Disheartened and frustrated by job search.

February 8, 2016 9:02 AM

I always feel like I keep hitting a brick wall after searching for jobs. Can I get some tips?

I'm currently in need of a full time job to help me finish paying off debt and save up. I work a great part time job but due to restructuring, there's no room for full time. Unless I wait it out but I can't afford to.

I've had a lot of retail experience and this current job I have is the first to involve graphic design and art. I've only been with the company for 6 months though. If you were to look at my resume, you would probably recommend me a sales or retail position - but I do NOT want that. I want to steer away from retail or anything having to do with sales. Areas of interest are print production, graphic design.. or pretty much anything involving the arts (being an artist myself). I feel like the only thing holding me back is lack of a college degree. I plan on going back to school for career training.

Whenever I do search for jobs, almost all of the ones I'm interested in require years of experience or a degree. Which leaves me frustrated. The full time jobs that I do qualify for are paying way less and probably offer a terrible working environment (I've had experience with those). I don't know what to do. It's really depressing that I have to consider applying for these terrible low paying full time jobs.

What advice can you offer me? I would appreciate it.

posted by morning_television to Work & Money (10 answers total)

I used to work for a screenprinter, and we had a lot of people with art backgrounds working for us there. It didn't pay very well, but it was a fun place to work.
posted by kevinbelt at 9:06 AM on February 8, 2016

Do you have PowerPoint skills (or can you acquire them? It's an easy program to get a handle on)? There are a bunch of positions I get sent to me for contract PPT positions which are very heavily graphics-intensive. It's not really going to satisfy your inner artist, but it's definitely something that allows you to be somewhat creative, and the work isn't terribly taxing and usually pays better than retail.
posted by xingcat at 9:25 AM on February 8, 2016

I'm a graphic designer and would be happy to look at your resume if you'd like to see if there are bullet points that can be rewritten to encourage hiring managers to consider you for design roles rather than ignore you due to your experience in retail.
posted by Hermione Granger at 9:32 AM on February 8, 2016

If you want to work as a graphic designer, your resume needs to reflect that. Not your retail experience. Employers assume that you kept body and soul together somehow, but they're really only interested in the skills they need to fill the position.

As a designer I assume that you can put together a portfolio that represents your abilities. I might suggest that if there's a significant amount of time on your resume, you can say that you freelanced, and that's where you can describe projects you did for friends or charity or one-off things. That will beef up the experience section of your resume.

Graphic Designers, am I off base here?
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 11:15 AM on February 8, 2016

Whenever I do search for jobs, almost all of the ones I'm interested in require years of experience or a degree. Which leaves me frustrated.

Apply to these anyway. They want those qualities, but they're often not dealbreakers if you can present your competence strongly. Especially as the country approaches "full employment".

Find friends or FOAF's who already work in similar positions or evaluating applications for positions similar to those you are looking for, and ask them to go over your application, (such as Hermione Granger's offer above), and ask to look at resumes of friends who have the position similar to those you are applying for.
This will allow you to craft your applications based on the norms and what works well in your desired field.

TL;DR:
First, make sure you're doing everything correctly and well.
Second, do everything correctly and well, even when you don't meet all the requirements.
posted by anonymisc at 12:07 PM on February 8, 2016

I would recommend developing a story for yourself to describe how your biography makes you a suitable candidate for a certain type of job. Something like... your combination of sales (retail) and customer contact (retail) with your graphic design and art makes you ideal candidate for advertising. It doesn't have to be this, but I think a nice story will give you some confidence to move forward. It'll help with your cover letter, help you when networking and hopefully will give you a lot of confidence.

Good Luck...
posted by jazh at 12:44 PM on February 8, 2016

I'd second screenprinting shops - I used to be a manager at one. There are a lot of local shops in that arena in most places. See also - commercial printing, advertising speciality products, commercial embroidery.

Do you have any experience designing web sites? This is a growth area, as companies are spending more money on digital and less on print and mass media. You do NOT have to be a coder to do web design, necessarily. Bigger shops have people who do design work only.
posted by randomkeystrike at 12:45 PM on February 8, 2016

Whenever I do search for jobs, almost all of the ones I'm interested in require years of experience or a degree.

Job listings requirements are wish lists. Outside of Fortune 500 companies and academia, they are not really requirements. Apply anyway.

Also: lie. List your current position for the last six months, and prior to that list Morning Television Freelance. Leave the retail off your resume entirely.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:19 PM on February 8, 2016

Go to Kinkos and make a portfolio of things you are created -basically print it out. The corporate world dies for good design and content writers and designers. Make the portfolio look corporate-you know, a bit stuffy but creative. Think of the clients-when they open a brochure designed by you what do they see?
Dont have a corporate portfolio? Take up 3 or 4 items-ppt for a retail client, brochure for a retail client, webpage design (no don't design it just create mockups) for a retail client and chose one other. Get creative, print and that is it. Then apply like crazy to all the companies you can. Dont say retail, say eCommerce, if you can. Done.
posted by stepup at 4:49 PM on February 8, 2016

Hi, I'm an art director.

If you're applying for a paid internship or junior designer position, not having design experience on your resumé is not necessarily a deal breaker, if your portfolio's solid. For someone just starting out who wants to break into the field, here's what I like to see:

• A rock-solid portfolio of 12-15 pieces. These can be class assignments, or pro bono work you've done for a nonprofit/worthy cause. Only include your best work, and be ready to talk intelligently about what you did, and why you did it; problems you ran into, and how you handled them. A guideline I use when looking at portfolios is that the quality of the worst piece in there is the level of quality I'll see most often.
• That you're able to handle feedback. This is so crucial, I can't stress it enough. I can teach someone design skills, but I'd rather not have to teach someone how to take criticism. Because your work WILL be criticized. Go watch some of the videos of Roland Young's critiques, and see if this is still something you want to do.
• Look at your retail experience, and in your resumé, stress all the customer interaction skills you learned. Are you good at calming down angry people? Are you good at thinking up novel solutions to problems? Show me how you can transfer those skills into dealing with design clients.
• Are you willing to be humble and pay your dues by doing unglamorous grunt work? Or are you going to start sulking that you're not immediately a senior designer by year three of your design career?
• A solid web presence. The first thing I'm going to do with any applicant is to google them to see if they've got a website or not. Make your portfolio on the web as solid as the one you'd show an art director in person.

Entry-level positions as a designer will indeed be low-paying. Reconcile yourself to that. You're there to learn how to work with real briefs, real pressure to create, and real deadlines.

Good luck!
posted by culfinglin at 9:37 AM on February 9, 2016