Absolute advice for graduates

It's that time of year again when hundreds of design student wannabees, leave college and university, looking for their first job to kick-start their careers in the creative industry. A daunting prospect for the majority of graduates trying to compete for the same positions, in the best agencies. And those creative posts are few and far between. Internships are usually the first (and best) way to gain the necessary experience and knowledge to get things moving. So, at Absolute, we thought we'd give those graduates a few tips on how to improve their chances.

Here at the studio, we continuously receive a lot of CV's from prospective creatives, either looking for short-term placements or permanent postions. The majority of requests we receive, sadly fail to inspire and are not worthy of a follow-up call. A lot of which land on our desks, are usually in the form of an A4 written CV, and usually describe the candidate as being great at what they do, and how they'll bring something new to the agency.

As someone in the industry once said; 'If everyone was as good as they said on their CV's, everyday at work, then we'd be the best agency out there, by far!'

Another current trend is to put graphs or ratings, in the form of infographs, next to applications they use. And more often that not, they award themselves top marks. They then have links to their own websites, which usually fail to showcase their work well enough, or projects are not articulated properly, leaving you confused about what they're actually good at.

Now, here's our advice on how to be the person to get noticed by your peers:

The first thing you should do before you send your CV, is research the company and the person you're interested in speaking to, either the Managing Director or Creative Director, and find out as much as you can about them through social media sites like LinkedIn or scour through industry news. Do your homework.

Then, put together a presentation, usually in the form of an A4 landscape pdf, briefly introducing yourself and then showcasing your projects as you would if you were sending a creative document to a client. Make sure the work is large enough to be seen and has short annotations describing why you did it, how you created it and what the aim of the project was. Don't cram everything on one page. Spread it out so it tells a story in the order from concept to completion.

Keep it simple. Aim to showcase around 6 to 8 projects. Just enough to whet the appetite and have the viewer wanting to see more. Tailor the projects around what you've found out in your research. If you're aiming to get a placement in a packaging design agency, then dial up the focus on those projects, but also have a variety of other designs in there to show off your skills.

At the end of your presentation document, put in your personal details. List your skills, creative memberships you may have, your achievements and the packages you can use. The viewer will see from your work how competent in Photoshop you really are. If you have a website or are on a site like Behance, then add those links in, but make sure they're worthy of inclusion.

Keep different versions of your presentation and don't be scared of trying placements in a variety of agencies with different approaches. Working out of your comfort zone will broaden your skill sets for when you get to the agency you really want to work for. That knowledge and those skills will come in handy, as you grow as a creative.

One final point, if you're going to brand up yourself, or create a logo out of your initials, make sure it's good enough, not just because everyone else's doing it, otherwise just make sure your presentation is bold and confident. And good luck.

If you would like to try out as an intern at Absolute, either as a creative or a digital developer, then take the above advice and send your portfolio to [email protected]