Designer Job Sites:

There is, alas, no magic pill that can miraculously transport you to the day you start your first (or next) job in the design field of your choice. You may not need to pound the physical pavement to get a job today, but you’ll still need metaphorically to pound, trawl, and scour the internet for opportunities that you’ll then have to pursue, track and follow through on until the much-anticipated happy conclusion. All this bother comes with one consolation: everyone has to go through the process at several points in their lifetimes.

Herewith, in no particular order, are a few tips that, while not a magic lozenge, may make the process a little less burdensome. They may also remind you of details that often get neglected. Thus, without additional ado, a quintet of helpful hints. 

Tip #1 Make Sure Your Portfolio Looks Good on All Devices

By this point, you no doubt have an online portfolio showcasing three of your best projects and describing the process you went through to complete them. You’ve either set it up on a portfolio site like Behance, Dribbble, or Moonfruit, or you’ve created your own website by some other means. You know that your portfolio is going to be your calling card and that Hiring Directors are going to be evaluating you based on the work you’ve put on exhibit. The next part is something of an apparent no-brainer, but quite a few people with brains neglect it: although Hiring Directors are most likely to have a large computer monitor to place at your disposal when you walk them through your portfolio at your interview, the people responsible for hiring you may previously or subsequently view your portfolio on another device. You should thus make sure that your portfolio (and website, if you have one—and you should) look great, not only on a large desktop monitor but also within the confines of a smartphone, tablet, or smaller laptop screen. Give your site a view on as many devices as you can lay your hands on, and do what you can to adjust them if they don’t perform as they should.

Tip #2 Make a Spectacle of Yourself with a Website

In addition to a portfolio with three projects to show to prospective employers, you should also have your own website on which you can exhibit a wider selection of your work. You should be so lucky you’ll get so much traffic that your server will crash, but, on the other hand, if your work isn’t out there, you can be sure no one will see it. If time permits and you write well, you can even consider adding a blog to your site. That will help keep it current during fallow periods when you don’t have fresh designs to add to it. You probably shouldn’t have any illusions about winning any SEO jackpots and coming up first when someone googles “graphic designer,” but there should be something waiting for anyone who’s sufficiently interested in you to have googled your name. As with an email address, choose a professional URL, either one as close as possible to your name or a fictitious business name you can use for your freelance projects. (If you go the fictitious business name route, you should also invest in an additional yourname.com URL.)

Tip #3 Keep learning and adding skills

Time waits for no one. Neither does technology. Your skills coming out of school with the design software programs you use in your work are a bit like a new car when you drive it off the lot: they’re immediately out-of-date. You thus have to keep on top of the latest versions of the software you use. The situation is reminiscent of the Queen of Hearts’ famous remark in Alice and Wonderland about needing to run as fast as you can just to stay in place. Such is the pace of technological progress in today’s world.

In addition to that, you should seriously consider adding to your skill set on a regular basis, even if it’s just by following an on-demand class from Udemy or Coursera. Just because you’ve finished with school doesn’t mean that you’ve mastered all the design software in your field, and even if you have all the major bases covered and have kept them current, expanding your knowledge base can only help you. You never know when you’ll stumble upon a fit between something you’ve learned and something for which a recruiter is searching. Knowledge may not invariably be power, but it certainly can only help you as you seek to progress in your career.

Tip #4 Keep Everything Organized

Job-seeking involves accumulating a great deal of information, including the job leads you’ve identified, the mission statements of companies, the all-important names of Hiring Directors, the status of your applications, and several half-baked ideas that you’re not quite sure how to use. You owe it to yourself to keep all these important details organized and, especially, to find some way of having an overview of your job-search process. There are lots of ways of doing this, from trying to write it all down in a notebook to taking advantage of something a bit more modern and sophisticated.

Among the best ways of organizing your job search is the so-called kanban board. Invented in Japan by Taiichi Ohno, who worked for Toyota as an industrial engineer in the 1940s, the modern kanban board is particularly beloved by project managers who espouse the agile method, as it makes it possible to track the individual bits and pieces that make up a project. “Kanban” is the Japanese word for “visual signal,” and the kanban board makes it possible to visualize tasks and their progress through whichever stages the designer of the kanban board chooses to highlight.

