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Get Your Dream Job in 2020 w/ Petrula Vrontikis
Chris Do and Petrula Vrontikis reveal the networking strategies and career pivots needed to land your dream job in a crisis.
Chris Do
Founder, The Futur™ · October 8, 2020
Stop Playing the Lottery
There are two ways to look for a job. The first is a numbers game. You polish your resume, write a generic cover letter, and fire it into the digital void of online application portals. You do this dozens, maybe hundreds of times, hoping that an algorithm or an overworked HR coordinator plucks your name from the pile. This is the least effective way to find work.
It is, in essence, playing the lottery.
The second way is a game of strategy. It requires research, precision, and a willingness to activate the single most powerful asset you have: your network. In a compromised market where opportunities are scarce and competition is fierce, this is the only way to play.
Petrula Vrontikis, a veteran graphic designer, author, and professor at the prestigious ArtCenter College of Design, has spent her career as the conduit between emerging talent and the professional world. In a conversation with The Futur’s Chris Do, she lays out a playbook for navigating a job market in crisis.
Her central premise is simple. “One of the worst ways to look for a job is just answering and filling out a whole bunch of anonymous online applications,” Vrontikis states. “That is the least effective way to get to where it needs to be, and that's in front of a talent recruiter or creative director.”
The alternative is not about having a star-studded address book. It is about systematically building and leveraging connections to gain an unfair advantage. It is about getting the inside track.
The Inside Track Playbook
Many recent graduates and job seekers feel they have no network to speak of. This is a failure of imagination. “Who am I supposed to reach out to?” is a common lament. Vrontikis argues the answer is already at your fingertips.
“LinkedIn is just astonishing,” she says. The platform is not just a digital resume; it is a live map of professional relationships waiting to be navigated.
Vrontikis lays out a direct, tactical approach. Let’s say your dream job is at Collins, the acclaimed brand and design agency. A newly graduated designer might feel completely disconnected from such a company. But a simple search changes the entire game.
By searching for people who have attended your university and currently or previously worked at your target company, you instantly uncover a list of potential allies. As Do demonstrates live, a search for “ArtCenter College of design” and “Collins” on LinkedIn immediately reveals a dozen people with a shared connection.
This is your entry point.
Your outreach should be specific and respectful. You are not asking for a job. You are asking for guidance. Vrontikis suggests a simple script: “I'm trying to expand my Art Center network and I'm specifically interested in being a... something something at Facebook. I'm looking for some guidance from you about the process there.”
This simple act achieves several critical goals:
- It Bypasses the Gatekeepers: Your message lands directly with a practitioner inside the company, not a generic HR inbox.
- It Leverages Affinity: The shared alumni connection creates an immediate, low-level bond. People are generally more willing to help those from their own tribe.
- It Gathers Intelligence: The contact might offer crucial insights. They could clarify what the team is really looking for, which skills to emphasize, or how to tailor your portfolio to their specific needs.
- It Activates an Internal Advocate: Even if that person can't hire you, they might forward your portfolio to the right person. “Hey, have you come across Chris Do’s application?” Vrontikis imagines them saying. “I think he could be really interesting for the something something team.”
This process transforms you from an anonymous applicant into a referred candidate. As Chris Do puts it, “That's how you get the inside track. If you can get the inside lane, it's the shortest and the fastest.” This isn't cheating; it's being strategic. “All's fair in Love and War and getting jobs,” Do adds.
This network activation creates a ripple effect. The person you contact may not have an opportunity, but they know you are looking. “The more you get the word out as to what you are looking for... your network will work for you,” Vrontikis explains. You are creating a buzz around your availability and ambition.
The New Rules of Creative Work
The pandemic didn't just shrink the job market; it fundamentally altered the nature of creative work. Vrontikis observes a trend toward a more nomadic career path, accelerated by the forced shift to remote collaboration.
“You're going to be working more nomadically,” she predicts. “You probably have shorter gigs... maybe 18 to 24 months.”
This is not a sign of instability but a new model of career growth. The most ambitious designers move around frequently, building their networks and their salaries with each jump. Data suggests that employees who change jobs every few years tend to earn significantly more over a decade than those who stay in one place. These moves can even happen within a large company like Google or Apple, as employees shift between teams to find the best fit for their skills.
This new environment places a premium on a different set of skills and habits. With the humanity often extracted from interactions by a Zoom screen, a candidate’s professionalism and self-management are under a microscope. This is not about faking it; it is about demonstrating that you are a reliable, positive, and proactive professional.
Vrontikis stresses the importance of simple, often-overlooked details during virtual interviews. “I don't want to see your bed,” she says bluntly. “I don't want to see your dirty laundry in a corner. Come on. If this is your office, you got to get it together.”
Your background, your lighting, and your on-camera presence are now part of your professional presentation. It communicates your level of seriousness and attention to detail.
Beyond the visual, there is a critical mental component. The modern media landscape is engineered to capture and retain your attention through negativity. Vrontikis warns against “doom scrolling,” the act of getting sucked into a vortex of depressing news that drains your energy and optimism. “At the end of just a half an hour of looking, you're just in the worst mood possible,” she cautions. “And the worst mood to be actually going, ‘Hey, I'm a great candidate, I'm positive and I want a job.’” This sentiment is a key part of building a strong personal brand that radiates confidence.
Protecting your mindset is a professional responsibility. How you manage your time when no one is watching is a direct indicator of how you will perform in a remote or hybrid work environment.
Pro Bono for Good, Not Spec for Free
When you have more time than opportunities, it's tempting to do any work you can find. But there is a sharp distinction between working for free strategically and working for free destructively.
Vrontikis is a staunch opponent of speculative work, where a designer creates custom work for free in the hope of winning a paid project. “I think it's really detrimental to our field,” she says. It devalues the design process, frames creativity as a subjective beauty contest, and sets a precedent for clients to expect free labor.
There is a better way: Pro Bono Publico, which means “for the public good.”
Instead of responding to a company's demand for free work, you proactively find a cause you believe in and offer your skills. “You determine what it is that you care about,” Vrontikis advises. This puts you in the driver’s seat. It is an act of agency, not desperation.
The process she outlines is both passionate and professional:
- Identify a Problem: Find a non-profit or cause-based organization whose mission resonates with you. It could be about voting rights, environmental protection, or a local community initiative.
- Propose a Solution: Don't just ask if they need help. That puts the burden on them. Instead, identify a specific communication problem you can solve. For example: “I came to your site to find information about [specific issue] and I found it confusing. I would like to volunteer my time over the next two weeks to design a clear, one-page infographic that explains it.”
- Define the Scope: A proposal shows you are thoughtful and professional. It also allows you to “box in” the project so you don't overcommit. A defined timeline and deliverable makes it easy for them to say yes and ensures you get a tangible portfolio piece.
A self-initiated project for a cause like the Surfrider Foundation is not spec work. It is a strategic investment in your skills, your portfolio, and your personal brand. It aligns your work with your values, produces a case study you can be proud of, and demonstrates your ability to identify problems and propose solutions. This proactive mindset is exactly what employers are looking for and aligns with the principles of attracting your ideal clients and employers.
The Multidisciplinary Advantage
In a lean market, companies are looking for more value from every hire. The era of the hyper-specialized junior designer is giving way to a demand for creatives who can operate across disciplines. Vrontikis notes that companies are actively seeking people with a combination of skills.
“Many startup companies are looking for senior positions or people that have diverse experiences,” she reports. “Design plus motion, design plus coding, design plus analytics, business and design, research and design.”
This is not a contradiction of the expert positioning that Chris Do often advocates for in a freelance context. Vrontikis clarifies the distinction: “If you're a freelancer... I still think specialization is an edge. But I think having being more of a Swiss Army knife in an employment situation will add value and differentiate you.”
Think about where you are in your career. For those just starting, breadth is a way to create opportunity and discover what you're truly good at. As you mature, you narrow your focus to develop deep expertise. But that expertise is amplified when you can connect it to other fields.
This idea is powerfully articulated by designer and technologist John Maeda in his influential Design in Tech reports. He identified three key types of design in the modern economy:
- Classical Design: The craft-focused pursuit of creating beautiful, well-executed artifacts. This is the foundation for most creative professionals.
- Design Thinking & Business: The use of design as a process for solving business problems and improving user experiences. It is about strategy, not just aesthetics.
- Computational Design: The ability to use code and technology to build tools, platforms, and systems at scale.
Maeda’s argument, which Vrontikis’s observations confirm, is that long-term success requires mastery of at least two of these three areas. A classical designer who also understands business is a strategic partner. A designer who can code is a product builder. The more languages you speak, the more valuable you become.
This is **The Multidisciplinary Advantage**. You are not just a graphic designer who knows a little After Effects. You are a brand designer who can prototype user interfaces, a visual storyteller who understands business analytics, or a UX designer who can code. This is how you stop competing on pure aesthetics and start competing on strategic value, a core concept in value-based pricing and positioning.
“If you can raise your education level to be able to add more value,” Vrontikis concludes, “they don't have to hire two people to do that because you're the person that can do both.”
Skate to Where the Puck Is Going
Perhaps the most pragmatic advice for a difficult market is to stop looking for jobs where they no longer exist. It seems obvious, yet countless creatives continue to chase opportunities in industries that are in freefall.
