What to do after submitting resume and portfolio

[theboyjwo]

Okay so I have a full time job in design industry right now, i've had it for about 2 years and got really lucky to get it right out of college, but now i'm ready to move on and find a new gig. I've gotten a few cold calls or emails from various companies, but after researching their company I find that position they are looking to fill would probably be a step down from what I am doing now. So I don't really bother to call back.

I've been submitting my resume and portfolio to various positions on monster.com and careerbuilder. But I've gotten little response, a returned email asking for some more samples of my work, and praising my skills but they eluded that I contacted them to late and their first round of interviews were already complete, but promised they would call me in if they need a second round.

Other than that I've got nothing. Am I missing something, should I be calling these places if possible and requesting interviews? I've always had the idea that submitting a good cover letter, resume, someway for them to see your work and sit back, and wait eagerly for somekind of response is the standard applying for graphic design positions.

One of the obvious answers would be "hey maybe your work isn't good enough" Well i think it is, i've completed a variety to good and diverse work over the last 2 years at my job and in school before that. I feel good about showing people what i've done. So assuming my work is on par.
What else can I do to try and facilitate a response?

[chris_bcn]

When you use monstor and career builder and the like you are competeing against everyone in the world. It's amazing the resumes you get from those places. People with nothing even close to the skills required. A lot gets skimmed and binned - you really need to getlucky.

My advice would be to identify the places that you would want to work for - contact them, and make sure you get through to the right people. Request informational interviews even they aren't looking for someone - they'll view your portfolio and hopefully remeber you. Remember to keep in touch with them, follow up and make sure they don't forget you. Fine line as you don't want to stalk them either.

I have to say that your website wouldn't et passed round one for me. Not for the contnet, but because you resized my browser for no reason at all. I run FF and have winodws in tabs. I clicked your link in your sig and my screen shrank - hit the x immediately

[PrintDriver]

Yep, you need to fix that site for the resize and the speed.
Its load time for the portfolio sections is just barely making it under my "10 count" limit.

[chris_bcn]

I think, depending on whta agencies you are submitting to, you could do with updating your wesite. More and more people are looking under the hood and you couls do with modernising it a bit.

I really don't think your site is helping you at all. It's slow, it forces a resize, the text is tiny, it's a chop shop job from fireworks. I think you could stand to update it. The people you want to work with will recieve and look at so many sites - yours needs to stand out.


So where ever that crazy woman is today....I'd like to say thanks, and I hope all your future relationships pale in comparison to what you had with ME......just kidding
0_o


:confused:

This is your professional website no? You really don't want this stuff on it.

Rethink how you are presenting yourself via your site. I'd restructure, redesign, recode, and rethink your copy. If I had recieved this it would have gone into the WTF category. Along with the guy who sent me his resume in word but still had all the trach changes still attached. That was funny

[chalsema]

One thing I noticed was the captions next to the work. They're not all grammatically correct and they sound unprofessional in some cases. Working on those might help a bit.

[tZ]

Your work is quit nice.

It shows a well understanding of design.

I am with the others though.

I like your layout but, I think it needs to be redesigned with CSS rather then resorting to cut up imagery for such a simple job. Not that simple is bad (cause I like your site)- but in this case your entire site could be easily and definatly more effectivly presented in code.

Furthermore, the personal comments- I would leave those out. If your showing this to an employer they want to see your best and I would assume are more concerned with your work then personality peer say at this point- especially directly.

I would also say the work that you say "I just did this for fun and what not" or "I'm not really satisifed with this yet"- I wiould just leave that work either out or rid of those comments. Cause from the looks of it you have enough work to start minimalizing.

I like the illustration, but don't think its your strongest point and would consider dropping that all together. As it does display your artistic abilites but, I think alot of your design work communciates that also- so unless you are targeting a illustration job then one might consider directing attention towards your design- rather then illustration. Not because its bad, but because you are a designer and non of the illustration is being utilized in a design fashion- get what I'm saying? Perhaps if you had one of those illustraions on a CD cover or something maybe then it would better, but as it stands right now I wouldn't suggest putting that kind of stuff in a portfolio directed towards design. Especially, considering some of the sucess of your other design related works- but thats my opinion.

The other thing I would consider doing is scraping your website section. There is nothing there anyways so why is it a section? It most likly shouldn't be.

In the end, what I would recommend is starting to minimalize your portfolio some and restructure the website a bit but, execute in code rather then image slicing and getting rid of personal comments towards your work or its sucess.

I do overall like the simplicity of the site though. I think to many people try to make thier site all "dazzle" forgoting what its purpose is to display not cause a headach or interfer with the success of the navagation.

