Breaking into the creative industry can be exciting, challenging, and a little overwhelming. We’ve pulled together our top 10 tips to hopefully help graduates and students land their first role or internship in a design agency:
1) Find out the right person to write to – ‘dear sir/madam’ or ‘hi there’ will probably go straight to junk mail. Make the effort, it makes the difference.
2) Follow design agencies on social media for any job opportunities & to check out their latest work. Plus adding positive comments on posts if you like their branding, graphic design, media buy campaigns or new websites projects. It’s nice to be nice.
3) Stand out from the generic bunch if you do send an email. Quote from their blogs and do your homework on what the agency is up to.
4) Go old school and post or hand deliver your CV to agencies. Use unique paper stock to stand out, as we have received some wonderful examples over the years leading to us employing great talent.
5) Quote examples of design or media projects you like from their work in your covering letter. It is an excellent way to demonstrate immediately that you are on the ball.
6) Be prepared to be ignored or snubbed – it’s ok, some people can be total muppets.*
7) Be persistent – even following up a few months later and even a few months after that to keep on their radar.
8) When you get to interview stage, be no more than 10 mins early. Please do not be late, as it looks bad. We also suggest bringing a bottle of water to interview too. This is incase the design agency don’t offer you anything and your mouth dries up.
9) The interview panel may well ask you why you want to work with their agency. Have a short, concise answer ready and prepared – winging it is not an option.
10) Be positive and passionate about the industry – if they are not, then you don’t want to work there anyways.
If you are seeking an internship or placement at an advertising agency or design studio, we hope you found this helpful.
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* Cole AD is not perfect and sometimes we are guilty of this too. We don’t mean to be though and we are getting better at responding!