Raleigh

How to Land Your Next Design Job…and Make Your Next Design Job Want to Land You!

“The best way to accomplish serious design … is to be totally and completely unqualified for the job.” Paula Scher: Great design is serious, not solemn

Job searching can be frustrating—trust me, I speak from experience! After submitting what seems like (and just might be!) HUNDREDS of resumes and doing everything in your power to secure an awesome design job (or, lets face it, just a design job…any design job) you might be getting frustrated, losing patience and losing hope. Don’t lose hope! The important thing to remember is that you’re an amazing designer and the more you put yourself out there and keep trying, the more opportunity there is that your talent will be discovered.

At our January Community Meeting, AIGA Raleigh’s Member Experience Chair, Kristin McPeak, gave a presentation with many valuable tips and tools to putting your best image out there to help potential employers see you in the best possible light. After her presentation, many members also gave some great input and suggestions. We want to share to following information and tools with you that you should be sure to utilize:

Behance |  www.behance.com

Behance is the leading online portfolio platform to showcase and discover creative work. The creative world updates their work in one place to broadcast it widely and efficiently. Companies explore the work and access talent on a global scale.

It is simple, easy and best of all FREE to set up an account with Behance. The wonderful thing about Behance is that you can link it with your AIGA Member Portfolio, use it to show work on LinkedIn, and send potential employers to your page to show them your work.

Behance also has an option to upgrade to a ProSite, which is a personal portfolio site builder that syncs with your Behance Network projects. With ProSite, you can create a fully customized personal website in minutes that includes your work, additional pages, your resume, and much more. No programming is required, and your site can live on your own URL. The cost is $11/month or $99/year. A ProSite subscription includes: dozens of website building tools, website hosting, unlimited space, unlimited edits, and easy integration of Google Analytics. This is the perfect option for the designer who has limited time and needs to get a good looking website up fast to impress those hiring managers.

AIGA Member Portfolios  |  www.aleigh.aiga.org/portfolios

AIGA members are invited to join the AIGA Member Portfolios Gallery—an exclusive network hosted by Behance—to gain broader exposure for their work, connect with like-minded designers, and be discovered more easily by potential clients and recruiters.

How to sign up:
Go to the Sign-up page on the AIGA Member Portfolios site and enter your AIGA credentials. You will be prompted to create a Behance account or log in to your existing Behance account. You will start seeing your work in the AIGA gallery and on your AIGA.org member profile within a day.

LinkedIn  |  www.linkedin.com

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with 250 million members in over 200 countries and territories around the globe. Their mission to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. When you join LinkedIn, you get access to people, jobs, news, updates, and insights that help you be great at what you do.

Tips and Tricks:

 

Creative Triangle  |  www.creativetriangle.me

We are Creative Triangle is a website that features all types of creative professionals from Crafters to Designers to Dancers. It’s extremely quick to add yourself to this website by clicking the “Add Yourself” link at the bottom of the site and filling out a short, simple profile.

Dribbble  |  www.dribbble.com

Dribbble is a place for designers to show and tell, promote, discover, and explore design. Web designers, graphic designers, illustrators, icon artists, typographers, logo designers, and other creative types share small screenshots (shots) that show their work, process, and current projects.

Meetup.com  | www.meetup.com

Meetup is the world’s largest network of local groups. Meetup makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face. More than 9,000 groups get together in local communities each day, each one with the goal of improving themselves or their communities.

There are many professional groups on Meetup that offer some amazing free or low cost events that are great learning and networking opportunities! Just to list a few:

 

Various Advice

Community Members at the January Community Meeting also gave the following advice:

 

Do you have any advice to offer fellow designers looking for work? Is there anything we didn’t mention that has helped you land a job? Please let us know!

 

About the Author

Tracy Maniaci is a creative professional with extensive knowledge in several industries. She is experienced in all aspects of graphic design with an exceptional talent for marketing, communications, public relations, copywriting, branding and event planning. Learn more about her at
www.tracymaniaci.com.

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