Some will prombly debate me on that, but I think since, your mainly a print designer it is important to "emphasis" your print capabilited by toning down the site design to something functionable that emphasis your design within rather design around(the site). Having such a minimalistic results in added attention to your work because thier is nothing else to look at- good thing. Thats my logic.

nice job

[theboyjwo]

Thanks for the advice.
I don't think the resize is a problem for the majority of visitors, I made the resize because I don't want there to be a huge amount of white space on the right side, say if somebody is browsing full screen window. But perhaps a splash page to enter the site will do the trick.

As for speed, man this really shocks me, I've had this site up for over a 2 years now, and I've had the opportunity to view it on several different systems and browsers, it has never had any lag on loading up. Which believe me was concern when I made it as I knew I'd be loading serval swap out images in the background with fireworks for the gallery. Perhaps it is a bit old, at the time my goal here was to make a simple yet effective website with a gallery for my work. I didn't want to try anything fancy like Flash or actionscripting as certain people might not have the supported plug-ins or whatever. I just wanted to make it easy to get to my work. I've seen alot of kick ass sites that mask really bad design work in their portfolios.

Regarding the anticedote on my profile page. I wrote that just the other day, before it was quite bland sounding, and it really didn't read like it was about me. So I totaly rewrote that page to purposely add some life to the content. I wrote that last part in jest, just to put a bit of humor there. Sure it might not sound super professional, but i'm applying for a Creative position, not financial analyst.

i appreciate the critique though. Perhaps i'll start working toward a more visually interesting site for the near future.

[chris_bcn]

Regarding the anticedote on my profile page. I wrote that just the other day, before it was quite bland sounding, and it really didn't read like it was about me. So I totaly rewrote that page to purposely add some life to the content. I wrote that last part in jest, just to put a bit of humor there. Sure it might not sound super professional, but i'm applying for a Creative position, not financial analyst.


Doesn't matter - when I'm looking at a portfolio or CV I want to see that the person is professional and produces good work.

I'll find out more about the person during interview. Any anecdotes in your first contact (ie your site) would lead me to believe that you're not taking working with me seriously.

It's fine for a personal site, or if you're exclusively looking for freelance perhaps, but not if you hope to get a job with a firm. IMHO

I would say that the resize thing would annoy the majority of users

[theboyjwo]

Tz- Exactly man! Thanks for the comments, I put the illustration section in there, well because i'm a freelance illustrator as well. Admittedly I don't seek out or take on much work, as I am primarily a graphic designer and I find it hard to do both at the sametime. But i feel seeing that I can draw, paint, etc.... just emphasizes the amount of versatility I have as an artist. I'm not just a person who can use programs.

I really appreciate all the comments people, its getting me to look at things differently.

[Kool]

Come for advice and get a website critique for free LOL.

Hi theboyjwo, welcome to the forum. http://home.comcast.net/~rnick9/koolsmiley.gif

As for your actual question, monster.com and the like are pretty much useless. I guess somebody gets jobs off there but I've never known anybody who did. There's a bunch of threads on job hunting here in our Linkage to frequently discussed topics (http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7892) Scroll down to post #3. Good luck.

[chris_bcn]

It's not website critique as much as the impact the site has on a job hunt. I get loads of portfolio sites sent to me and I have to weed out quite quickly otherwise I'd never get any work done. It's sometimes not enough that there's good work in there - the intend person has to look at it. If you annoy them immediately (resizing the screen, really small text) then they are less likely to look favourably upon the work.

The work is good - wish I could do illustration - I just think it would be more effective if aspects were re-thought

[PrintDriver]

I viewed your site on a DSL connection. If you are looking at it on T1 or cable that may be quite different in load time.

[cornfed]

You have a ton of misspelled words in there. You should really run a spellcheck. I don't think there is anything less professional than a misspelled word, especially for a designer. On a forum or something, it's okay, but not on something that represents you professionally.

I think your design work is really nice. I agree with the others that I would leave off the web stuff and the illustration section. Your design work stands well by itself.

Your resume needs an overhaul. It looks like you designed a logo in 2003. Whether that's the case or not, I don't know. But it seems you would want to reword that so that if it is the case, then you're not making it so obvious. If its not the case, then the wording is misleading.

[theboyjwo]

Cornfed,
Thanks for pointing out the spelling check, I forget to do that alot.

PrintDriver, Have Cable speed here at home and a T1 at work both MACs, but I've checked it on my Mother's laptop with a DSL connection as well, didn't seem to have problem back then. Regardless people of commented on the slowness so its an issue. I have a site optimization plan in place, I just have to take the time to do it.