“You have to understand as a job seeker who's doing well, what industries are actually thriving,” Vrontikis insists. “Going to look for something that doesn't exist doesn't make any sense.”
If your portfolio is full of luxury retail packaging, concert posters, and restaurant branding, you are showcasing skills for industries that have been decimated. While the design fundamentals are transferable, the context is wrong. A hiring manager in a thriving tech or healthcare company will look at that work and ask, “Where's the thinking about how those can be translated into something that can be appreciated by our customers in a virtual environment?”
This is the wisdom behind the famous Wayne Gretzky quote: “Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.”
This requires you to become a student of the economy. It means trading doom scrolling for market research. What sectors are growing? Where is venture capital flowing? What new problems have emerged from the crisis?
- Growth Sectors: Industries like e-commerce, telehealth, logistics, online education, and content streaming have exploded. They need designers, but they need designers who understand their digital-first world.
- Problem Seeking: As Do often says, we must be problem seekers, not just problem solvers. When one industry collapses, it creates new problems elsewhere. The decline of brick-and-mortar retail creates problems for landlords and communities. The shift to remote work creates problems for collaboration and company culture. Each of these is an opportunity for a designer to create a solution.
This might mean a pivot. A photographer whose market for event and travel work has evaporated might find that their skills in visual storytelling are in high demand in video production. As Do points out, the insatiable appetite of streaming services like Netflix, HBO, and Amazon for content, especially documentaries, has created a golden age for filmmakers.
You may not be able to find your dream job. You may have to invent it by finding a new application for your gift in a place the market values. It is the intersection of what you love, what you are good at, and what the world is willing to pay for.
Finding that intersection is not a matter of luck. It is a matter of design.
You have the tools. You use them for your clients every day. The challenge is to apply that same strategic rigor to the most important project you will ever have: your own career.
TRANSCRIPT
hello beautiful people what is up donation futurist doers and you crazy people called doughnuts today we're going to be talking about how to find in land your dream job this is 20/20 so special circumstances apply and we're gonna cover the state of the creative job market during the pandemic we're gonna also talk
about how employers are changing and what they are looking for when is the best time to apply for a job and tips on nailing the virtual interview today joining me me is a graphic designer and author of many online courses she's a professor at Art Center who's covered a range of classes and
topics including Advanced graphic design professional practice before portfolio development and career management creative presentations and critiques you're starting to see a theme here I think she's also the creative director founder and owner for Antiochus design she's also a recipient of the a age aiga fellows award and she speaks at conferences worldwide about
design inspiration travel culture teaching and learning she scuba Dives she does yoga it's not thing that she doesn't do really and she's also contributed to the Future who am I talking about talk about patrulla run tychus patrulla welcome to the show how are you doing I'm doing it we did that it's can't
believe we did that and I didn't fall all over myself so okay that's a lot to talk about and I think there's obviously a lot of interest on this topic about how to land your job how to land the dream job there aren't a lot of job opportunities out there so we want
to be careful that we know how to do this the right way and I can't think of a better person to teach us how Okay because you're that person your that conduit between all these professional or practicing graphic designers and the professional world you help these young people these graduates do this so
what have you been talking about what's the what's the topic or concern that everybody's got on their mind right now as far as the job market market is concerned well as you mentioned there are less jobs out there so as a candidate you need to make sure that whatever you're doing is going
to be most appealing so when people are looking they're going to find you and the what you're presenting is is Excellence so you come to the top of that pile one of the worst ways to look for a job is just answering and filling out a whole bunch of anonymous online applications applications
because that is the least effective way to get to where it needs to be and that's in front of a talent recruiter or creative director or an art director building the network and figuring out how to get the right mentorship and really putting in the more social soft skills that are necessary to
to secure people to trust you and to be able to recommend you it's going to you know it's like ten times better results than in any way some anonymous you know kind of application form this procedure will get you and you know people say I've been I've been working so hard to get
a job I just do everything I possibly can but but ultimately what some of these things are are just in effective ways to get your materials where they need to be okay but what if the application process makes you or says you got to fill out these forms and be in there a
generic Anonymous person can you sidestep that well maybe it is that your network includes some people that might work at that company already so so putting them putting a note to them through with LinkedIn or finding out how to get to them either through there professional email or or if you have a
connection to say hey I've put my application in I just want to see if there's anything I can do to make sure that so-and-so sees this or do you have any advice for me so it doesn't mean that you always have to contact that person that is looking at the application but within
the company it may be that you can get some insight as far as strategy how to get yourself seen or to know a little bit more about the job if you get any bit of insight it's possible that you can kind of your some of your materials to play to that say they're
looking for graphic designer that that is really doing branding and motion but the application you know just really emphasizes The Branding part then that enables you to know how much you should emphasize something more that you can offer I think that is the The Next Step here and that is that somehow you're
offering what they're looking for but you're offering more value also also so if you have any way to get in and get insight as to what that value is that they need it really helps you uh-huh that's a great tip that's how you get the inside track if you will you guys know
and Runners like when they're running around the track if you can get the inside Lane it's the shortest and the fascist and by reaching out to people that are already in your network that you might not even know Exist by poking around a little bit they can give you Insight on what they're
looking for or get feedback on the process or maybe even put a good word word in for you you and hey all's fair in Love and War and getting jobs so why not use the network and make the network work for you and it also is building trust within the network because if
you start reaching out to people maybe maybe the person you reached out to actually can't help you but they may know someone in a different company that can so the more you get the word out as to what you are looking for and what you want to offer and that you're enthusiastic about
about you know whatever the industry is your network will work for you you know putting that out there it may not come back in a straight line from point A to point B often it comes around because you're creating almost a buzz around like I want to I'm I'm ready to do this
and I'm ready to do it better than I know most people can write so if I'm a student I just graduated and I know Arts Center graduates people three times a year and I just graduated I might feel that that I don't know anybody patrulla who am I supposed to reach out to
me I want to get that dream job easier I reach out to easy easy LinkedIn is just astonishing I do a search for the company say the company is Collins in New York or San Francisco so I did a search for Art Center College of design and Collins poof all of a sudden
there are probably at least a dozen people that have graduated from Art Center that have Affiliated themselves a Collins so some still work there some maybe work there in the past but all of a sudden I mean how easy is that Joseph this is not all that mysterious mysterious and then seeing it
right now knowing right now knowing what to ask them under really reading their profiles and seeing whether they're still there what their role is there when they graduated from art center and and just you know because you're in a network and it does have to be Art Center it can be you know
Cal State Long Beach it can be you know whatever design school you go to or in the case of the future it may be that I find that somebody there there actually is you know has the future in that they're watching and you know they're talking about how they're learning and you might
actually find like-minded people in this network of yours Chris uh-huh so you know you know what I'm going to do this this might be a little scary but I'm going to actually log in and do exactly what you're saying and show people how how to do this great so you guys hang tight
for a little bit because I had to move my computer around here a little bit so put your the keep going on and I'll be a little distracted right now now okay okay so I think one of the other things I can offer to job Seekers now is to take some time to
do it the right way like how you were you're learning the fundamentals say of typography or color or layout as as a designer you really if you didn't get that in school you're having to step back and really understand how these things work you're a designer so you employ the design process and
that's what what I think you need to do in job searching there's no easy way about it there's no quick way you're going to do it it's actually something that takes rigor practice practice structure and and knowing as a design process knowing your goals specific goals knowing who your audience is knowing where
their pain points are I mean I'm just asking people to do what they do professionally for themselves so I don't I mean I know people get really freaked out about it but we have the tools we use them all the time time right okay I'm ready okay you guys let's do this live
I'm gonna switch over to my computer here and hopefully you guys can see what's going on logged in to LinkedIn right now and the first thing I'm going to do is just it's not coincidental I just searched for you patrulla so here we go we're going to type in Collins like that's how
you would find it and it's as a company and I'm going to do it the way I know how patrulla but feel free to correct me if I'm not doing it the right way and then if I click on people I don't see him go up in the search put Collins and then
put Art Center I just want to show you this part person then okay okay and so so there's 85 employees at Collins and if I type in here here Arts Center okay and then I'm going to find look at this oh here's who I know look at that so I already know Brian
in this case okay this is unfair Advantage but if Brian warrant here I I could look at this and I can read a little bit about them see if there's a point of connection and perhaps just the old art center Alumni network might work for me okay so that's one way that's the
the simpleton Cristo doesn't know how to look for a job way now you're saying if I go into search up here right right as should type in Collins right and and then in this case Arts Center without a space between art and Center like this and cons art center and the results here
will be different because this is people that may have worked with Collins in the past so ultimately you're you're method Chris gets people that are are there but this method will get people that even had worked freelance for Collins uh-huh should I click on see all results sure why not all right live
dangerously here we go ladies and gentlemen so all right so you do you see any names in here that we should click on or now I'm getting a lot of columns that are not the right Collins unfortunately okay well maybe your method then maybe your methods a little bit more effective than it
it yeah it it probably is that Collins is more common name so you're getting yes different color okay but I know what did it was terrific we should try to maybe do something less like nobody has the name Facebook so if I'm looking for a job at Facebook right let's try that I
