Posts Tagged ‘employment’

MTC Media

MTC Media

Having posted my thoughts on university before, both the good and bad points I was in two minds with what to do over the summer as the end of the educational year and holidays approached and I wasn’t sure whether it was worth carrying on or trying to seek employment within the industry.

I’d become disillusioned with university over the last few months as I felt the course had stalled slightly and I wasn’t picking up as much as I wanted to and felt that a lot of the content we were being taught had little relevance to the industry. (We were still told that table based layouts were acceptable on occasion). As the year finished I was still swithering as to what to do and decided that I’d decide over the summer as there was no immediate rush to make my mind up as the course doesn’t re-start until September but circumstances speeded that process up.

After a hectic couple of weeks, between completing the university year and everything that’s associated with that, I was offered employment with MTC Media here in Dundee and I was delighted to accept. My role is the front end development of websites and implementing the HTML/CSS/JavaScript, as well as designing and after four weeks of employment I’m really enjoying it so far. I’ve learnt a lot in the short space of time in my employment, from the mechanics of how a design agency operates to more technical aspects of coding and designing solutions for clients. Whilst I’ve designed and implemented several websites in the past, it’s much different now that it is my main job role and in a design agency, and I’m really enjoying it so far.

My knowledge is increasing all the time and at a much faster rate than it would had I stayed in education and for that reason I feel I’ve made the right decision.

University

Abertay University

As my first year of university comes to an end, I was reading the latest issue of .net magazine and came across the article written by Jack Osborne about what to do after leaving university in order to gain employment within the industry. Although I’ve not yet reached that stage yet, there is a few tips that anyone at any stage of education can implement now in order to increase chances.

Portfolio:

Jack states that the portfolio of any work should be in the right order and as good as it can be as that is where potential employers will look first. Students are often encouraged to leave out university work from their portfolio but often that is all students have, and goes back to the old adage that they can’t get a job due to lack of experience but no-one’s willing to offer that experience. In my portfolio, two thirds of it is university based as that is all I have at the moment but another useful tip which I will implement over the summer is to “fake it”. By creating websites for imaginary clients it will give me a chance to improve both my design and coding skills as well as boosting my portfolio.

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