Getting Work Experience

Over the last few weeks at work (roughly three months, give or take) we’ve been looking at recruiting a graphic designer – it’s the one area where the IT team lack skills, and with a lot of [currently unmentionable] big projects coming up, a designer is going to be a highly relevant part of the role.

What I wanted was a newly-graduated designer, looking for work experience, and getting them some solid commercial experience. I contacted two of the local colleges (including one with whom we’ve had a previous positive experience with getting in a web geek) as well as UEA and the STEP programme, both of whom have services for finding placements for graduates. Like a bell-end, I believed all the media pap about “[x] graduates applying for every job“. What a mistake.

The entire process turned into a nightmare. The colleges didn’t come back with anything – the one we’d previously used didn’t even bother responding – and UEA and STEP between them threw back ten applicants, of whom six were useless from the start, and not even qualified as graphic designers. Three of those had decided that “designing a new site” meant “developing a new site” – which it doesn’t and didn’t – despite us specifying that it was a graphic design role.

Of the four we interviewed, three were incredibly awful. I understand that they’re just out of university, but if that’s the level for recent graduates, it’s a real concern. Even the CVs they sent out were all formulaic and dull – if I’m looking at potential designers, I want to know they’ve got an eye for at least how a CV should look, something “designed” to make it stand out from the pack.

Now maybe it’s me being unrealistic – it’s certainly based on the other graphic designers I know and have worked with before – but if I’m interviewing a designer, I shouldn’t receive a blank look when I ask what things inspire their designs, or to name me a design that they really love. I wouldn’t have cared at that point whether it was something on cars, bikes, office equipment, technology, websites, anything – I just wanted to know what they thought of the industry they’d chosen to be part of, the sphere they had just graduated in. Three of the four responded to both those questions with a look of total incomprehension, no spark, no nothing. Not one of those three could name me even one designer they liked.  Me, I could whiff on for ages about certain designers, concepts etc. – I love design, I just can’t draw to save my life.

We have finally found someone who I think will be really good. His work stood out from the first moment – a CV with a design to it, even though I personally hated the image used, it was still designed – and the projects he’d done at university, including his final project which was fantastic.  In interview he brought in a portfolio (none of the others had) and could talk about what inspired him, the stuff he liked, the way he worked and so on. It was a reassuring interview after so many let-downs, and I’m really pleased that he’s come through.

It’s been an awesomely frustrating experience – one that’s put me to the edge of saying “Screw it” and going a completely different route. I find it utterly amazing how bad most of the people who applied for the role were. And it’s not even like we were trying to get the role as an internship, which seems to be the new ‘latest greatest’ way of getting work experience. We’re paying the designer – I believe that good work should be rewarded, not got for free as an internship – and while it’s not great money, it’s better than nothing. (We’re using the standard established STEP rates) So it’s not like we’re taking the piss, or taking advantage of the graduates – it just seems like they don’t know what the hell they’re actually doing.