Wednesday 9 March 2011

TLK 3 - Freelancing

The third TLK lecture invited two freelance designers: Joel Lardner (an illustrator) and Chris Wharton (a web designer). Jane Richardson who is a senior member of recruitment agency Aquent was also there.

The main subject of the talk was looking at how students were to get a foot in the door with companies, how to approach them and employability. As a freelancer the most important thing is to create the best professional profile you can. Whatever research you can do into a company they can do into the employee too. There were some helpful suggestions of links to look at such as behance and sortfolio two types of online portfolio. When looking for jobs twitters tweet deck could be a useful resource.

It has influenced me in my extended major project, because it has made me think about how graduates look to the employer. There are plenty of social networking sites to build profiles and brands, including Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. When a prospected employer can type a candidates name into google, the first thing that comes up will be these social networking sites... so it is important to keep professional and personal profiles separate.

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