Jobs: Creative

Opportunities to further your career within the Creative industry

Good news: The creative industry has continually grown & gone from strength to strength. Teams have noticeably grown in size & skills. With the demand for creative dramatically increasing, team size is having to mirror that, which means more available positions & headcount across brands & agencies.

With the digital, tech & software world taking over more traditional organizations, there has been a big shift & lift in digitally focused roles across UI, UX, CX, Product Design & Service Design. ‘Creative’ now spans across print, brand & digital; on both a contract & permanent basis.

Being a creative, you will always have an element of being hands-on, no matter your seniority. When you reach the ‘Manager” level, that doesn’t always typically mean people management, but project & strategy management.

Recent Changes for Creative Jobs

The creative working landscape is constantly influenced by innovations and new ways of thinking. One result of this influence is that self-employment & freelancing is on the forefront of the creative market. More precisely, there are not many other industries in which the self-employment rate is as high as in the creative industry. Particularly, a lot of young people prefer being portfolio workers and self-employed.

Future Prospects

Currently, it is prime time for creative professionals with the right experience and skills as creative agencies have been growing and companies have been investing more and more money in their creative departments. Recent noticeable changes in the market support that this trend will continue and predict that the demand for Creative Directors, UI, UX & Product design experts will particularly increase over the next couple of years.

Salt’s advice for getting a job in the Creative industry

• Employers’ Requirements

  Since the creative industries become more and more digitalised, it goes without saying that employers expect creative experts to be natives in everything that is digital. This might range from online distribution, website & customer journey optimisation and end to end UI of a mobile app to the creation of online banners. You will be expected to know your strengths, even an impressive hybrid UI/UX designer will be heavily weighted to one of those aspects. The continued growth of creative means roles & opportunities are becoming more specialised.

• CV Requirements

  In the creative world, CV translates to portfolio. A folio of your work is a must and most hiring managers will typically look at a showcase of your previous work before reading a CV. It’s important to show-off your greatest projects so always keep this up to date.

  There is one particular keyword which is a must-have on every creative professional’s CV: mobile. Having mobile design experience is a huge benefit for every creative as responsive design for iOS, Android and co. is considered as a key prerequisite by all mobile users but it is sometimes not that easy to implement as mobile platforms are constantly updated and change. Two other crucial skills are website design and development. Nowadays websites are more often visited than the actual store, which is why the experience of the online shopping experience must be perfect.

  Unless you are a mobile or website developer or designer, you are not expected to master these skills but to have a basic understanding of them.

• Creative Job Interview Preparation

  During an interview for a creative role, interviewers tend to have a close look at the applicants’ portfolio and ask relevant questions about their work. Besides portfolio questions, they might also ask you the following in order to get to know you better:

  1. What was your favourite project and why?
  2. What technology tools do you use regularly?
  3. Could you please describe your design style.
  4. What is your opinion about our creative materials?

• Educational Requirements

  A bachelor’s degree in a creative-related field, such as graphic design, television production, advertising and publishing, might be seen as advantageous by some employers. However, what really matters in the creative industry is the professionals’ portfolio. An excellent portfolio is usually worth more than every degree which is why creatives start working on their portfolio as soon as possible and rarely do a postgraduate degree.