mean there might be John Facebook and I just insulted you I'm sorry well let's try that let's try your method I'll want to see how this works okay now we have Facebook an Arts Center with those space there's a hundred eleven thousand results which is bananas this is a good thing though I
think because that means that art center people have been around a lot of places so this is the power of the network of Arts Center probably yeah right okay now should I be then money one of these people I'm because I'm in the booth I can't really see okay let me Zoom are
saying okay great this is better so I have Kenneth yeah go with Kenneth he's in my class now he he owes he is there you go okay okay so it looks like I'm a second connection as I'm a to connections away from him he said art director at a sad face book and
it's in Pasadena right so what do we do next can you walk me through this part send message you could you could actually connect with him first and it's possible that he may not be monitoring his LinkedIn account which is just fine right you can send them a message here that says you
know I'm you know I trying to expand my art center Network and I'm specifically interested in being a something something at Facebook so make sure that your request is specific and I'm looking for some guidance from you about the process there okay right so let me square that up okay so my message
is a little funky and funny obviously I'm not looking for a job and I don't really want kind of help me with finding a there but I just wrote hi Candice was just chatting with patrulla during a live stream of wanted to connect with you that's all okay is that okay yeah but
you guys would write what patrulla said so maybe it again let me let me say that again yeah but you're going to to introduce yourself and let them know let's say you graduate in December let them know that you're going to be available and looking in in January and your what specific things
you're looking for and if you can have you can ask them M to help with you to guide you through the best process and you can you can also say give them a link to your website so they know let them know that you're just expanding your network okay so these are these
are you may not be getting the job from Kenneth but Kenneth May then go to the hiring manager at Apple and say oh by the way have you come across Christo's application because I think he could be really interesting for the something something team so you're helping Facebook identify their connections and this
is building Trust on your end and on their end so it's again all all about instilling and building that trust trust okay so I'll read to you what I wrote okay okay I wrote Hi Kenneth I graduated from Art Center in 1995 I was hoping you could guide me through the interview process
at Facebook as I'm applying for the open internship position and the 40 year old intern okay go ascendant I'll talk to Kenneth next week should I send it absolutely he's gonna go are you kidding stranger things have happened Chris all right alright so there we go go I'm sending boom alright I hope
I can it will connect with me and we'll see what happens I don't know if you're qualified for us double-check my my CV here okay that's beautiful that was great so I know there are a couple of people watching there's 240 people watching us live I think it's number is growing as we
do you guys go ahead and drop in your comments and I'll be sure to read through them along with Market Jonah who are in the booth helping us to make all this happen okay fantastic I have a few more that's a great tip unless you want to ask something specific I wanted to
share a few things to get some context going that are more covid related no I want to hear a lot more thoughts so please continue on so I just I think people's careers are going to be slightly different than they have in the past I think those of you who are starting your
career or if you've just started maybe in the last two to five years you're going to be working more nomadically so it's it covid Force this but I think generally you're going to be working more virtually and nomadically and what I mean that is that you probably have shorter gigs let's say full-time
gigs but those gigs are only going to last maybe 18 to 24 months and that's common in the past it used to seem like that wasn't enough time but the real go-getter kinds of designers are really moving around a lot and what happens is they're moving and building those Networks and finding opportunities
and the interesting thing is some of those opportunities are within the same company so you you may work with with this particular team at Google for a year and moved to this team for a year and a half because that company wants to find out where you are going to be the most
valuable and productive so so sometimes you're sometimes you're working nomadically within a larger company or you're actually going to leave that company and go to another when you tend to leave jobs more you'll tend to be your salary will tend to be higher than those that that stayed in one job you compare
them over a 10-year period if you moved around but say three to four times in 10 years versus staying in one place and ten years your salary level will be higher is this also true if you move around the same company but different offices or do you need to leave this company go
somewhere else it depends on on the title because usually large companies have salaries that determine or dictate at I'll just like you would Chris in your company a junior designer you know gets paid x amount an art director would get paid x amount more so if in that movement around Google you go
from a designer too art director then probably your salary will go up within that that okay okay makes sense and I think learning prototyping tools to be as effective as possible working virtually as a must so if you've got time on your hands and like get out of the rabbit holes of of
you know Doom scrolling and you know get on to learning some really great prototyping tools if you find you've got more time on your hands do some experimental projects or some projects for people that might not be able to afford them them some for good projects that you can feel good about both
passionately and also you can use them as examples of what it is that you believe in and examples of how you can do what you do best hmm let me see if I understand this correctly I've heard the term Doom scrolling before but what is Doom scrolling what happens is it the news
and the sources that we get are so so so much about creating persuading us too to dive in more and and there so divisive and navigate negative it becomes you know you're just scrolling trying to find information but it just gets very depressing and it's it's a it's a term that that just
means how current news sources sources are sometimes just taking us down paths that are so negative and upsetting that it you know at the end of just a half an hour of looking you're just in the worst mood possible and the and the worst mood to be actually going hey I'm a great
candidate I'm positive and I want a job so you've got a really keep your positivity up you've got to keep your health health in check people will say will want to know that you take good care of yourself that your time management skills are good that you that you can be relied upon
in the time that they're going to be needing to connect with you that you've got you've got your available and your responsive and you're positive and you know when you're communicating with people over Zoom it's like it extracts the humanity out of our occation so you've got to make extra effort to keep
positive keep looking at the camera and not keep distracting and and looking down and you got to actually you know consider that this is meaning you have a particular Authority about about you people will listen to you if you talk to them like you're having a really good positive conversation about problem solving
and you bringing your expertise to the table I just okay sometimes I see people interview and just the set behind them terrible like I don't want to see your bed you know I don't want it I don't want to see you know that your place is dirty and you've got dirty laundry in
a corner like come on you know if this is your office you got to get it together so right after this call I'm going to go and clean up my room but I want to let everybody know in the interest of full transparency full disclosure everything everything here you see in camera looks
pretty organized everything below and around me is a total chaos fine total disaster zone right just let you guys don't that's an absolutely fine you know okay you're wearing you know like Superman shorts fine Chris I don't want to see him and then you didn't show them to me that's great well that's
a matter of fact okay there's a couple things that you're mentioning in this kind of conversation that I want to highlight and kind of draw little bit more now what you do in your free time and this kind of Doom scrolling and it does seem like the social feeds these also so-called news
networks seem to prey on the negative news it's always served up in the curate this up because it gets us all riled up and then we stay on it longer and that's why I think John krasinski's some good news has been such a breath of fresh air I hope I said his name
correctly and it's kind of nice to see that for a change but now more than ever I think how you manage or time when nobody's looking is even more important because we have so much of this unsupervised time right where we're working from home like I'm literally at home right now you're in
the studio the team normally is elsewhere but they're also in the studio somewhere so now we have to kind of develop different habits and you're talking about okay okay look take a step or take a break away from the bad news and let's do something and you said for good projects and I'm
not sure everybody is familiar with that term can you can you explain that and can you help us who may not have access to the programs that you have or the people in the network how do we find a for good project that we can feel good about participating in so we're using
our time better so so you determine what it is that you care about say that you're really interested interested in taking responsibility for bringing more people out to vote okay so this is really timely and there's there are organizations that that you can contribute your time to that are doing that that or
you can reach out to your network with your skills as a designer and do something maybe it is create a particular community or make sure that people you know know the facts about mail-in ballots how can you as a designer identify a problem and commune and create the communications that can help solve
that problem even for a small audience as your own network so find a need a need that's important to you it doesn't have to be about voting it could be about any social environmental cause project it could be that you could contact one of a particular organization let's say the Surfrider Foundation contact
them and say hey I'm a graphic designer I'm doing a little bit of freelance but I think I can contribute x amount of time over the next two weeks can I do something for you you I will I would like to do this for you because I think I didn't get the information
I wanted to when I came to your site to find out about the something something in regards to the coastal Waters in Santa Monica okay so you're identifying problems because you know because you're passionate about that what did you what did you try and find that you couldn't find what need do you
have or what need can you identify that could facilitate that and then make sure that when you're investing that it actually is going to yield you something that you can put your name on and use so sometimes it's easier to come to them with a proposal for something versus ask them what they
might need out of the gate because it could be like something that takes you away from your job search because it's going to last six months because it has to go through 16 16 committees right just make it easier for them to say yes to because sometimes they're like well I don't really
know your skill said and I don't have anything right now and it just might close more doors for you so if you propose something it shows that you've done the research or thoughtful and you have a plan and you know how to box it in so that you don't over commit to something
right okay that's excellent I'm curious though what you see in terms of the advantages of doing spec work because we're doing this for free for a company right a cause that we believe in and this is good makes us feel good and it's good for the world versus just saying I just want
to do something for the Surfrider Foundation without actually even having to reach out to them I'll just work on my own spare time and just use that as a as a case study on what I think they should do you could do that are the benefits to others are the other the by
doing it without them being the client you have more control over it so but in and you might be able to deliver it to them and say say this is what I have done can you use this so all that's fine but I am not really a proponent of spec work for graphic
