. Period. It’s harder to do because you need to put yourself out there a bit more. It’s harder than sending out 50 identikit emails with a portfolio attachment and waiting under a duvet. It requires you to fit around other people’s diaries. You have to be available and you have to be responsive. But it works.

Remember those soft skills? That.

2. Show me how your mind works.

I can’t imagine how many undegraduate and graduate portfolios I’ve seen over the years (insert something about pennies and hot dinners!), and I have written a fair bit about the approaches I feel are appropriate when designing your own portfolio, but one thing that comes up again and again is ‘process’.

So many portfolios are simply a catalogue of output. Screenshots, sketches, renders, prototype photos, models, Photoshop visuals…the list is endless. And most portfolios seem to treat these individual outputs as items to be placed on a page on their own merit – as if the sheer evidence of a page of sketches is enough.

Most people looking to hire a designer, are seeking individuals who they can deploy onto other projects. It is rare that you will ever be reproducing the coffee machine or the can crusher or the diabetes monitor you crafted at Uni in your new role. You will be expected to apply your skills to a new brief – with regularity, consistency and in parallel, and the variety and breadth of briefs will be unpredictable. So the employer is looking for evidence that you can do all the things they think someone of your age, talent and experience should be able to do. And the only tangible way they can do this with any efficiency is with your portfolio. So you need to demonstrate HOW you tackled a problem, HOW you researched it, HOW you found the idea to proceed with, HOW you resolved and refined the idea, HOW you ensured it was manufacturable and HOW you presented it to the client so they understood.

If you do this properly and with impact, succinctness (he says), consistency and panache, you will not only impress with your work, you will prove that you have the skills that your future employer can confidently utilise on many other projects that come through the door. Giving someone confidence that you will approach something with rigour, analysis, flair and pragmatism – whatever the topic, or subject matter – will be an absolute godsend.

I’ll also add the word ‘narrative’ to the mix here. To be honest, if you do a good job or explaining HOW, then the narrative bit should follow, but it’s always worth remembering that human brains work better with stories and narratives. If each of your projects have a natural flow and narrative to them across the duration of the project, it makes our ability to understand them easier and we naturally fill in the gaps. Also, you shouldn’t always assume that the person interviewing you is a designer or understands your course modules. Your work should be – in the most part – understandable and interesting to a marketer, CEO, Engineering Lead or any other business function who may be in the room.

3. Attitude over skills.

I recently gave a talk to an audience about the importance of soft skills (and shared the script for this here), and I firmly believe that had I relied entirely on my design abilities to get me a job or move me up the metaphorical career ladder, then I would have failed miserably. I would say I was an ‘above average’ designer but nothing to write home about.

What helped me more were my soft skills (which I didn’t realise at the time because you are too young and naïve). My abilities to connect with the people I was speaking to and forge a relationship – however fleeting – was the differentiator. My mother has always said I was a ‘spit’ of her father (who died when she was 16) but who forged a career (after leaving the army) as a shopkeeper. By engaging with people who came into the shop, he would start listening to their stories, get them to stay longer, slowly suggest additions to their shopping that they didn’t realise they needed, and have them leave spending twice as much as they had intended but with a smile on their face and a desire to return. That.

A positive, tenacious and endearing attitude will take you further and faster than any amount of attainable skills per se. I’m not suggesting you can ignore your studies, flunk your course and wing it, but the things you did less well in on your course can be more than made up for in the way you hold yourself and engage with others.

As an employer, you can teach skills, but you can’t teach attitude. Start with attitude and you are already most of the way there. As far as skills development is concerned, I can send you on a KeyShot course, get you to shadow a Photoshop whizz, sit you next to a SolidWorks expert, but if you don’t have the right attitude, nothing works.

So when you get an opportunity to speak to someone in the industry or are sat in an interview (shitting a proverbial brick), make sure you take the time to ask the person interviewing you how they are getting on? How was their holiday? Where did they go to Uni? That’s a cool piece of art in the background…who is it by? Comment on the bloody weather! Ask them their opinion. Make them laugh. Tell them stuff about you. Remember small facts about them that you can refer back to in your portfolio delivery. Information is king.

