Mike Carter Workshop - Orchard

A couple of weeks ago Mike Carter from Orchard recruitment came in to speak to us. He graduated in design and art direction and Orchard have placed more people into design than anyone else in the North.

At the moment 49.188 people are studying in art and design. This is second only to business studies. During the discussion we spoke about what was needed in the industry to breakthrough this huge number of competitors for jobs. The main points were enthusiasm, commitment and organisation. Real industry work requires a whole new level of accuracy. You can't afford to make mistakes before you go to print or it can prove to be very costly to your employers. When making your portfolio you can afford to make mistakes and make them better but when you show your work to people it cannot have mistakes in it.

We moved onto the subject of CV's. These need to get people to contact you. They need to conform to the 3 second rule. If your potential employers see exactly what they need to within that time then you have given yourself every chance. You need to include Employment - What your company does and what you do in it. Aswell as this you need to include education and your number of GCSE's with dates. Other qualifications need putting in order most recent first. We were advised not to put our date of birth on the CV due to ageism. If employers really want to know age they can work it out from our qualification dates. We should not be general with hobbies and only put in references if they are excellent.

With regards to the portfolio the advice was to consider the amount in our book carefully. To fake real prints to make things look like real industry pieces of work. We spoke about portfolios all looking the same which I have noticed about my class. Something I agree with is the way you should let the person look through the work. If you need to explain your ideas they are not good enough. During interview we should be ourselves, know the location and have some knowledge of the company.

We then did a small group exercise which involved having 25 cards with industry and student projects upon them. We could only include 15 cards for imaginary portfolio breakdowns. We did this for different types of job which helped us to understand how to taylor our portfolio to each one.

We were told to always have questions to ask your interviewer. Going around the group we were asked what we would ask. Most people didn't have one to ask. Mine was 'What are your plans for the future?' At the end of the interview we should clarify when we should be contacted.

I found the workshop worthwhile and got involved as much as possible and plan to take the advice into my own work.