designers I think it's really detrimental to our field and I think it's really been bad for the motion design industry so spec work really works if you are getting a long-term project like you're an architect and you're going to do this work get that award and it's going to keep your firm busy
for three years so when you do it to get like an account like ad ad agencies do or large project like an architectural firm it works but per project spec work the the designer it's just it's just a poor business practice and it will deteriorate the industry and create a series of expectations
that that bypass what is a process of working with the client to figure out the right solution and it turns the process into a little bit more subjective like I like that I don't like that kind of things and anyway that's you and I can debate about that and another another yeah time
yes yes I'm no fan of spec work either and just so that I'm clear and we're using all the same terminology spec work is short for speculative work it was which is when you do work in hopes that you'll get work for money and I probably have misused that term here in that
whenever I do free work or work that I don't get paid for I just while put it all in this giant bucket of spec work but when it's a self initiated project when you volunteered to do work for for a or an organization like the Surfrider Foundation how do you describe that spec
work isn't the right term but what is the word term that you would use then the word pro bono doesn't mean for free it means for good so people could say that's a pro bono project because ultimately you could sell it to them but it's ultimately a project that is for good and
I would say for social or Environmental environmental good is that does it did I answer that I think so okay I don't know I wasn't going to make it case out of it but then you're like saying go ahead and volunteer to do work for cause companies are we using volunteer or Know
What's it gonna be money tear in this case would be a good term but you have limitations around it if if you do that it isn't just like oh I'm going to work for you for nothing and we'll see how that goes it's really it's really structured structured and it's really exercising both
your visual design your design skills but also your professional skills to make sure that whatever agreement you have is clear okay I don't want to split this hair to finally here I think we understand that if you have some free time you can elect to begin a relationship with somebody for money for
free but you're initiating in this is really important versus them initiating it or forcing you to go through some kind of test animation test storyboard or test design before they consider hiring you neither of us are proponents for that it does exist in some Industries unfortunately sadly and I'm glad I'm not doing
client work anymore yeah that but it works in some Industries so yes it's not always bad just to kind of go on a more kind of positive tangent there one of the things we're finding is that companies are hiring interns so if I don't usually say that interns you should take an internship
once you've graduated I usually believe that our students are able to to really achieve at least Junior design or design or positions right but what we're finding is that if you can can say okay this internship is lasting two months at least it they're using it kind of as a trial period and
most of the jobs that are coming up at that at that level that high level meaning High not within the company structure but at that little level that there are opportunities interns are being moved up into those positions before before anybody anonymous okay okay so interns have the best shot at getting those
opportunities so if somebody didn't internship in the past let's say in their sophomore or Junior year they may want to knock on that door kind of update them about what skills they are they've acquired have a conversation because their chances of getting a job if it's available are significantly more than somebody just
showing up and saying here's my resume right right okay okay let's let's get back to that it's a very competitive job market out there because I don't think their whole lot of Industries that are hiring right now in fact they're going the opposite way as far as I can tell and there are
a lot of people are hurting right now going months without a job we happen to know somebody in comment I'm not saying she's hurting but she's an art center grad she's a super talented person and she told me that she was very close to Landing a job at one of these really big
tech companies I can't say which one and and covid hits and everything thing is frozen right that's what you have just kicked everything down the road like we're not making any decisions right now and so now you're just stuck in a tailspin or holding pattern right okay what should somebody do in that
case well I think it's important to understand where the opportunities are and where they're not a lot of things that designers loved to do let's say work in the music industry or work in editorial or book design the opportunities just just are not are so you have to understand as a job Seeker
who's doing well what industries are actually thriving and how to find companies that are in a very active growth mode or or at least a stable mode so you know going to look for something that doesn't exist doesn't make any sense so you've got to make sure that you have a better understanding
of the economy and opportunities that this difficult time may may actually be having four for for designers especially designers that are Innovative thinkers you know if you have a portfolio full of things that are just a bunch of artifacts you know like luxury Packaging luxury retail packaging and a bunch of posters when
you go to show that people are going okay well I understand the design skills but where's the thinking about how those can be translated into something that can be appreciated by our customers or or client base I'm in a virtual environment what are the what are the things that are going to facilitate
that in regards to social media are ways to promote it that aren't going to be about showing up in a high-end retail store and seeing it there on display display so it's really educate get out of the you know get out of the things that are the Doom scrolling and get into figuring
out who's doing well well what industries are doing well and I'm trying to identify whether you have any connection to people in those Industries going back to what we talked about when we first started this conversation uh-huh I know man I don't want to make it sound that it's super easy I know
I'm you know I've got that calm or yoga voice right but but you know I'm actually just using kind of logic and the logic part is just being really objective about not something that people want to be get really emotional about like I want this I don't know how to get that I'd
I'm not sure and I'm you know and there's a whole bunch of difficulty wrapped around it because when you're a job Seeker and you're having to work really hard it can really deteriorate your your mood and make you feel like you're not going to get what you want but just having a better
idea as to how to organize yourself how to organize your materials know what your audience is looking for and that old adage like skate too to where the puck is like that's that's where you want to go so this is really important that you're not looking for jobs that the in Industries like
I did a lot of restaurant design especially fast casual restaurant design years and years ago in my business if I was still doing that it would not be going very well because there are really having a tough time and it's not just oh they need a Rebrand you know it's I don't know
when it's going to be better and they're going to really be be in this situation of completely restructuring the last thing they're going to need is you know heavy-hitting outside branding help right okay you touch on a bunch of things okay okay it seems very logical and obvious almost that don't go chasing
after opportunities that don't exist it doesn't matter how good you are at finding them they just don't exist right now but I want to ask you this question in a second but I want to follow up with the idea of like what industries are doing well but I just want to point out
something I think since the beginning of this year you have graduated two classes from art center right in this covid environment and normally since the time of a lot of Celebration there's a grad show and you put this together and you have industry professionals which I know you're deeply connected to for many
many years you're the person who's like wrangling all the people have all the jobs of the best companies and you're saying I wonder if you're a good fit for our grads and they come a lot must have changed so can you talk a little bit about the things that have changed like our
people now dreading graduating and are the recruiters not even showing up anymore are they showing up in a different way everything's changing okay I want to know all the details details are grads used to get jobs very easily our grads are still getting jobs but the number of them of the jobs are
less but they're still getting the ones that are there so so in some instances that's the best we can do as a school like if there is a job they have an understanding because many times other Arts Center grads are in there working and they know what to expect so there's that trust
and the knowledge of the process and the expectations so so we're getting the jobs that are there is just a lot fewer companies are taking less risks there are things that are valued and I brought this because I've reached out to the Alumni network and said okay what's going on I just going
to read this candidates need to to go into more detail about how they make decisions then just walking through a portfolio identity in I'd encourage interviewees to focus more on the why and the how of a design project not just how it looks being able to talk about impact and provide context is
so important to hear and this is something you're teaching all the time Chris many startup companies are looking for senior positions or have dogs or people that have diverse experiences design plus motion design coding design plus design analytics business and Design research and design so those of you that just have this one
you know graphic designer mode and met find that you're a little stuck because that there's a big pool of people that are in that looking for the same jobs so it that if you can raise your education level to be able to add more value especially for visual design user interface user experience
and motion and branding is just still you know golden because you're bringing more value to somebody they don't have to hire two people to do that because you're the person that can do both both does that help Chris Chris does just making some notes Here okay so you're saying that there are opportunities
for people who have multiple skill sets that were multiple disciplines I don't know if you call it cross or trans discipline but so design is good you need that that's the foundation and if you do design and coding or design in motion and business or marketing or something else you present all kinds
of opportunities to your prospective employer and that they're getting better bang for the buck they're also getting somebody who can speak multiple design languages if you will or creative languages and I think that's really really cool so you're saying that there are more opportunities right now for senior people than there are junior
people is that correct yeah yeah because because there are a lot more Junior people to so the competition is greater in that in that stupid of people looking for their first job but I have to say there's something I think a job Seeker doesn't think a lot about and that's actually leveraging what
they might have been before they became a graphic designer like say you were in import-export business before you decided that wasn't where your passion was and then you got some graphic design education how can you leverage your knowledge of the import-export business a start-up culture as a graphic designer so if you can
start to triangulate these really interesting background expertise that you have not sort of saying that was me it is me now and now I do this therefore I understand the business more and I can again create more value value in this in in this opportunity opportunity makes a lot of sense to me
okay so one of our friends and so's on well before I get to Ann's question okay I want to read to comments really quickly great first comment is truly you look great you look like you're at an intimate dinner I'm having Tapas with you so people are commenting on the little lighting but
there are more Kiona thank you Jonah that's that's you know what you guys you guys have to realize something I'm supposed to be in that booth and I got kicked out because Patrol is here so so damn slow sacrifices I make for our guests okay now the other thing they're saying is you
have an incredibly soothing calming voice and they listen to you for hours or days and should you walk us through some sun salutations or downward dog on a walk myself through some sun salutations about us okay okay we'll do that later that's a different episode okay the question here from and so is
