Be Dependable

1Why 10 emails is not enough

Here are my numbers. All told, I wrote to 32 people at 26 organizations. Sixteen never answered, and one sent only an auto-reply. Fifteen wrote back. Six of those said no, mostly because they had no room this year. Four said they'd think about it, and I never heard from them again. The other five turned into a call or an interview, and four of those said yes.

I'm not sharing these to say you should write to 32 places. I'm sharing them because of what they hide.

Say 30% of the places you write to would reply. That does not mean 10 emails get you 3 replies, because you don't know which places are in that 30%. With 10 emails you could reach 1 of them, or 5 of them. Getting fewer than 3 replies happens almost 4 times out of 10. Once in a while you miss every one.

With 100 emails, about 9 times out of 10 you end up somewhere between 23 and 38 replies.

So a strong portfolio raises your chance, but it can't do much with 10 emails. Write to more places than feels comfortable, and decide early which ones matter most. I'll come back to how I did that in Part 4.

There's a line I first heard in an online community I help run, from people working in Silicon Valley, graphic designers and programmers alike: Finding a job is a full-time job. That's even more true if you've never worked on an in-house team.

2A website first, with a PDF ready

Over the summer I put together a PDF portfolio. Then in early October, a few weeks into our web course, I bought a domain and built my own site. It went live on October 15, the same evening my first round of emails to hosts went out. Every email carried the link and no attachment.

A link means people see your work at first glance, whether or not they want to download anything.

This matters even more for a placement. You're free labour, so some companies and HR teams may not read your résumé at all. A link can still get a quick click from someone who isn't that interested. A file to download adds just enough friction to lose them. Some might skip all of it and simply ask you to come try, since you cost them nothing. At this stage, that isn't a bad thing. When they're paying you, it's another story.

That's one of the reasons I recommend having a personal website even before your PDF portfolio.

In UI/UX today we design mobile first, because desktop is no longer the main use case. I feel the same way about portfolios. Website first, PDF ready. I know school will probably still tell you to start with the PDF. That's not a knock on school. Teaching always runs a step behind. If you've taken our web course, you've seen classes slowly move from Adobe XD to Figma, a change the industry finished a while ago, and it has already moved on to newer tools.

Who reads the site and who asks for the PDF

Who looks at what depends on who they are. People with a design eye, like a design team, a studio, or a director who looks after the brand, will go through your site properly. The director of operations at an industry association had looked at my portfolio online and told me that even before we met, it was clear I could handle the job.

Others still want the PDF, often older managers or people who simply don't like browsing a site. HR at a group of companies called to ask for mine before the interview. Clients will be the same if you run your own studio one day. Keep both ready.

Four to six featured, the rest as a collection

For both, I used the same rule. Pick four to six of your strongest projects and show the brief, the process, and the result. Put everything else in a collection, one image and one line each.

One small thing I missed. My first email had no phone number and no résumé, and the hospital asked for both in their reply. Put them in your signature.

3Studios, the art route, and in-house teams

When we picture a design job, most of us picture a studio. It's worth knowing what else is out there, because you are a designer, not an artist, and the work comes in three kinds.

Design studios

Studios judge your ideas and your craft. They are full of designers and usually want people with experience. Unless you're changing careers with design work behind you and a very strong portfolio, I wouldn't start there. One kind of studio needs its own note, the ones close to our school. I'll come back to those in Part 6.

Arts-leaning work

This path cares more about your own voice, your people skills, or pure creative range. It's a different path, and not what this piece is about.

In-house teams

In-house teams sit inside places whose main job isn't design: a hospital, a factory, a school, a science centre. Many of us will land here, and it's where I aimed. The four that said yes were all places like this.

That's my result, not a rule. What you get depends on what you start out wanting. I wanted stable work, and right now that matters more to me than how creative the job is. So I wrote mostly to places like these, and that's where the yeses came from. Start from somewhere else and your list, your numbers, and your result will look different.

In these places, the first question isn't how creative you are. It's whether they can hand you the work and stop worrying about it.

4How I ranked places and scored offers

Before you write to anyone

Before I wrote to anyone, I sorted every place on my list by two questions. Could I see myself working there after graduation? How easy are they to reach? That gave me four tiers. Then one more check. Do they have their own marketing or design team? If they do, there is real design work waiting.

Once you have options

Once I had real options on the table, I scored each one from 1 to 5 on five things and weighted them. Stability and funding counted most. Then whether the role was real. Then career value, the chance to stay on, and the commute and hours.

