Assessing my suitability for employment in Web Design

With the first assignment of the second year coming to an end, now is a good time assess my suitability for employment in the industry.

The job ad I will be using for the basis of my assessment:

Junior / Middleweight web designer - Hull
Category: Digital Duration: Permanent
Location: Hull
Salary: Negotiable

Description:
My client is a leading design and marketing agency, with a reputation for delivering advanced web design and development solutions to companies of all sizes. Highly customer focused, their client’s needs are the heart of their business which means they produce results that always exceed client expectations. They have an opportunity for a junior to middleweight web designer to join their team ASAP. You will be a Web Designer with good XHTML and CSS skills creating websites from start to finish.

You will be joining a well established, technical and growing team that is amongst the best in the business. Whilst you will learn a lot and be developed throughout your career, they need someone who can hit the ground running and be able to work autonomously.

Requirements:
You will be working on a varied range of exciting projects, from e-commerce through to e-marketing and creativity will be important. Experience with creative packages such as photoshop / illustrator / Indesign etc. are required.

All applications must include a list of your URLs that you have designed / worked on so that we can pass them onto the client.

Apply now for an outstanding career opportunity with one of the best in the North.

The advert I have chosen is for a junior to middleweight web designer. I feel this would be an ideal starting point for me to get involved in web design professionally. I am still very much learning as a web designer so as things stand could not claim to be anything more than a junior.

The varied client base the company has, would satisfy my need to diversify my portfolio, giving me experience to work in lots of different sectors. This will hopefully improve my design skills and demonstrate my versatility.

The job requiures the applicant will need to have good XHTML and CSS skills, creating websites from start to finish. I confidently feel I can now do this, although I still find the end result taking too much time.

The ad states successful applicant will learn and be developed throughout their career; this is very appealing as I am by no means the finished article. It is very important for me to work for a company who is willing to help develop my skills.

But the respective company also want someone who can hit the ground running. I feel with the skills I’ve learnt already in XHTML and CSS that I could do this. I always find myself achieving better results when I’m “thrown in the deep end”.

Technically as things stand I would be pushing my current skills to the limit. But with regards to meeting the creatively the role requires I feel I am more than capable. Thanks to my current background knowledge of graphic design applications and experience.

Over the final months of college I must strive to become much quicker and have a much more natural approach to coding my XHTML and CSS whilst trying to incorporate other languages, such as PHP and JavaScript.

It will be important for me to use the time to add to my web portfolio. I definitely don’t have enough URLs to demonstrate my skills as a web designer as things stand. The HNC team projects will be vital to improve this.

If I applied for the job tomorrow I feel I would come up short to standards required to even get an interview. This would mainly be due to the lack of published websites I have completed.

I think it is a very realistic aim that by the end of the course I could aim for such a position with confidence if I concentrate on my weaknesses by building more websites much more quickly.