If – in the course of your interview – you can ascertain that the guy is a Dad to 2 teenage girls, hates camping and has a needy and slightly annoying dog (for instance!) then play to those bits of information in a positive and endearing way. Make him like you because if he likes you, it is likely that his clients will like you, and that will make him happy because it will likely make him money! Just sayin’.

4. Don’t overestimate ‘consultancy’.

I know I keep banging on about this, and in truth I can understand why many choose not to listen, but don’t presume to believe that ‘consultancies’ are the best and only choice for your career search or placement opportunity.

I would urge you to read the two articles I wrote about working in a ‘consultancy’ and working ‘in-house’. In summary, ‘consultancy’ is not half as glamorous or exciting as you are led to believe and ‘in house’ is often riddled with politics and glacial decision making. Having said that, both have huge benefits but please ensure you base your decision on evidence and reality, and not just anecdotal hearsay.

5. “I want London.”

My biggest facepalm moment in most support sessions is when undergraduates or graduates are given a sniff of an opportunity to work in amazing businesses, they simply decline on the basis of wanting solely to work in London.

I just don’t get it. But maybe it’s easy for me to say that because I’ve actively avoided London for most of my career (and I’ll admit the seduction of a particular business based in London was too much to refuse at one time!). There are so many interesting places to work and people to work for that are outside of the M25 and in beautiful, cultural, cosmopolitan, inspiring parts of the country or world.

Make the most of the time you have when you are relatively free of ties, financial responsibilities, family obligations and you are relatively cheap to hire. See the world. Or just see more of the UK (or whatever country you have graduated from). If that coincidentally happens to be London, then great, but don’t limit your search for reasons that are – in the main – invalid.

For Pete’s sake, don’t limit yourself before life does it for you.

6. Understand industry timings.

By the time I end up speaking to most students about job or placement applications, it’s invariably too late. Most are in blind panic mode and wanting to either wave a magic wand over their portfolio or summon up a perfect job from my network (incidentally, for any of those connected to me on LinkedIn, I regularly share/repost any jobs for undergrads/grads/juniors/midweights/seniors that appear on my feed, and regularly get asked by people in my network to repost stuff so it gets visibility, so keep an eye out and rifle through my recent activity if you don’t visit very often).

Many think that their priority is to complete their Uni assignments first and then prepare a portfolio about a month before they need to start their placements (slight exaggeration but not too far from the truth!), in part because they want to complete all their year’s work and then present it all in the portfolio.

However, the reality is that the industry will start looking for placement students around the January/February/March time. The same is true for graduate jobs (despite what many Uni’s will tell you about degree shows and New Designers). This is partly a by-product of wanting the ‘cream’ of the year group and not wanting to fight in the bear pit following degree show fever, but also a by-product of anticipated growth and business activity throughout the year. Companies are reluctant to hire in the lead up to the typically slow period of December/January, but will look to hire when things start to get busier in February/March and they have a better view of future project commitments for the remainder of the year. July/August are terrible for getting hold of people who are all taking well earned holidays or covering for colleagues who are taking holidays! By the time September/October comes around it’s all a bit too late and most businesses will struggle through the rest of the year without hiring….or they are concerned they will get less ideal candidates. April and May are OK but it’s highly likely that most students are doing all-nighters and sweating neat Monster around this time so to expect them to take a week out and focus on portfolios or job hunting is like asking the Pope to slut-drop!

My suggestion to all undergrads and grads is to put time into making connections in the Autumn and Winter months (most likely Winter months as Autumn is pretty much over by the time Uni’s are back and in full swing) and to make sure they have a workable portfolio (see later point) to circulate in late January/early February. Keep an eye out for opportunities and get yourself an up to date and relevant LinkedIn profile*

*Small note – please make sure that the picture you use in your CV or portfolio is the same one you use in your LinkedIn profile. Designers are visual people and consistency and recognition is much easier if these pictures are the same. And make sure I can recognise you from your photo. And smile….at least just a bit. It helps.