this is or any so she's like okay what are the the what kind of advice do you have for people who are in that senior place and it seems like companies or imploding right now what I've been out of school for five ten years what am I going to do right now so
if are you saying that you are worried that your you're going to be laid off is that well I'm already laid off okay let's assume I've lost my job I'm a senior person I've been in the industry for ten years let's say and have multiple skill sets what should I do what kind
of advice do you have for me I think it's it's pretty much the same thing we've talked about like figuring out in your network what's going on having really good it's about the things that you learned at this job the things you that you felt that created value and differentiated you in the
experiences you had with your teams and your co-workers what could they rely if they rely upon you for so you really really figuring out how to articulate and differentiate what it is that you have because those are the things that we're going to Leverage as we're looking for a new opportunity opportunity yeah
and make sure people know you're in a bad you're in a bad emotional place when when you get laid off it's so difficult it's debilitating but and it's a tough time to deal with the self-reflection because you've got you know this this difficult emotional state so sometimes you have to ask others like
what do you think I asked somebody that was on your team like help me understand what things did I do right what do you think was that the thing about working with me and I know that sounds really weird but if you don't have a perspective on it it's easy to ask others
because they can be more objective because they're not in that place you might find a whole bunch out about yourself that's going to help you be able to position a good cover letter or to be able to really figure out what important things on your resume to highlight because both a cover letter
and a resume our are ways of Storytelling and there exercises in hierarchy of information so you may have the same fact right but positioning them differently in on a resume or carrying someone someone in revealing way in a cover letter it makes all the difference in the world because if you send out
a whole bunch of canned cover letters people read them and they just they look they sound generic they sound generic you really have to craft these things to real people if you expect to get real jobs so it's not at all about about templates it's about thinking and and designing communication that solves
a problem problem it's what you do best as a graphic designer right in theory in theory theory in theory well if this person was was at a job for five years they must be doing something right right how are their competitors doing is it the entire industry like then why did it happen
did it happen because the this company had trouble or the whole industry had trouble so it's a little difficult to try and help an because I'm not sure sure going on enough to be able to at least have a conversation about what I'd recommend the next steps would be okay so here's the
note to for my live editor Jonah don't got to my face when I'm doing something else will you please it's pretty obvious I'm not even looking at Petula right now this is what Jonah did Jonah you know I thought you just ate I think you're ready to go back no a little jumpy
jumper it's gonna be your new nickname jumpy Jonah keep it on patrulla she looks good she sounds great this is just like leave it alone okay I had to do a little digging around because there's some chatter inside the comment section and I also want to say hey hey everybody case you're just
joining us let me just tell you who were talking to we're talking to protrude of run tychus among many things she's a professor a long time standing professor at Art Center College of design and she teaches many things like professional business practices so we wanted to have have her on because there's a
lot of us looking for work right now yeah and I can't think of somebody else who would be better to have as a guest on today's show she's also authored a number of online courses on Linda now linked in learning so you guys can look that up in a second okay but you'll
is talking about their opportunities now in the senior spaces for people who are Cross or transdisciplinary and she talked about these things and so immediately in the chat there like well Chris always talks about specialization ization isn't this going against that and I do want to say something here now this is where
I cut to my screen so Jonah can't mess up this part so I looked at this thing because I remember seeing this thing a while back this is an article in Wired Magazine about how John Maeda was doing a presentation at South by Southwest and he's talking about the different kinds of design
he comes up with this little thing I'm sure you've seen this patrulla but I was trying to zoom in and wired is like fighting with me right now because I didn't collapse this thing but I'm going to jump into it it's like he talks about there are three kinds of design at Play
and that don't need to be that specific but the three kinds of design what most of us most of you guys that are watching right now would fall under the traditional classical design that there's a right way to make things that are perfect and that we work we want to work on our
craft and that there's a sense of completion the thing that we talked about a lot on this channel I think is is business and the design thinking because execution has outpaced Innovation and experience matters and then also truly has mentioned this this about coding Ting and using technology using design with coding to
create tools apps platforms networks that could potentially change the world and this is designed in scale for billions of people and in real time so he's like you don't you're not going to be successful anymore if you just slowly focus on classical design you have to pick two of these three if you
want to have a shot at this and I think this goes to back up exactly what you're saying right patrulla yes and I want to not really contradict your idea of specialization if you're a freelancer if you're if you're looking for freelance work I still think specialization is an edge edge okay and
if you're starting a small firm I think specialization is really good but I think having being more of a Swiss Army knife in employment situation will add value and differentiate you from others others you know but you know that these things it depends because it may be that the team needs a specialist
and then they're looking for that but I would say say now if people can provide more skills and value they will they will be able to be utilized better in a compromised compromised market hmm I wanted to share something that another alumni said to me when I was asking these questions and she's
hiring manager I was she works with a hiring manager and she said before meeting meaning if you do get an interview prepare with the questions below for both parties to have more context where do you see yourself in five years years what are some of your design goals business goals and goals for
your skills and impact how will you track allow how will you tackle trade offs in across cross-functional team and how do you build relationships relationships so this is for the groups that have been out for a while what she's telling us is that is that it's not just about the design it's about
how you worked in teams what your goals are how a company can can get the most out of you and how can you give the most to them in a compressed period of time these are and you know how do you build teams how are you and a valuable team member or team
team leader what are your leadership skills skills how did you get them you get them on the future Channel possible possible possible oh you're done I'm done ha ha ha I mean I'm not done done but I'm done with that right okay I want to I want to respond to something moderator may
have two minutes to respond please put me on the clock and okay let's see how we go we do here okay let's talk about specialization just for a second I don't want to interrupt you but I was thinking about it there's very few live streams that are going to go by where I
don't mention my friends named Blair ends and he talks about this this that there phases that designers go through a creative people that the beginning of your if your life you want to try as many things as possible and be as broad as possible this is how you create opportunity somebody asks you
design letterhead you're like okay so I'm gonna ask you to do an animation through intro real you say Okay so you get yourself into lots and lots of things and that will get you to a level of success but after a while you're going to find that you've been spread very very thin
in terms of your skillset you've not gotten really deep at anything so the second phase of your life is when you have to just it'd just be maniacal but editing it down to saying to yourself I think I really like photography and interactive spaces and then I'm going to go really deep in
that and that begins your second Arc but so many people don't quite get there so when you're listening to this you kind of have to figure out where are you in your career and your journey so if you're at the beginning of your career you're probably going to need to be very Broad
and try lots of things because let's just be honest you don't know what you don't know yet yet you need to try things in schools are great place to dabble in things and they offer many kind of courses especially at Art Center where you can experiment in different things and kind of figure
out what you want to do for yourself and I want you to look at it like this so you can remember this really well okay you guys know what I like a DNA Helix looks like right it goes in it goes out and it goes in and it goes out like that right
so I imagine you're at the bottom of the Helix if there's such a thing and you're going to just try lots of things and you're going to go really narrow and then you're going to find lots of success and and where opens up is when you go really deep you learn that there's
so many things to learn just in that area of specialization but you still have this broad skill set there's a lot of things you still know and when you become really successful you're going to find out my gosh people are now saying you're really good at this can you also do that and
then you're bringing it in so it's this constant state of going out expanding narrowing things in expanding out okay that's it for me that's almost like yoga is it it okay all right there's a question here and I think it's a pretty good question from Diego Cuevas and he asked me if I
can find the question now there it is he's like I'd love to ask Chris and patrulla imagine your the middle of a career you don't like in his case and recently discovered that he loves something else who loves art and photography should he ditch this whatever career he's at to do what he
loves what do you think patrulla I'm going to be really pragmatic and say the market for art and photography is compromised so it the idea of it being the source of your income income it depends on how much you need to make that being said to figure out how people are making money
with art and photography might be your next step like who's actually making a living doing that and how and why I just feel like it is really difficult when you discover after all this experience that you've gained somewhere else that you really want to be somebody else and I don't no one in
any way to for to say people shouldn't follow their dreams and follow their passions but there's a responsibility you have to doing something that is going to sustain you as a designer as an artist and a photographer and finding a financially sustainable career in those at this time is is it is a
very very tricky decision decision finding mentors that are able to do that and seeing how they do it and by I don't mean by likes in social media my don't mean by you know just doing free stuff and posting it up I mean actually making a living because because I think it's important
as a designer that you're doing something that is not only satisfying from from your heart but but but it actually is and compensated so you can continue to do it otherwise you're going to be in a cycle like oh I tried this at being an artist and now I've got to do this
other thing again and then I got to go here you know how can you know it may not be that you can do that art photography now but there may be a stair step up if you can figure it out what what is the market for still photography maybe you'll find that videography
is act and storytelling is actually much more valued and therefore more compensated so you may want to think about 10 tangents in those areas that may be more sustainable for a career does that sound depressing I know I'm going to sound depressing I'm just trying I'm just trying to like solve a problem
you just keep it real real hashtag real real okay good well I do want to provide a slightly alternative answer to this and an approach which I have to copy out is completely Reckless so patrulla gave you the pragmatic practical thing you probably should do and if you have mouths to feed you're
