<aside> 🔥 This toolkit is for my peeps out there who are looking for jobs. I’m going to give you an overview of what has helped me personally over the years.
If you’re fired up to get your dream creative job, you can also snag my 7-day creative career planning challenge - The Creative Career Blueprint.
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Cold-applying (that is, finding a post, uploading your resume and portfolio, and then doing nothing else) will likely not yield a ton of results. Part of your default action when applying for jobs should be seeking out a human being who works in the company you're applying to, either in HR or in the same department as the job, and following up with that person (email, LinkedIn, whatever). Don't email several times. Just a quick note to say you're super interested and you're wondering if they can point you in the right direction.
For instance, there are several Product Design groups on Facebook and on Slack. There’s Open Animation, a Discord for people who are trying to learn animation skills. There’s Panimation, an organization for trans, female, and/or queer-identifying motion designers. There’s Where Are The Black Designers?, a community for BIPOC-identifying designers of all disciplines. Want to join a group for Women in Tech? There’s a Slack for that! There’s a (free to enter) community for anything you can think of, if you just search for it. Don’t pay expensive fees.
Why this is important: These communities generally have a "jobs" area that you can check out, and because it's a community you'll be able to see who posted what and get answers about if the job is still open. It’s also a great idea to use these communities to build your network so that more people think of you when something DOES come up.
Search “Groups” in Facebooks, but you can also just use google to search for Slacks and Discords.
People need to know you’re looking. If you’re not in an awkward situation (aka have a job already), post on your LinkedIn or FB or IG that you’re looking and provide a link to your portfolio. Your network is going to be the best source of leads.
This is table stakes, because most people will decide off the portfolio if they even want to talk to you at all. There are some finer points on how to structure one's portfolio that I'll put in a different care package if folks show interest.
Unfortunately it's a bit of a "buyer's market" out there right now. It means employers are able to passively wait for referrals to come to them or just search for available people on LinkedIn, etc and they don't necessarily have to go through a whole job posting process. So keep your LinkedIn, Dribble, etc up to date.
The most important question you'll always be asked is..."Tell me about yourself. What's your experience?" — pre-write a few sentences summarizing your experience & skills. You can use Chat GPT to find other likely interview questions by feeding the whole JD into it for context and asking it to give you questions. But the most important answer you want to have memorized (or open on your computer while you're chatting) is "tell me about yourself." Your brain is gonna get scrambled because of nerves and it's really helpful to have it for reference.
Just like the point before this, it's an excellent cheat sheet for yourself to reference your past experience and help get through your nerves.