This blog provides helpful advice for candidates who are job hunting, including how to put your best foot forward, your social media presence and online profile.
Websites and online folios:
- If you’re a designer or have a portfolio to present online, make sure your website is active, don’t share a link that takes you no-where, it can be incredibly frustrating and not a good first impression!
- Some great websites which are easy to use for your folio are Squarespace, Wordpress, The Loop or Behance.
LinkedIn:
- If you have a profile set up on LinkedIn, make sure it is up to date! Your most recent roles should be listed accurately reflecting the same as your CV.
- If you are no longer ‘open to opportunities’ make sure its turned off! Otherwise, you’ll get contacted about opportunities regularly by recruiters or hiring managers (as much as its very flattering it does waste everyone's time).
- Be careful about what these small details indirectly say about you, if there are errors its not a good impression and shows you may not be reliable, have strong attention to detail and be the wrong person for the job.
Your CV:
- Its a good idea to write an introductory paragraph at the top of your CV, this should really sell your story, career and skillset and is the first thing that we read when reviewing your CV. It needs to be punchy, to the point and engaging.
- Add some creative flair to your CV, make sure it is formatted correctly, with no spelling mistakes and is laid out clearly, it should be a PDF, not a word doc, with embedded hyperlinks taking you to your online website and social media platforms.
- Word documents are an instant turn off for recruiters, agencies or prospective employers, especially if you’re a designer!
- List the months and years for each job (most recent first) and make sure you put the date you graduated your studies on your CV.
- Avoid huge amounts of text, you want to be able to communicate what you’ve done in a concise manner. Bullet points are good, so you can review your experience at a quick glance. Studies show that the average CV view time is 6 seconds!
- Remember, people are time poor and expect to be able to review your CV and skillset easily.
Your Design Folio:
If you don’t have a website or online folio, think about how your PDF folio is going to be shared, you might want to consider wetransfer.com, Google Drive or Dropbox. For emailed PDF folios, keep in mind some companies may have email restrictions over certain file sizes. Your folio PDF file should be 5-10mb in size so it can be shared easily via email.
Show your best work and a good variety of creative (i.e. print, digital, social, OOH, TVC, packaging) so we can see what you’re capable of.
Make sure you note what involvement you had in each project; e.g. concepting, design and finished art. You don’t want to put work in your folio that you haven’t had a big part in producing or that you have not had permission in sharing.
I hope this info helps, if you are interested in a new opportunity in the creative space, get in touch with me at joanna@creativerecruiters.com.au
THANKS!