I know this is a hard one to answer - give me your gut. Will companies even touch you with 15+ years experience if you’re going for a design position vs. management?
thanks.
Maybe if you’re looking for an internship…
If you think there’s some reason to question your motives for a certain kind of position, you should spell it out in your cover letter.
You, mean to stress that I really prefer and am great at hands on design vs. managing others in the cover? And what else they get by hiring someone with that much experience for a senior position?
I don’t see why not if you can do the job. The only thing is they may not be expecting to pay that much money so that would be a consideration. Would a 15+ year guy work for the price for a 5+ year guy? Most wouldn’t but in a bad economy maybe they can get a lot of senior level guys to take mid-level jobs.
For a senior or principal position it would be totally normal. Not everyone wants to direct and manage and employers know that. I’ve met senior designers in their 50’s, and at frog we developed a new position called fellow for that purpose… essentially a super, super senior designer. Essentially, once you are a senior designer in this org, the choice is your to go the associate director, director, executive director route, or principal to fellow route.
That’s awesome! I wish more organizations did this. I thought the days of actually designing for more than 10-15 years were gone with the Raymond Loewys of the last century.
I spent almost the entire day concepting, ideating, and doing client ready sketches with the team today… if it is in the veins, it is in the veins. Craft is back, and in a big way. Time to put the post-its away and get to work.