The hospital came out on top. There was one thing I wrote down but didn't score. I liked the science museum's pace and atmosphere more, away from a medical setting. It was a feeling, so I kept it beside the numbers instead of inside them. A score doesn't make the choice for you. It shows you what you're trading.

5Being someone people can count on

This one starts at school, long before any placement.

Say it before, not after

Teachers tell us all the time: If anything comes up, email me. I'd add one thing. Don't panic, and don't be afraid to send that email. If you can't make it to class, or your work is going to be late, say so before, not after it's over. Real emergencies happen. Then write as soon as you can afterwards and explain what happened. It won't fix that one time. But if you do it every time, people learn they can count on you.

The same habit carried straight into my placement. Before it had even started, I knew I might need to leave early one Friday. I told the hospital and our placement coordinator in the same email, said I would make up the hours over the following weeks, and asked both of them to agree. The Placement Guide is clear about why both:

Any lapse by the student in reporting an absence to both the employer and the Work Integrated Learning Coordinator will cause the student to fail the course.

This is also what interviewers listen for. When something goes wrong, your first thought should be: Who do I tell first, who owns this, who do I need to talk to? If that is already your habit, it shows in how you answer their questions.

Pay and terms work the same way. This week a classmate told our group chat about a design job for a real client. Pay and a contract never came up at the start, so the client assumed it was free, since it was a student assignment. Then came a request for the source files, and an NDA that would have kept the work out of their portfolio and the grad show. They turned the NDA down, and they know what they'll do next time. So talk about pay, scope, source files, and whether you can show the work before you start. Once you've said yes, raising it later usually doesn't go over well. It isn't always wrong, but if the scope hasn't really changed, it's a bit like reopening a signed contract. If the scope does grow, that's the moment to speak up.

The five-minute test

The second habit is smaller. Pick a project from last year. Could you find a certain version of it, the reference behind it, or a screenshot, in five minutes? It sounds fussy. But at a hospital, a factory, or a school, your manager or client will pick an old version as the final, or as the template for the next one. A lead designer or your boss can also ask to see any earlier round, so keep the versions nobody picked. One folder per project and dated file names are enough.

None of this needs a job. You can start with your next email to a teacher.

6From a phone call to a formal interview

I had five conversations, and no two looked the same. It helps to know the range before you walk in.

Some already knew me or my work

The hospital's placement coordinator phoned me, and we talked about the actual work and the start date. The association's director of operations had seen my site before our Teams call. Both said yes on the call.

Some checked the basics

The group of companies did a short phone screen, then a Teams panel with HR and the marketing team lead: tools, past rebrands, how I handle more than one task. I brought a one-page proposal with a plan for my five weeks, and the team lead said:

I really like your proposal, that you came with a plan of your five weeks.

One was fully formal

The science museum interviewed me in person, with a senior marketing manager and a graphic designer, and asked the kind of questions I knew from my earlier career: how I work with people, how I solve problems, where I keep learning outside of class, and what I do when the ideas get stuck on a brand project. I went in with a 30-second introduction and four questions of my own. HR emailed the offer on Monday morning.

One was with a design studio

A small studio set up a 30-minute Zoom with one of their creative designers. I brought a one-page proposal for them too, but the designer barely asked me anything. Maybe they had already looked at my portfolio, or they really needed the help, since they were looking for an intern anyway. We talked about my working hours, and they said it could basically work.

Nothing was confirmed in writing before I made my decision.

When the host is close to our school

The designer I talked to is a graduate of our program, and one of the designers on our panels. That reminded me of two of our part-time teachers who run studios and take placement students. They will be good to students, I'm sure of that.

But in a placement, a teacher or a grad you know becomes your boss. They are thinking about clients, deadlines, and money, and they may not be as easy-going as they are in class.

So my advice is the same for every host. This placement is a rare chance that the school works hard to set up for us. Take it seriously, for the sake of what comes after graduation. Whether or not you end up in an office, or in graphic design at all, the basic manners and mindset of working life are the same underneath. I'm still working on this too.

Formal or not, every one of them was checking the same thing. Would I be easy to work with for five weeks?

Where to start, whichever year you're in

Our placement search starts in October, while third-year classes are still running. The summer before is the only stretch with no classes in it.

If you're in that summer now, here's where I'd start. Pick your four to six projects. Put them on a site, and keep a PDF ready. Clean up one project folder until you could find anything in it in five minutes. Then, when October comes, write to more places than feels comfortable.

If you're in third year with me, the same list still works. Our last term and the job search before graduation are coming fast. Update the four to six projects, keep the site and the PDF in step, and answer the next email the same day. We'll be doing all of this again soon, for real jobs.