probably want to make that kind of decision but we go you guys ready fasten your seat belt we're going to do this I think life is short your time on Earth is very finite and I think all of us are searching for meaning and purpose and things that we love don't want to
tell you to go and be an underwater basket Weaver as they would say in high school when I was going to high school because there's no market for that the challenge usually is to find what you love and a Marketplace that values it which is the hard part I can't give you broad
generic advice right now because I don't know exactly what it is you want to do you talk about art photography and and if you're saying industry that is is no longer expanding and it's on the decline that's just me saying based on anecdotal evidence from my friends who are professional photographers then you're
probably setting yourself up for a lot of pain but you have to make that individual decision as to what your financial obligations are how many people depend on you and whether or not you want to do this thing but I do think it's really really important that as we all kind of embark
on our own creative Journeys that you do what you were meant to do that you have a gift to what and once you find that gift you have to honor it and do what you can to figure out a way to make it work that's the challenge so to say like I want
to do photography right now you're probably going to have a lot of heartache and financial Strife as you pursue that because it's just it's not happening but if you say to yourself photography is just a thing that I use to express my creativity and not the end product itself it may open up
your eye and your mind to other options and you might say to yourself well aware is there a demand for photography well if you take a bunch of photos and you put them together we call that video or film and there is no better time I think in the history of our civilization
to be a filmmaker because there are huge multi trillion dollar companies that are fighting each other to have the rights to your film especially if you make documentaries you talk about Netflix you about HBO Hulu Amazon and apple they're all just they have a voracious insatiable appetite for content right now for even
for YouTube you could do this point of reference here most of us could probably live a decent life not a great life but a decent life we make $100,000 a year and if you break that down that's not that much money relatively speaking to make per month it's a point of reference our
little YouTube channel that you guys are watching right now after having built it up for the last six years generates on average a little bit more than $10,000 a month in ad revenue for for us so if you approach it like I want to be a photographer like I'm gonna be a celebrity
photographer I'm going to be a nature photographer you might have a really hard time find a different application for your your craft and your gift and the thing that brings you so much joy and use a modern context when you look at it and I think you're going to find the answer and
if you have a hard time figuring it out I'm going to recommend you do this scrape some pennies and nickels together hire yourself a business coach and have them spend some time working with you so they can help you you can't see and that's my reckless irresponsible irresponsible answer I don't think it's
that Reckless and irresponsible I think the tough part now is that people are very dissatisfied with their jobs yeah it's a you know assume extracts the humanity out of our communication we're just we don't we can't collaborate in ways we can't learn in ways we can't Mentor in ways that we used to
so it is a very depressing time and so you have to figure out what kind of parse out what the problems are are the problems in the job or is it in the situation is the problem in what's really going on here and and it if you hang in there and and you
still have a job when things open up will it get better or you know it won't so I don't know that much again about your situation but be careful now because we're all in a very compromised place and it's it's important to pinpoint where the problems really lie yeah yeah ultimately what Chris
and I are trying to recommend is is look for places where there is growth because where there's growth there's opportunity and where there isn't growth it's a contraction and it will be hard for you to get a foothold in what it is that you want and I don't want you know it may
be just that this time in your life is not the time to be scrapping whatever you were doing and starting a new career career in a a time that is going to be the most difficult to actually get a foothold uh-huh also I know it may sound counterintuitive to some of you but
nature abhors a vacuum so when use the industries and collapse where everybody's looking over here for the opportunity if you're looking for industries that are just imploding there's opportunity there to it just takes a little harder or a little bit more effort to find what the opportunity is so when when restaurants go
out of business well that creates a new problem the the landlord of the person who owns the building has a new problem and then the people who live in that community of a new problem so what we want to do as my friend Brian Collins would say it's like we don't want to
just be problem solvers we want to be problem Seekers and so I like to look for a problem now now I want to say that this has been fantastic patrulla so far because when we started this live stream was 140 people and now we're over 400 people watching live I do want to
say hello to some of them people are tuning in from India Washington San Francisco oh my gosh it's gone by so fast fast Toronto pack San Diego Mexico Yorkshire UK Norway Nigeria we had lots of friends and in Nigeria Philadelphia Toronto Denver okay welcome everybody now patrulla back to the topic at hand
another quote I wanted to to say from us a design friend at P&G Procter & Gamble we are moving in a digital world really fast so brushing up on how we can reach more consumers consumers via media in an ethical inclusive respectful way is a priority candidates should show us the digital skills
they have through different programs different experiences and be able to talk about company company values you know what never analyzing before have there been so many strange and interesting pregnant pauses because I'm never sure if I should say something when you stop as I think it's a pregnant pause and You're Gonna Fill
it at something so I want to give you space at all sanjana cuts to my face on yeah that's not gonna lose me off too so Jonah do not cut to me once again if it's really just talking even if it's just silent as they honor day on the pregnancy yeah stay on
the pregnant pause hey ghost deliver prematurely in the hot seat you know sometimes you've asked me to put you in the hot seat and that's not what you did today right right but I'm usually mentally prepared for those kinds of moments and and not like this what Jonah just randomly cuts to me
I'm like what it's my turn to talk okay all right all right so let's see oh lots of other comments come in here okay from Egypt and everything else so the topic were talking about today is how to find and land your dream job job when there are fewer jobs to be had
everything has changed can you share with us another one of your golden nuggets are tips Pearls of Wisdom if you will I'm going to I'm going to do wonders that that's current okay you're going to have multiple sources of income so it used to be is a designer in the biggest you could
just have one thing going on you had your full time job and and then whatever but most designers that are making a difference and what they do have multiple sources of income they've got some gig on the side they've got their main gig they've got something in the works there collaborating on something
else in their learning something else and I know this sounds exhausting but it's also really exhilarating because through these multiple sources of income you can actually get a good chunk of income that might not have been able to be expected of just any one of them it also opens you up to a
a number of spected opportunities because your network is bigger so it could be at one point you're able to shift and do something that actually is about exactly what you're looking for because you'd been cultivating that for a while so so this is just stuff that we're finding it's not just one gig
it's a collection of gigs and it's hard you've got a lot of energy you're going to need a lot of energy you're going to need a lot of time management but it can be really exhilarating exhilarating and hmm like I've gotten a number of gigs right I'm a teacher at Art Center of
per full-time Professor there I run a design office I have these courses on LinkedIn that create Revenue and I have an Airbnb Okay so this is this is just how it is in you know when you're figuring out what opportunities you can get involved in and be able to leverage those opportunities opportunities
by being able to expand your your sphere right I love the idea of teaching at Art Center it's one of been one of the most meaningful amazing things I could ever have imagined but I love teaching everybody everybody that can't get there I love being able to teach people overseas I love being
able to share things globally globally and and I found that teaching and trying to find the find the potential in people is one of the most rewarding things for me so I'm finding the best places to do it and that's why I'm here right right okay that's a pregnant pause that says right
I love each other you're reacting or responding finally in real time I love it see it see how awkward that is you stay on for too little and she just wait my mother was straight with restrain myself so so bad yeah yes you need to restrain yourself or up Jonah go Jonah I'm
done just stay on for sure okay okay I want to make sure we've answered this because we promised at the top of the show I want to make sure this is great you understand yeah when is the best time to apply for a job okay I talk to you wait to tell you
this okay please tell me um first I'm going to tell you the worst the worst time to look for a job the worst time to look for a job is December especially after the second after the first week of December okay because everybody's gearing up for the holidays and if you start making
Ying all kinds of trying to outreach people are really busy just trying to juggle things by the second week they're figuring out just how to get things ready to maybe take some time off in between the holidays it's a really compromised time and you will not get someone's attention the worst thing you
could ever do as a job Seeker is to start sending Letters Out on December 18th okay don't bother do not bother it will you know if you want to waste time that's that's great okay but I would get a better strategy in December and go for the best time to get a job
and that's the second week of January okay because people leave their jobs but they're not going to leave their jobs before they get a holiday bonus or all those days off so there's a whole bunch of benefits that people have in around the holidays that they don't want to let go oh I'm
going to leave my job I think I'll leave my job right before I get all these benefits so they'll stay and then drop the bomb like Monday in January and then all the teams are scrambling to figure out what they're going to do they got tons of work to do and then they
extra layer of finding somebody so I want your stuff if you're looking for a job to be on their desks probably two to three days after they get back to work the I don't don't make it the day they get back to work because there's going to be a big pile but then
they'll know they'll know more what they're looking for and there's a lot of activity there's there's a lot of people moving around and that's the best time time in the whole year that's it Jonah now to Chris thank you see see I was about to say something and then and then portrayal said
in the whole year so okay all right couple things to talk about you had mentioned earlier that you have multiple streams of Revenue where your full-time teacher you run your own design practice you also authored a number of courses and you also have an Airbnb would you say that your experience and and
how many different revenue streams you have is typical of teachers these days or is it a typical because are we looking at anomaly or how most teachers kind of our diversifying like like that I don't I don't actually know you don't I I don't know how I feel really haven't asked those questions
to my to my peers peers hey guys I'm sitting in the lunchroom and say you know how you holding up heard about the furlough what's going on I think it's it's it may be different at Art Center because a lot of us do have our own smaller practices or contribute to larger practices
whereas maybe in a university or community College teachers don't necessarily have a separate practice but it's also for economic reasons reasons or he's I find that skill I use the most in all of them is persuasion in sales you know figuring out how to communicate to people how to instill Trust how to
