Off to a great start..
Q.
It’s that time of year again, when I get inundated with CVs from graduates looking for work. How do other companies deal with this annual problem?
A.
I’m sure many people share your frustration with the number and variety of applications that are made post end-of-year shows. I also hear complaints about recent graduates and their lack of experience of the world of work, the time it takes to get them up and running, and how “needy” they are in terms of supervision.
The answer is simple – put yourself in their shoes. Remember when someone gave you your first break. We’ve all been given an opportunity at some point and now’s the time to pass it forward.
To dismiss graduate recruitment as a waste of time and money is extremely short sighted. Whilst it may take some time to get juniors to a useful level of productivity and effectiveness, the rewards in terms of innovation and revitalisation for the creativity of your practice are perceptibly more. You need “new blood” in your practice to ensure a constantly evolving creativity. These new graduates may be a source of frustration, but they also challenge you, make you re-examine your own ideas and prevent you from becoming staid and in a rut.
Equally, you often find that an influx of juniors is rapidly followed by a huge impetus in the social side of your office – softball teams, cinema visits, and so on. It’s almost as if they bring a rejuvenation to the soul of an office. If you could bottle the enthusiasm that is brought to your practice, you could provide yourselves with a constant source of new impetus both in design and in staff motivation.
So the next time you hear someone saying, “I’m really sick of these so-called juniors knocking around the office doing nothing. They can’t work without someone standing over them and we can’t afford to staff them on anything,” ask them to remember why they joined the design profession in the first place and how they felt when they got their first experience of work – full of enthusiasm, buzzing with ideas and keen to learn. Don’t lose sight of that in the scramble to make money. We need to remember that we have a responsibility to the future of the profession and the community. We’ve deliberately chosen to work in a unique environment that thrives on interaction. Unless we support the future of creativity we may as well go and work in a bank!
August 2004
FX Magazine