That’s a lot of introduction to something that’s really very simple. A kanban board is basically a whiteboard (or another horizontal surface you can write on) with columns drawn on it and cards that can be moved across the board from left to right as they progress through the stages indicated by the vertical columns. If this sounds like a perfect use for colored sticky notes, that’s because it is. If you have the space, you can set up exactly such a board and use it to track the progress of your applications. (At its simplest, your kanban board would have columns for investigating, applying, interviewing, and offers. You can be agile and add a column at the extreme left for what’s called “backlog,” items that are waiting around to be put into action. You can add to the columns as much as you wish, and you can fill the cards (i.e., the sticky notes) with all the information you’ve gathered (like that hiring director’s name you spent so long ferreting out.)

Although there continue to be kanban boards that are actual boards, much kanban technology has gone digital, allowing for more organized organization of information on the virtual cards, which can be manipulated at the click of a mouse. These also allow for attachments so that you can, for example, attach copies of the resumes and cover letters you sent out, which alone is worth the price of admission. You can find all manner of kanban boards waiting to be filled out online (a quick googling will bring up several options to sort through), including one (Huntr) that is designed expressly for keeping job searches organized. There are free trials and free tiers, but eventually, money does have to change hands. Although every penny counts when you’re looking for work, the investment in a digital kanban board may well be worth it for a few months.

While you’re gathering your organizational tools, don’t forget that you’re also going to need something to keep track of all the interviews you’re going to have. You don’t need anything as complex as what you need to keep track of the other aspects of your job search, but you do want to make sure you don’t double-book interviews and do have the address to which you’re going to report safely written down somewhere. You can use pretty much any system you want here, from a humble datebook you picked up at the DollarTree in December to a more sophisticated written planner to any number of solutions on your computer, ranging from a simple calendar app through the more elaborate possibilities of Outlook. Just be prepared to have someplace to write down that first interview appointment before the long-awaited call comes.

Tip #5: Get Feedback

Resumes and cover letters aren’t the only aspects of your job search that can benefit from feedback. Especially when you’re dealing with sending out resumes into the black soul-sucking darkness of the internet, the process can become decidedly lonely, and bringing in a trusted friend or family member to help you with all-important moral support and encouragement can be of immense value. Being able to bounce ideas off someone can be enormously helpful as you struggle with one of life’s less pleasurable activities.

Better than advice from those close to you (whose sage counsel may keep coming down to “whatever you do is fine with me”) is feedback from people in the field who’ve pursued design jobs and who have been through what you’re experiencing. You may know someone like this in person, but, barring that, there are always platforms like LinkedIn that can put you in touch with people who can offer you this kind of support.

Another valuable source for feedback is the teachers who prepared you for your design career. Mentoring and 1:1 career support aren’t limited to reviewing resumes, and you should take advantage of this possibility before the going gets too tough. Many schools offer career support services with their longer programs, including Noble Desktop, which provides individual mentoring to those in its extended certificate programs, including the UI Design Certificate, the Graphic Design Certificate, and the Motion Graphics Certificate programs. Noble’s practiced and expert advisors can help you through the more challenging impasses you’ll encounter as you look for work.

Learn the Skills to Become a Designer at Noble Desktop

If you wish to become a designer, Noble Desktop, a tech and design school based in New York that teaches worldwide thanks to the wonders of the internet, is available to give you the education you need to get started in this exciting field. Noble teaches certificate programs in numerous aspects of design and the technology that makes design possible in the contemporary world. These certificate programs offer comprehensive instruction in their topics and will arm you for the job market in whichever aspect of design interests you.

Noble has certificate programs in graphic design (the Adobe trio of Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator), digital design (the main troika of Adobe programs plus Figma for UI design), UX & UI design, and motion graphics. All these programs feature small class sizes in order to make sure that each student receives ample attention from the instructor, and can be taken either in-person in New York or online from anywhere over the 85% of the Earth’s surface that is reached by the internet (plus the International Space Station.) Classes at Noble Desktop include a free retake option, which can be useful as a refresher course or as a means of maximizing what you learn from fast-paced classes. Noble’s instructors are all experts in their fields and often working professionals whose experience is invaluable when they mentor students in the school’s certificate programs 1-to-1.

Noble offers further design courses that are briefer than the certificate programs. You may also wish to consult Noble’s Learning Hub for a wealth of information on how to learn to be a designer.

Key Takeaways

• Make sure your portfolio and website are optimized for every type of device on which they may be viewed.
• Continue your professional education and continue adding to your marketable skills even while you’re looking for work. 
• Keep your job search materials and information rigorously organized.
• Get help and support whenever you feel you need it. Searching for work is a stressful process.
• In-depth training for those interested in design careers is available in both online and in-person classes from Noble Desktop.