build relationships how to be a good listener and learner these are the things that that are consistent throughout all of them and I didn't learn that stuff in school you know I was a lucky person young person where I learned that from my family and so so you know I just I had
that as the superpower that's enabled and number of things my my dad wasn't really salesman and I used to listen to him you know Sally could sell ice cubes to Eskimos really so you learn stuff you learn about human behavior you can observe things that where people fear things and how to calm
them down how to really listen how to learn and how to use your translation skills so they're really you know dazzled by your ability to just see things from a different perspective perspective you know that's those are I know I thought that was a lot of topic but I'm done Chris okay fantastic
I like how you have no after every time now yeah you should just go like this or something and they will know like country okay I have you can just one other step out so John has no choice so we're going to get to this one about your tips on how to nail
the virtual interview because we want to really talk about that I know you'll of experience teaching and training people on how to nail the interview but before we do that Jack Thompson has asked this question so for recent grads with industry experience do you think it's wise to get a non design job
until the job market is at least somewhat recovered from what's going on right now I don't see why not if you if you need the income and you have the time you know and you can continue your job search I I would be careful about the commitment you're making to the non design
job that they they aren't now depending on you and then you're just doing it you know in the meantime so as long as there's kind of clear communication there then I think ethically it's it sound and economically it may be a necessity yeah you have to eat first you have to eat first
so all of the things that we say have I think an assumption that you're okay like you're not going to be living on the street tomorrow because that's your primary concern just to make sure you could feed yourself and you can pay rent and whatever else okay now now if you have to
do an on design job because there's no opportunity out there and as Patrol has caution you the window of jobs that you can have is closing really fast as we're shooting into November December right so I don't know I I kind of think about this a lot where I think we're always chasing
the next thing that we're not ever present to what's happening right now what do I mean by that well when you're in a job you said well when I have free time I'll work on some self development and then you get laid off and there's no jobs to be had then instead of
doing that self-development acquiring those skills that you need reading the 10 books you said you were going to read this year but didn't then you go and get probably a labor job one where it's not really utilizing your skill set and if you do this kind of work and you have no energy
left left when you get hired again with the job market swings back up your kind of just you haven't really made a lot of progress so if you're at all remotely in a position where maybe you can move back in with your parents or eliminate a lot of your expenses so that you
can live for a little bit while the job market is sorting itself out and I think a lot will happen after the election because generally because there's so much uncertainty people don't make any decisions right now that once it picks back up maybe you could you can enter in the marketplace with all
the skill sets all these tools tools added to your belt did you didn't have before like you wanted to take that coding class but you never did you wanted to sit through and get your MBA program but or degree and you didn't I don't know I just feel like there's no better investment
that you can make then to invest in yourself and you're never going to get a better opportunity in terms of of time we're all going through this together most of us haven't left our homes and if we have it's using social distancing why not just use this moment to catch up on the
things that you've always promised yourself you would do that's just my take on it again probably a little reckless probably not that thoughtful but I'm just saying that okay so I think you're always you've always been a proponent of physical physical health and its relationship to emotional health and that is absolutely necessary
and one has to figure out what it's going to take to keep you healthy I'm I'm kind of shocked these days because my students have been super truthful about spending time like how much time in a week are they playing video games how much time they spend on tick-tock like frightening amounts of
time and one can rationalize and say oh I'm so depressed and this stuff makes me feel better well it's sort of like eating sugar to get energy it's going to spike it but it's going to come back down so you actually figuring out how to know what's really good for you what really
is going to make you feel better and also reaching out and finding communities of like-minded people that aren't just complaining I'm finding a lot of people just want to commiserate and say oh a bunch of bunch of crap and everybody's been you know like how do you find people that are actually working
harder to better themselves and I think that's one of the good things you do here Chris is is you're really helping coach people and make them feel good about learning something that they may have been fearful about before so just being here is really a good thing and finding communities that are positive
and trying to make change that's that's where that's that's where the success is going to be hmm and we've seen that we've seen that in there are Pro Group which is a gated community in terms of you have to pay to belong to our coaching group when covid hit I thought for sure
people are going to just abandon Ship because when when it's tight you don't want to be spending money not on a group but something really odd is happening our communities actually grown so it went from about to 70ish to almost 400 under people is part of our community and I understand it now
the dynamic of needing to be around people or positive optimistic who have different life experience and skills that that you might not have that you can learn and grow from okay now to the last question last question about tips on nailing the virtual interview Petula what do we need to do to make
sure that we don't squander that stuff we how do we prepare for this what do we say and you mentioned before we all need to be prepared to answer three or four the questions that you mentioned take me through the process and maybe we can even do a little role play or something
I don't know if it's appropriate okay let's let's let's just start with some technical stuff okay okay in the first three seconds they will have an impression of you before you even open your mouth they have decided so what are they getting the impression of first of all it's what maybe came before
like like are you on time are you are you trying to converse with them in an environment that's Pleasant to look at your a designer design your environment so you are the camera is eye level okay because if you're sort of down here looking up it doesn't feel very good good right or
if you are over here going like that it's odd you know so we want to be emulating a conversation you're trying to say this is what it would be like if I was standing three feet four feet away from you and we'd be talking that's how it should be you should be able
to use your hands if that's if that's what you should is that if that's what you do and the lighting has to be really good right here because most communication is nonverbal so it's not just what you're saying but how they can hear by your voice being up this is like good posture
but for your mouth right so what I'm saying sounds brighter than if I'm like I nice to meet you my name's patrulla I'm really happy to meet you here thanks thanks for your time okay speaking from your diaphragm there no I'm speaking it was like I'm just trying you know I'm not making
I'm not making a connection at all I would imagine meeting someone and they're like hi so nice to to meet you it's horrible so you can just be on a lot of Botox yeah everything's Fallen right your face is frozen so I'm not saying you have to be smiling like this it's not
a talking about but know that it's scary if you are articulating your words really carefully these parts yeah there's like a smile in here and it helps my voice be be brighter I think people should really hear themselves speak and practice it almost like an instrument how can your voice instill trust and
confidence and Authority and it's a very difficult thing for a younger generation that hasn't had this level of communication so if you can do that you will connect with your interviewer so much faster and so much more effectively so so the first thing you say is not can you hear me you want
to talk to them like I'm so excited to meet you say you Chris and I okay Chris let's say which what do you want to be the candidate or do you want to be do you want to be the the employer I don't know you're the boss you tell me you be the
employer you interview me okay okay boy I haven't done this in a while I'm gonna be like bucket of Rusty Nails here hmm hmm let me start you know the last time I've interviewed somebody my god when is the last time okay so I called this me over 10 years Chris I am
yes I'm my name is patrulla run tychus Andrew I am so excited to meet you I've been following your channel for a while and also we have some mutual friends in the motion design industry and I'm just I'm excited about the opportunity to possibly work with with you and looking to see about
opportunities that you might have hmm okay well first of all patrulla I love your energy and maybe there's an opportunity here at you you seem like future material to me are you a fan of the channel if you watch any of our videos I've watched a lot of your videos and I think
you are excelling in certain areas and I might I might offer a unique skill set to kind of fill in some of the the areas that may maybe you guys aren't touching on right now because I you know I come from a slightly different background and it could be that it could be
a good compliment so I wanted to talk to you about any of those opportunities and see if I have identified them or if there are ones maybe you've identified that that that I hadn't thought of and we can see if we can collaborate wow that sounds fantastic I mean tree tell me more
well I think you guys are really working well on the idea of business and Design but it may be that you actually start mentoring people to teach and not necessarily in a formal way maybe informal teaching you're actually teaching people how to have podcasts you're teaching people how to have channels how to
exercise their voice and become fluent in what they know would be great for you to be able to help people do what you do but that's more authentic to them and I love the idea that you can teach people to teach in non-traditional non-conventional ways because I think that's where you Excel and
I can bring my experience from formal teaching to maybe fill in the gaps in regards to some of the fundamentals when can you start as easy whoo well I was like starting to sweat here at the interviewer okay okay is there anything that you saw on my resume that you wanted any clarification
on I did want to show you some projects coming up but I also wanted to find out if you had any questions in regards to my background I'm gonna be honest with you the truth I didn't look at your resume you come highly recommended and I'm impressed with what I've heard so far
I think the best way for us to move forward is for me to put you on some kind of trial basis with us where we can see if we're both a good fit for each other how does that sound sound I think that maybe where we end up but I think it's really
important that I actually understand more about what it is that you are what your goals are because okay in some instances it might be aligned with mine and so it really has the best chance of working but I think we do need to have a few more conversations because I want to make
sure that whatever we embark on has the best chance of success sure sure sorry we're supposed to answer something or I'm just a greeting okay but just back I know I let's go back to if it's not you and me let's go back to nailing the interview before the interview you want to
do as much as you possibly can to make sure that you know what the parameters are around this this interview time you have so you need to ask them how long the interview is because if you think you're going to present something and you think you have an hour they've only got a
half an hour it's going to be super awkward you also want to ask how many people are going to be there because it may be a one-on-one or they may have you talking to a whole team and you might want to ask the names of those folks and do your research on LinkedIn
