Showing posts with label entry-level jobs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label entry-level jobs. Show all posts
Sara R.
I wanted to include non-volunteer, personal experience too, but for now I left that out. Admittedly, I should have another piece to add here, but I kind've shot myself in the foot.

Professional experience:

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology)
New Jersey Senior Mentor and New York City/New Jersey FIRST Webmaster.
  • Provided resources and communication to teams in area.
  • Developed online content for new website.
  • Co-wrote, designed, and edited bi-monthly e-newsletter.
  • Created, edited, and maintained all 2007-2008 photographs, content, and layout.
  • Produced materials for outreach presentations.
  • Developed effective communication strategies for both teams and New Jersey and New York City Planning Committees.

AmeriCorps*VISTA
Volunteer for FIRST program in New Jersey.
  • Developed online visual identity for New York City/ New Jersey FIRST website.
  • Produced online visual materials for corporate presentations.
  • Created original, interactive content for NYC/NJ FIRST website.


Volunteer Work:

"Alex" the Movie, MCCC TV4 Class
Co-Web Designer and Developer

  • Designed original UI experience similar to the iPhone.
  • Designed outer interface and digital graphics.
  • Created cohesion between site content provided and site content created.
  • Recipient of Web Design II Information Architecture and Popular Vote awards.

Mu Beta Psi (National Honorary Music Fraternity)
Brother of Pi Chapter, Rutgers University. Web developer and designer.
  • Developed website architecture and overall content presentation.
  • Designed content layout and website layout
  • Created original content - bio pages, site map, etc.

US FIRST Robotics Team, Hightstown, NJ
6-year mentor of Hightstown High School’s FIRST Robotics team.
  • Trained students in Adobe Photoshop, and HTML.
  • Advised and edited updates to team website.
  • Edited team newsletter, award application essays, student scholarship essays, and promotional materials.
  • Designed all official team uniform logos, button graphics, 2008 and 2009 website Flash header.
  • Co-wrote content and advised students on content writing for team website. Former student leadership member.
Sara R.
I opted only to look at entry level web design jobs, even though I'm not entirely sure that's what I want to do with my life. But, I figure, it's a good starting place. Based on a bunch of websites of research, I came up with the following general requirements: Photoshop, Dreamweaver, HTML, and CSS. They were listed as requirements almost everywhere. A few other places also wanted Final Cut Pro or video editing software, some other Adobe products (like Illustrator or Fireworks), and a lot of people wanted someone with cross-platform experience - ie, they want someone who can work both in Mac and PC.

Then, of course, there were the non-technical requirements like a bachelor's degree or equivalent experience, learning/working quickly, working under little supervision, etc. Which, to be honest, is almost as important to me as knowing the software. Personally, I could learn all the technology in the world, but if I don't care about attention to detail the design things that I could create would be a disaster. Knowing your work environment - groups or alone, etc. has a significant impact on the kind of designs you develop too.

I took all these search options, including the one about little supervision to see what other jobs I could find. Not surprisingly, even when I took "web designer" out of the search options, I still found a LOT of front-end design jobs. But I also found a few graphic design jobs, a few web DEVELOPER jobs (the back end, instead of the front) and even a couple marketing jobs focused on the "web" aspect of their companies.

There were a lot of New York jobs, and some California jobs, but there were also a lot of "virtual campus" jobs that were based all over the place. Big surprise, working digitally from anywhere?