What Next?

You’ve completed your course and hit the job market hard. What next? Tom May talks to creatives about the best ways to get your dream job.

So you’ve just got your qualification. Congratulations! And smart thinking too, because, quite frankly, you’ve chosen a great profession to enter.

You could have studied, for example, photography or journalism. In a post-digital world, making money from either of these disciplines is increasingly difficult, even for seasoned professionals.

In contrast, there have never been more jobs available for graphic designers, motion designers, animators and illustrators. As Emma Barratt, head of design at WolffOlins in London, puts it: “The demand for new talent and new ways of looking at things is rising across the industry.”

Ben Brears, strategic design director at Leeds studio Robot Food, agrees with Barratt. “For better or worse, we live in a hyper-connected, warp-speed world and everyone’s always looking for the new and the next,” he explains. “Graduates and juniors are a crucial part of bringing that change into our industry.”

ROUGH SEAS LIE AHEAD

But of course, it’s not all going to be plain sailing. While you might have been a star among the few students on your course, you’re now having to compete with hundreds, maybe thousands of others, to get a foot in the door. All the while worrying about how to pay the rent and put food on the table. That’s exactly what Harriet Payler, now a designer at NB Studio in London, went through a couple of years ago, after graduating from Kingston University with a BA in graphic design.

“While looking for work, competition was the biggest challenge,” Payler says. “There were a vast number of graduates in the same position as me. There was also the added obstacle of having to fund living in London. As well as interning through the week, I was also busy working on Saturdays and Sundays, as were most of my friends.”