Aug 23rd 2013 . 4 min read

Breaking Into The Creative Industry

by Polaris Agency

Getting a job in the creative industry is no easy task. If you’ve just graduated you’re probably feeling optimistic about your future – and rightly so. However, getting that career job you’ve always wanted can be more difficult and time consuming than you imagined. But don’t worry there are ways to speed up the process.

Look in the right places

There are so many job websites out there it can be daunting to know which ones are best. Here are a few that I found particularly useful:

Guardian Jobs (jobs.theguardian.com) - This is a great website that allows you to browse by category and whittle down your results to a point where you only view the stuff you need to see. Guardian-jobs is also brilliant for finding short term work, if you need to bolster your CV with some experience this is a great place to find internships.

CreativePool (creativepool.com) - Creativepool is viewed by all of the creative recruitment agencies in London. Further more, you can upload your CV to your account so you are directly showing your skills to the people that will get you work. Recruitment agencies are good!

Chinwag Jobs (jobs.chinwag.com) - Another website used by recruitment agencies is Chinwag. This site gives you a wide variety of results for jobs as well as networking events.

Meet people face to face

Now you know where to look online, the next thing to do is find out where to look in person. Networking is one of the most important things you can do, it can seem a little frightening at first but once you’ve been to an event or two it becomes second nature.

A great place to find creative events is “chinwag.com/events”. A particularly interesting event to go to is Digital Shoreditch. This event runs for 2 weeks and has a variety of companies showcasing their services to thousands of visitors that attend each summer.

So now you know a little bit about where to look online and the importance of meeting people face to face, the next stage is to have the right kind of materials with you at all times. When you attend networking events always make sure you have some professionally made business cards with you. Another good idea is to bring multiple copies of your CV along. Try to give out all of your CVs and business cards by the time you leave the event. You’ll feel great after it – trust me.

Social Media

What you do online is as important as what you do in person. Make sure that your Facebook settings are private or at least remove as many drunken photos as possible. Drunken photos won’t get you a job. If you use Twitter, make sure your tweets are protected. You don’t want potential employers to see silly comments you made a long time ago.

If you really want to be ahead of the game, get yourself a blog or pinterest account or both. Upload as much of your work as possible, even a Facebook like page is a good idea. Finally, once you’ve got some experience and contacts make a LinkedIn account and make sure you connect with everyone you’ve worked with.

Your portfolio website

An essential part of your employment mission is to set up your own website. If you can build websites, great! If not, find some tutorials and template or get someone else to make a website for you. Know this, your portfolio website (if it is done well) will improve your employability by 100%.

Search Google for good portfolio websites, there’s so many out there.

Read

Last but not least, read. Yes I know you’ve been studying for ages and your bored of learning but ultimately the learning process never stops. Once you get a job you’ll realize university taught you about 3% of everything you really need to know – so embrace the fact that the learning process will never end.

Here are some books that will help you greatly in your quest for work and your understanding of some key elements of design: