Let’s take a look at some things every web design student should have ready when graduating.

Your Degree

First things first, you’ve got to knuckle down and get that all important degree to help open those doors to your dream job. Lets take a look at what elements make up that all important qualification.

Always remember, there's light at the end of the tunnel!

Good degree work

A lot of students can breeze through their University course, doing the minimum amount of work for those all important pass grades, but this does little to help you when graduating. Although some pieces of work you produce on your course may not be suitable to show potential employers, it’s imperative that you have some work to display in a portfolio when you leave (it’s even more important if you aren’t planning on doing any kind of freelance work whilst at University).

A lot of design courses help students find real life clients for their final projects, this is a fantastic opportunity to show potential employers that you can work on a ‘real’ project for ‘real’ clients and for a lot of graduates, will be the most important thing you’ll produce whilst at University.

If the work is of a good enough standard, this can also be presented in your portfolio.

Good degree grades

If you’re doing good work, then good grades will follow. Chances are, if an employer is asking for a potential employee to have a degree, their next question could be what grade you achieved. While it’s certainly better to have a degree behind you than not at all, a degree with a poor final mark can look poor on your resume and could really put potential employers off.

There has been a lot of debate around grades lately however, take a look at some interesting links:

Degree grades ‘should be replaced’ – Telegraph

Good degree attendance

University isn’t all about waking up at 1pm in time for your afternoon clan meeting on Call of Duty, it’s also about making sure you’re in class for important lectures and not missing vital learning time. There aren’t many students coming out of University with 100% attendance records but a decent attendance rate makes sure you aren’t missing a lot and can look impressive to employers should they ever ask.

Good degree attendance can help reinforce learning and impress employers

Your Portfolio

People say degrees open doors, if that’s true then I’d like to think that portfolios help you walk through them. In my opinion, there’s nothing more important to an employer than the work you produce and display on your portfolio.

Your website

Your portfolio website is the most important item you’ll take with you into any interview, it should contain your best work, display personality and show the viewer just how much you know about web design.

We’ve already spoke about using some University work in your portfolio, but chances are if you haven’t completed any freelance work during your time at University, there will only be one or two examples of work you’ve produced for actual clients. This can be a problem when it comes to applying for jobs as employers may be hesitant to hire graduates with minimal commercial experience.

This is why it’s always important to be doing as much work as possible in your spare time to help grow not just your portfolio, but also your skills as a designer and developer. While at University I created websites free of charge for friends and some small local businesses, while many people are against this type of free or ‘spec’ work, these types of projects can be invaluable to a design students future prospects.

Presentation

Of course, it goes without saying that your website should reflect the type of work you’ve been creating for University and clients. There are no right or wrong ways to present your web portfolio, but lets take a look at some great examples of online portfolios.

Brian Hoff uses a great minimal design that really catches the eye

I'm a big fan of Daniel Guillans website. It's clean and gets the job done.

Oscar Barber has a really simple, textured design with all of the content at hand.

Clients

It’s not always possible to get some real clients on board your portfolio while at University, but any sign that you’ve completed work for even the smallest of clients can really impress potential employers.

How To Get Paid Freelance Work While You’re Still A Design Student

101 Ideas to Get More Freelance Work and Generate New Client Leads

How to Get Freelance Work with Twitter

Your first dealings with a 'real life' client can be daunting, but you'll benefit from the experience.

A Blog

With the ever expanding market of easy to access content management systems, starting and maintaining a blog has never been so easy. A blog can give you a space to discuss design topics that may not fit into your standard portfolio as well as give you a platform to showcase your work on a scale your portfolio may not offer.

Although you cant be expected to maintain a huge design blog while undertaking your degree, a few posts a month on certain design topics, such as the ones you’re covering in your modules for example, can give you a chance to showcase not just your work, but your understanding of the theories behind it.

Here are some great examples of designers that use their portfolio site together with a blog:

Chris Wallace uses his website as a hub for his portfolio work, blogging and WordPress themes.

Kyle Steed uses his website to showcase his work as well as video blogging his thoughts.

A Blog case study

A great example of someone using a blog as a platform to both showcase and attract work, is Jacob Cass of Just Creative Design. Jacob launched his blog in November 2007 and it has grown into one of the biggest and most well known personally run designs blogs on the Internet with over 20,000 subscribers.

Although Jacob is posting a little less lately, you should certainly subscribe to his feed.

Jacob, hailing from Australia, has used his blog as a platform to secure a full time position at a New York based design agency. This is a fantastic example of how a blog can open many doors for you if you’re prepared to put the work in.

A Résumé

Of course your design work is the most important thing for a web designer but what about your CV / résumé? A lot of graduates spend a ton of time making sure their online portfolio looks perfect, but often they will attach a standard word document or hastily created PDF to their email as an afterthought. This can instantly undo all of your hard work with some employers, so take time when creating anything you’ll pass onto potential employers.

Contents

So what should you look to include in your résumé? Well, of course put in your qualifications, relevant work experience (they don’t need to know about your paper round when you were 11) and a little about your hobbies. A résumé is supposed to act as a brief synopsis of what you’re about, so try not to overload the reader with too much information.

How to write a successful CV

Design

You’re a designer, so why shouldn’t your résumé look as good as the work you produce! You can head on over to www.misterstevenson.com for a look at what some great designers came up with for a generic CV design. Lets take a look at some great résumé designs:

Christa has a really unique and clean design to her CV.

Julien incorporates some nice graphics into his CV design.

A really unique CV with a nice, high quality image.

Conclusion

Hopefully we’ve gone some way to giving students and graduates a helping hand in what they can use to help prepare themselves for life after University. Although all of the above will certainly help prepare graduates for future employment, there is no substitute for good work and ensuring you produce a high standard of work throughout University will give you the best possible platform in which to achieve everything you want to when you graduate.

Have we missed anything? If so let us know!

1. Agencies, Agencies, Agencies

A lot of people have bad things to say about job agencies, but for a graduate they can be extremely helpful.

In the last few years a lot of agencies specializing in creative jobs have emerged, these agencies (should) understand what both the advertising company require, and what the applying graduate is looking for.  Using these agencies will reduce the risk of a generic agency trying to put you forward for jobs you either don’t want or aren’t suited to.

Below are a few agencies to get you started…

http://www.altituderecruitment.co.uk/

http://www.kelsojones.co.uk/

http://www.creativematch.co.uk/

Also, designm.ag have just wrote a comprehensive list of where to find web design jobs, take a look here.

2. Have an online presence

Obviously this should go without saying for web designers, but a lot of students graduate from University without a collection of websites they have designed for real clients, including an online portfolio where they can display the whole body of their work.

Even if you’re a graphic designer, when you send your CV over to a company it’s very useful to have a website with your best work on it so someone can get a quick look at what you have done in the past.  If you don’t, then it could be that you don’t ever get to present your work to a potential employer.

Including the best work you’ve done at University in your portfolio is a good idea, but it shouldn’t be the focal point of your portfolio as it won’t display any kind of experience with clients or diversity in your work.

Here are a few examples of some great portfolio sites…

http://www.evaneckard.com

http://www.danlindop.co.uk/

http://digitalmash.com/

Which leads me nicely onto….

3. Do work for clients, even if it’s for free

Clients don’t have to be the owners of massive companies, they can be family friends who own coffee shops, boutiques or friends that run their own club nights.  Of course, having well known companies and names on your CV / portfolio will look good but at it’s the quality and quantity of work that will help you in the long run.

You’ll do well to find people who are willing to pay a substantial fee to an unproven and inexperienced designer, which is why it’s important that you are prepared to do work for next to nothing or indeed, absolutely nothing.

Doing work for free may seem like a lot of hassle for a student with examinations and assignments on the horizon, but building a portfolio whilst in University will save you time and stress post-graduation.

4. Have a ‘nice’  CV

When I first graduated I hadn’t thought about how my CV looked, it had my vital information on such as past works experience, personal skills etc but it was largely the same CV that had got me into several odd jobs during University.

A CV can sometimes be the first thing that lands on the desk of a potential employer / client so first impressions really do count.

Phil Thompson wrote a good piece on how not to write a CV, which you can check out here.  Creare design also speak about their first hand experience of reading student CV’s for a design role.

5. Don’t depend on University to teach you everything you need to know

A decent University course should teach you the basic building blocks of web design, depending on the course that could include PHP, CSS, XHTML, content management systems, elements of graphic design and a whole lot more.  However, you must keep in mind that what University teaches you isn’t the be all and end all of the industry.  The web design industry is constantly evolving and it seems the structure of the ‘average’ University does not accommodate the growth and expansion of the industry it is trying to teach.

A List Apart have just written a fantastic article on the failings of web design at the University level.  While I won’t try and dissect it too much, it pretty much hits the nail on the head when it comes to what I believe are the shortcomings of the Universities when teaching website design.

A lot of students (I hold my hands up here as well) leave University and expect, perhaps rightly so, that the skills they have gained in the 3+ years in higher education have readied them for their imminent career in web design, and it’s usually not the case.

I graduated with a basic knowledge of CSS which I thought was enough, I soon realised it wasn’t so I went out and bought Simon Collisons book ‘Beginning CSS web development‘ which taught me more than my University CSS module did.

The hard work doesn’t stop when you leave University, for web design graduates it is just beginning.

That’s it for my first self-written article, I hope I’ve given some half decent advice and you’ve picked up one or two useful links along the way!