7. Stop ‘honing’ your portfolio.

Another bugbear of mine. Candidates saying they will start applying for jobs “…once I’ve redesigned my portfolio”!

Stop.

If you’ve got your ducks in a row and read/understood my earlier points, you will have a workable portfolio layout and structure/narrative that you can continue to add content to as you create it and complete projects.

But the key point here is ….You don’t need to show completed work before you share your portfolio. Any industry professional worth their salt will a) understand that your work is ongoing and there will be stuff you haven’t had time to include and that it is incomplete b) will be able to understand your thought process (see point 2) and not necessarily need the end result to see your potential and c) will be able to gauge your level of potential/skill in your work no matter how many times you ‘re-craft’ your pages. Much like an experienced chef will know exactly how good an aspiring chef is – and can be – by tasting their food (no matter how pretty it looks), so an experienced designer or leader will know exactly what you are capable of by looking at your portfolio and work, no matter how much you ‘hone’ the layout.

I can absolutely guarantee you that you will have more opportunities and a greater chance of success with a ‘work-in-progress’ portfolio and a great attitude at the right time (see earlier point) than a ‘honed’, version 7.0 portfolio at the wrong time.

That’s not to suggest you can throw it together. Take pride in all aspects of the craft of the portfolio, but don’t think you need to have fully completed work in there before you share it. Just note that the work is ongoing or ‘work in progress’. It’s all good.

8. Please read stuff before getting in touch.

The number of people that schedule a support session with me but haven’t read any of my earlier articles is starting to get on my wick. The whole point of writing so many articles to help undergrads and recent grads is to ensure that you have much of the collateral available to start.

It smacks of laziness if you literally can’t be arsed to read anything and want me to spoon feed you the same content over a call. I’ve even given you a link in the paragraph that describes how to book a session. It couldn’t be easier.

It potentially smacks of a wider trait of needing to be told stuff, rather than doing some donkey work and finding it out for yourself. Either way, please be respectful and do your homework.

9. Ideas are gold. Rock the ‘thinky’ stuff.

As a final point and as an adjunct to some of the other points in this post. I think it’s important to reiterate that whilst skills are useful, alongside attitude, raw ideas and your ability to really ‘think’ through a problem are the real finds as an employer of talent.

I always used to get a real buzz from discovering young designers who had the ability to challenge and question things. Not simply going through the motions, gathering reams of predictable internet guff into folders, laboriously sketching endless variations of the same old shit, pulling together Pinterest boards of predictable ‘designer’ porn, writing ‘How might we’ on thousands of Post-It notes, producing concept renders of meaningless, magical solutions…that sort of thing.

I mean kids that see ‘through’…not just ‘at’.

The ones that find genuinely new ideas for things that might not be capable of a sketch. Approach the problem from the left, not just the right. Put thoughts in order and think things through to a natural conclusion. Make sense of chaos. Bring order to apparent randomness. And I don’t necessarily mean crazy or ‘batshit’ ideas…which is the common misconception. Brilliant ideas don’t have to be radical or ‘blue sky’. They can just be really bloody sound ideas which make sense and have the makings of a creative business-savvy solution. Like the tiny idler gear that knits all the other unwieldy gears together.

So don’t be afraid to show people your ideas, and your ability to think. There are not enough brilliant KeyShot renders in the world that can countenance just one brilliant idea. I would rather pay someone to deliver a very few genuinely insightful and relevant ideas and solutions than have acres of output than doesn’t quite hit the mark….which from where I sit, seems to be the prevalent stance.

So-called ‘productivity’ over ‘creativity’ is a dangerous precedent.
I’m all for ‘profitability’ but productivity-led profitability has a fairly short shelf life if you don’t deliver creativity.

Annoyingly that’s only 9 points. My OCD needs 10, but I think this article is long enough already. I hope the above is useful to some. It does summarise the huge number of direct conversations I’ve had with many of you over the past few years so by writing it down, I hope to support many of you who may have had similar questions in future sessions.

Good luck.