Hello new and current students. And welcome to read this blog. Hopefully someone in the classroom will tell you about this, so that all of you can start blogging and finding out about all the marvelous things related to IxD. I graduated about a year ago, and been looking for a job ever since. Alas, I’ve had no luck. Here are some advices to all you students in getting a job.
1) If you don’t have previous work experience before you came to the school, take a year off and do those internships. You cannot get a job unless you have at least a year of experience, preferably more. All the interviews I’ve had, have failed because of this. Internships are easy to get, when you are still in school, after that, no chance whatsoever. Try to get at least 2 companies to your CV, preferbaly more.
2)And your final thesis, make sure you have a sponsor for it. Don’t do overly futuristic stuff, or if you do make sure it ties down to the basics of IxD. The companies are interested if you have the capability to do the stuff, before they are in your ideas.
3)As soon as you graduate, the places you go for interviews will start asking if you can do wireframes, patterns and flowcharts. If you don’t know what those are, don’t worry. They are the simplest thing ever and you probably can do better.
4) Learn to code. HTML, Javascript, PHP and all that jazz is very good to know, and I guarantee it will help you in getting a job. Flash is pretty much dead, the reasons for that are pretty much all over the web and is related to the runtime itself, still, it’s up to you if you want to learn it as a lot of companies still use it. I wouldn’t.
5) Physical computing is great, it’s fun, it’s the future and you should learn to do it, but, the truth is.. nobody is interested in the future, unless they have a lot of money and/or genuine interest to do it. Almost every company I have interviewed at say that it’s interesting and they want to do that, but lack of funding or interest towards hardware interaction is a hard sell for marketing people. Things might change soon, though, as NFC phones are becoming mainstream next year, at least most of the Nokias. More about that later.
6) Get enthusiastic. There is nothing worse than a designer not believing in design. Use this blog or make your own (another good thing to learn, hack WordPress) to report your findings to the world. If you love yourself too much, you can also use Twitter to do it ;) Talk about future technologies with everyone, go to conferences and get really drunk with the people there, talk about interactions while you are drunk, it’s great fun.
7) Learn to design mobile stuff. Before it was web, now it’s mobile apps. Don’t limit yourself to iPhones, as good as they are, they are meant for rich people.
8) Don’t worry about operating systems or design guidelines and things called “Scrum” or “Agile”, you really can live without those. They may help you in getting job, however. But, the job you are gonna get is closer to development than design work. Your choice.
9) Do a really nice portfolio, that has a mixture of mobile, web, ethnographics, psychology, the future, physical computing, (maybe flowcharts), paper prototypes, “design thinking” (I know, a clichee), collaborative working and more!
10) Do those internships! I can’t emphasize enough how important job experience is.
Good luck, and don’t drink those 3,5′s, they won’t get you drunk, but you will get a terrible hangover.