to figure out their backgrounds so you're feeling more comfortable the more knowledge you have about the time you have the people you're going to see and what it is that they're looking for the less fear you're going to have so that's a it just replacing these unknowns with knowns and therefore the fear
level goes down so I would also say I you know I don't want to just poke through my website and less unless you'd like to do that I'd like to create something custom for you this is before the interview in an email are there particular projects that you would like me to highlight
and give you more information on so the thing that's probably the biggest buzz kill on a zoom interview is for the the interviewee to just poke through their website because I can do that myself and it's not the right tool for the job the best thing to do is create like a custom
deck either PowerPoint or Keynote and and actually have curated some this experience for people so they know that you've really thought through that it's for them and but just by asking a simple question like what kinds of things you're looking for what projects did you see that piqued your interest then you can
go deeper on those projects than you might had might have been able to on our website besides a website is you know like the way the text works the way the Sound Works it can be a absolute Zoom interview disaster to poke through someone's website try the worst worst strategy I would recommend
hmm and I've seen some of your students present before they are very thorough of putting together a structured narrative or on the work and they have complete control over it because I think they're doing it in keynote or PowerPoint yeah yeah yeah instead of hunting and pecking around all just didn't load and
that image isn't working today you don't leave that up to chance now yeah the latest they want to say this is this the sound I just want mention with zoom and with keynote and with PowerPoint sometimes what you hear as sound on a video per se is not what they hear so you're
trying to talk over something and I mean they just didn't hear a thing so it gets super tricky and I and it's nothing you should should just wing it you need to really practice and figure out how this is going to work right okay now now granted I'm Rusty like a bucket of
nails on interviewing because I I don't really interview people and there's the people who do that for me but I do want to say this you're a candidate who's interviewed in ways that no candidate ever interviewed with me before obviously you're very articulate person with a lot of confidence and you you know
how to hold yourself as a person who can do public speaking I can't even imagine some young person sitting in front of me who's going to have the poison the command of language and the thoughtfulness in how you phrase things it's just is like one of those unreal God level interview things right
so I'm like I have nothing else here's the job why don't you just run the company for me at this point right well Chris you so call yourself a conventional employer or business owner irritant that is that is true that is all very fair and I do want to point out at several
things that from a perspective employer that patrulla did really well and I do want to say this because look where you're at and where Patrol is at yeah there's some light between the two of you I get that but we wanted to show you is if you could have your ideal version of
your interview it will look something like what just transpired because I understand our fans and our friends on the internet the first thing they're going to say in the comments was like Bob I can't do that this just but she's super experienced you runs companies you teaches at Art Center who am I
right so let's just kind of break it down what happened between petroliana and I think this is probably a good way to kind of bring our live stream to to a close here okay well first of all patrulla patrulla it looks amazing amazing that's because there's a lot of time and attention put
into this and it just communicate its right from the jump I'm a professional please take me seriously and I'm prepared she's dressed for the for the job that she wants she didn't show up in her pajamas so she's exactly who she wants to present herself to be who knows what her whole life
is like but this is a very good first impression it would blow me away with this it actually was a real interview because like when do you start like I wouldn't even even ask the first interview question right and then she used a lot of questions and phrasing that says to me as
a potential employer she's done her homework she's really not just watch the videos she found gaps where we could grow and as somebody who wants to grow my business and I don't know any business that doesn't want to grow their business she's bringing a whole breath of fresh air and a bag of
ideas that really resonate with me but I've not been able to act act on and then she neatly very carefully wove her skill set with this idea that she's talking about it's just this perfect union and it was just like I don't have to do any guesswork right now she has teaching experience
and she says formal teaching experience that might help me in teaching people in informal non-traditional ways and then she talked about a market that maybe were under serving she's hitting all a little invisible check boxes that I have in my mind and if you can do do 1/10 150th of what she's done
you're you're giving yourself a really good shot maybe of getting the job but for sure standing apart from everybody else who hasn't prepared for this moment whatever exercise you have to do mental physical spiritual whatever to show up for this and to be present to be grounded to be connected to this other
person you need to do that so that you don't blow that interview I want to say that you guys aren't that far away away you're the fruit in you and you're the expert in your work so the idea of you just knowing deeply how you have done what you've done what your motivations
are how it's relevant to a market that you've created for why it's important to the audience what your background is like I'm just asking you guys to be an expert in your cells and you're going to be much better at it than me I don't know know how to be you ooh know
how to be me but it's not like I'm asking you to learn something that so mysterious you just have to do a bit of self-reflection and practice and talk to people about about it you can't just roll it around your head that's like saying oh I'm going to learn how to play the
guitar so I'm just going to think about playing the guitar like you've really got to play it and it's going to sound awkward but at some point you will start getting that Rhythm and you're going to start reaching out and listening to other guitarists like oh that's interesting I'll try that but soon
it becomes your own voice no one is a better known as more of an expert in Who you are what you've done and why it's important then you you maybe just hadn't thought about it before so I'm kind of asking you to reframe what you do in a value proposition but you want
to be very careful because you got to maintain humility I didn't tell Chris I'm going to be an asset to your company never ever do that I'm Chris Chris has to determine whether or not he needs me he's not going to I'm not going to sit there and tell him he does even
as a peer it's awkward so certainly as somebody that maybe is coming in as a junior designer designer is super awkward you can tell them that you hope to be part of team's you hope to contribute but I've heard it I've read it so many times and cover letters I know I will
be an asset to your company no you don't that's awfully presumptuous it is so be careful be humble but you know you you this is it if you were like if you if you matched yourself up with a fellow job Seeker and instead of doing your own stuff you guys started to promote
each other that might be really interesting because you do it much more objectively you'd be able to ask the right questions you'd be able to they're like a client and you're trying to learn about them and might be a really interesting exercise because they're using objective ideas and trying to understand the problem
the audience audience the market pain points and create possible possible solutions okay that's it okay okay what you have shared with us today has been really wonderful and I would like to draw an analogy maybe it's in perfect in its presentation but let me just present present it the way that you presented
yourself what was very different than how most people show for an interview which is I have a menu what do you want what do you pick what would you like just pick anything and I'll deliver it I think what you did was you kind of figure it out beforehand via research if you
a dialogue or a ninny Email exchange that you put out there you found that they have certain preferences for what they want to eat what time they want to eat the temperature of their coffee and if they have allergies and you came prepared to say based on what I've learned this is what
you would like but I'm leaving there they're leaving some room open for you to choose something else your you've created a very tailored curated experience for this person and it reminded me of this chapter I read in Pat Flynn's book super fans and he said back in the day when he was working
as a waiter there was a gentleman who came in in who always ask for a glass of water and he was very specific in three three lemons and then one time this person sat in his area and he said because he also took a made it a point to remember the person's name
because he looked at their check it's let's say the person's name is Johnson mr. Johnson I'll be back with your cup of water and three lemons so we did two things right there a call him by his name and he paid enough attention to know that he wants a glass of water and
three lemons and then after serving him many times he also recognized the only orders one thing and so he asked him should we just refer to this as the usual so when mr. Johnson came in with his friends and family and his colleagues he would greet him by name and say well we
having the usual today mr. Johnson and that allowed him to feel like important amongst his friends and peers and that was a great way to stand out and he said every time he came in he knew he was going to win the tip competition that they had with the other serving staff service
staff so there you guys go may be imperfect and it's analogy and its design but I think what you want to do is to spend the time to treat the interview as if your future career depends on it and that just assume because you are who you are that you just going to
get it without trying to be prepared to kind of anticipate questions and to do your homework homework and do think you can to give yourself the best shot of landing at dream job okay I want to thank every single person who's hung out with us our audience has grown and it's not falling
off there are now 451 people watching there's so many positive comments in here for you patrulla at some point you may want to go back in and read them all Mark are there any highlights in terms of like the compliments are showering patrulla with don't list there's some people are just saying that
they're glad that they get this information someone said it's a wake-up call call and and they said that she dropped all this Advanced life knowledge and I won't be able to fit back in normal society ha ha ha once once a Man of mine has expanded it can never shrink back to its
original shape right or something like that okay always loved you I'll always love talking to you Chris sometimes it's more stressful than others this one not so much well we'll continue that we can be stressful but it was fine for me well it's very comfortable and work we're getting you I think to
share the best of what you have to offer and I hope we'll be able to do this more I want to just say before we bounced out of here everybody do look up patrulla her name is patrulla front I cos she's been my guest on today's show you can check her out on
our website 35k.com and on social media were on tychus okay and I just want to drop a little hint here the little hint is we've been working on something together it's not quite ready yet but this is a snapshot from our recently remodeled Studio A it's got that turban Vibe or not the
urban vibe that the urban cabin Vibe going on here and this is what particular looks like they're so be on the lookout for that okay so before I get out of here I want to thank you once again on behalf of the entire team Jonah and Mark Patrol thank you for doing this
and thank you for staying all the way to the end now we're getting ready to get a Dear John are you ready that was your warning Jonah good thanks everybody go get him but not till January okay okay January okay alright guys thank you very much for tuning in thanks for being a
part of the 1 billion minus one mission that we're on the win oh my God okay Johnny asked a me don't forget to like comment and subscribe and ring the bell for notifications see you guys oops I didn't mean to do that either thanks guys
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