I recenlty graduated and I am in the process of looking for jobs especially in corporate design departments. I found a few articles specific to this area of design on core, but I still have a few questions.
Corporate design jobs have turned out to be a good bit harder to find, more specifically jobs in industial design. I am having more luck looking on firms sights as to where to send samples, but with corporate it is a lot harder to come by. my questions.
In corporate jobs it seems that everything has to go through HR and I am wondering if this is the case. Design seems like an area where you need to get to the source of the hiring like a design director. In large corporations would it be better to send work to a design director if you can get a name and contact info or just go through hr. Which has the best chance of getting a good look at?
How can I find where design departments are located for large corporations? I guess I am wondering if there are any short cuts to the corporate design job search, some departments in some companies are hard to find.
I am looking for any help I can get in searching for design jobs within the corporate setting.
…idsa members directory would be one place to start…other than that you might try going down the list of the fortune 1000 websites for clues…or just google “design director” and sort through the 500k results…yes, hr depts are common gate keepers for corp id jobs and most are pencil necks (if they do not have an open req for an id your stuff will go directly in the can)…getting the name of the id dir is a good thing, but not easy.
You are correct about HR; In large corporations HR is a spam filter for the people you want to talk to. Avoid, avoid, avoid! You have to be introduced or meet these people first to avoid HR.
Search and go to industry conventions, meetings, conferences, tradeshows, speakers’ presentations, discussions, etc. As mrd mentions, contact local IDSA chapter and go to regular meetings / events. You will meet people genuinely interested in helping you. Be upfront about your situation to the people you meet and talk with. If you do not have a card, make your own simple business-personal card and give it out. Ideal if it includes a web-based portfolio link. I absolutely guarantee someone will say “…interesting, I know someone who may be interested, I’ll pass on your information.” Many people I know who did this or variations of, including me, all got jobs within a few months.
Many corporate design positions do not report to a design director but to a manager in marketing, engineering, R&D, a VP, the owner, etc… The easiest and best way to access these people is go to where they go and enlist others to help you get to them. Understand that they are probably looking for you too, at some point, but are as lost at finding you as you are at finding them. Also understand that they help each other out as much as you are asking here for us to help you, hence my guarantee quote above.
…networking is 5 times more effective in securing employment than any other technique…85% of all hiring is without any public notice of an open position.