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[MUSIC PLAYING]
I think the most important thing, what I look for, is evidence of people being creative
and sadly, practical. As well as wanting to be wowed, you do need to see that somebody
has created something-- you don't want them to take the glory of other people's work.
And as an art director and lead creative, I want to make sure that the talent that I'm
looking at is the person responsible for the craft-- so skills, basically.
Apart from the work, I would say the actual presentation skills of the candidate-- the
quality of what they're showing me and in what way they're showing me. For example,
a tatty ring binder won't really cut it, whereas a sleek, Avery folio with nicely laid out
run outs of their work speaks volumes. It doesn't matter about the brand of laptop.
Macs are good.
But again, it's all about just the way they present themselves, and if they speak confidently
and they're confident in their work. When someone can't explain to me something about
their work, then it doesn't really leave me impressed.
Apart from combing their hair, probably prepare-- not as if it was like a stage show or anything,
but just know how they would answer, what's your favorite project? What project are you
most proud of? How you would articulate how you produce things, what skills you have,
and if it were you listening to you, would you be interested in you?
It's a bit of a tricky subject at the moment with the way that internships are looked upon.
And I think for fresh grads or juniors that aren't really your four year experienced juniors,
gaining that experience is key.
So offer your services. Try and get two two-week internships. Be passionate and enthusiastic
above all else, if you're starting. And look to design press and stuff like that. Be interested
and experiment while you've got the opportunity, because once you get on the ladder, gaining
that proper agency experience, you won't have a better opportunity to really discover where
you want to start. So I think looking at just gaining some experience and being enthusiastic
is key.
Looking at the forecast for 2014 in digital, I think what I will be looking at-- to produce
with our clients and also to hire in talent-- would be lots of innovational use of social
media, how it can integrate with gaining sign-ups and data, and also just looking at responsive
design.
Whether that's quite a boring subject to broach, it's kind of we're not looking at traditional
web anymore, and we haven't been for the last year. So it would be good to see how people
are taking on that new dynamic of responsive device-focused design