How I Landed My First Full-Time Design Job

I’ve been designing professionally for the last 16 years, but I still have vivid memories of my journey that started my career.

Figuring out that important next step after high school or college will be a long-lasting challenge for many, and there’s no one-size-fits-all blueprint for success. The process isn’t always smooth, nor do you always get exactly what you planned for. But it is very possible to land the type of job you want if you stay focused on getting it.

Here are the inadvertent steps I took to land my first real design job:

Apply to jobs I wasn’t qualified for

During my junior year of college, I visited Atlanta and instantly fell in love with it. I made up in my mind that I would be moving there after graduation. I was deep into the core classes of my visual communication design (graphic design) degree, and fortunately, I was also afforded the opportunity to work part-time as a junior graphic designer while doing my full-time studies. My roommate and I had also just discovered the world of freelancing and I had a couple of projects under my belt.

In my mind, I was a talented, up-and-coming designer who was going places, so I started my full-time job search during my senior year of college. With my limited experience, I applied to all types of jobs and titles in Atlanta — senior designer, art director, design manager, entry-level designer, you name it. It was a good mix of ambition and delusion. I didn’t get much response at all, but I kept applying.

Persevere through adversity

I graduated and moved back home to Maryland. I wasn’t thrilled about moving back home after college, but I figured I would just work some odd jobs and keep applying in the meantime—maybe even find a part-time design job. While helping my parents move into a new house a few weeks after moving back, my grandmother suffered a stroke. It was a devastating and scary time for my family. Because she needed major rehabilitation and care, my dad asked if I would watch her full time until she was recovered. I agreed, of course, but that agreement also halted my ability to take a job.

Make a website that sucks

While I stayed home to take care of my grandmother, I decided to stay productive. I needed a decent portfolio website to increase my chances of landing my first full-time design job (I was currently just attaching a PDF of my work to each application). Mind you, this was circa 2005, so web technology was still heavily evolving. With one Dreamweaver class under my belt as experience, I worked relentlessly to put together a portfolio website while attending to my grandma.

So I designed the look and feel, built out my Photoshop files, sliced ‘em up, imported them into Macromedia Dreamweaver (now Adobe) and also used layers to organize my site (this was a time when coding with tables was still standard). It was coming along well, so I thought, until that dreaded day when I finally published it to the web for the world to see. It looked great in Netscape — but my heart was broken when I viewed it in other browsers. It was a terrible, jumbled mess, with almost every element rendered out of place.

Capitalize on “in-the-meantime” opportunities

Although I was staying home during my grandmother’s recovery, I still had a few bills to pay. Pulling from my network of college friends and organizations, I commissioned a few freelance projects to bring in some income. I was still deflated from the failed website I had built, so I focused on other projects. About 6 months after my grandmother’s stroke, she was doing well enough to function on her own again. This commenced my hunt for a job again. I was more than eager to jump back into job applications and resume applying to both part-time local jobs and full-time jobs in Atlanta. Reluctantly, I reverted back to my PDF portfolio and kept it moving.

In an almost divine way, I landed a graphic design internship at a DC-area law firm approximately 2–3 weeks after my grandma’s recovery. Excited and ready to learn, I started my 3-train and hour and a half each way, $14-a-day commute. I met some cool people and worked on challenging projects. I had interesting conversations with law students who would invite me into their conversations for a “regular” person’s point of view. Although I was learning a lot and getting good experience, I still had my eyes on the true prize, which was landing a full-time gig in my dream city.

Make another website (the right way)

About a month or two into my internship, I realized that I needed to recreate my portfolio website, but using the right techniques. First, I needed to learn the proper way to build a website that rendered correctly on all browsers, and then I needed to build it. So every day after work, I made the trek from the city back to the suburbs to find a seat in the library near home and plow away at my website for a couple of hours. I spent my weeknights in the library; I spent my weekends in the library. I was obsessed with getting this website done.

Thankfully, I was able to recreate the design of the first version into a much better functioning website in a couple of months.

Stay ready for the opportunity

Once my new website was ready to go, I was much more confident in my ability to display my design work effectively. But by this time, it was late spring and I was growing a little weary of the long commutes to my internship, living at home and the failed attempts at landing that full-time design job. However, I remained diligent.

One day at work, I received an email expressing interest in me from an employer in Atlanta looking for a production designer. I had applied to so many jobs that I honestly couldn’t keep track of who was who. But I didn’t care — I happily scheduled a phone interview. I vividly remember the day of that phone interview, as my heart was beating out of my chest as I rushed out on my lunch break to prepare for the call. “Would you be willing to come down to Atlanta for an interview?” Well…of course!

Thankfully I had a saved up a little money for an opportunity just as that one. I booked a flight to Atlanta and stayed with a friend. On the day of the interview, I could hardly contain myself as the HR manager gave me a tour of the building and escorted me to the creative director’s office. I can’t remember much of what was said in the interview, but I do poignantly remember him asking about my portfolio—“Did you create this website? This is really good!” Those words meant more than he would know!

Say “YES!!!” with radical faith

In June of 2006, about 9 months after my return from college and my 6-month stint from working to take care of my grandmother, over 100 applications later, and what seemed like a lifetime of waiting — I was offered my first full-time employment offer as a production designer at a travel and incentive agency. With a resounding “YES!”, I accepted! The following month, my family and I drove to Atlanta with my things. I had no apartment lined up yet but had a start date approaching in a few days. Naive and admittedly ignorant of the moving process, it was only by grace that I was reluctantly approved (with my crazy low credit score) for one of the three apartments on my MapQuest printout. With my parent’s help, I was able to move in that weekend and purchase a few novelty items for my apartment. In a few short days, I was on my own in a new city, ready to start my long-awaited journey.

I did well at my first design job. Just a few short months after I was hired, I was promoted from production designer to graphic designer. I made great connections and worked on projects that taught me that I had a lot to learn. My tenure there lasted for almost 4 years. 13 years (and a much higher credit score) later from the faithful day that I started that first design job, I have grown my design career by cultivating my skills in corporate, non-profit, small business, startups, and even my own business experiences.

It takes perseverance. It takes resilience. It requires a whatever-it-takes (legally and ethically) attitude to get what you want. It took me about a year, over 100 applications and a bit of adversity to land my first design job. In hindsight, a year wasn’t really that long. For you, it may be much easier or a little more difficult. Whatever the journey, it’s yours for the taking. From the day that I declared I would move to a new city and land my first real job there, I never stopped believing that it would happen. If it happened for me, then it can happen for you!