Applying for creative positions isn’t about showing every project you’ve ever produced, written, designed, filmed, styled, or managed. Instead, it’s about developing an understandable narrative of who you are, what type of work you excel at, and why you would be the ideal candidate for the particular position. An effective career edit will enable your resume, portfolio, and other outreach efforts to appear focused rather than overwhelmed.
What should you include in a creative job application?
Most creative employers want more than technical skill within the creative jobs industry; they also need to know you can translate a brief into something relevant to an audience, collaborate with others, and ultimately deliver results. Therefore, your application should be tailored to demonstrate which of your previous projects, positions, and accomplishments relate best to the position you wish to pursue and the fashion or creative job category your interested in.
Keep what you need to answer the question, such as:
- Relevant Creative Work: The project needs to fit within the scope of the position, either as a medium for the work, the work itself, or the degree of authority required to complete the project.
- Skills requested by the employer (software, production methods, writing formats, campaign experience, art direction, editing, research, and/or presentation skills).
- Strong results: Outcomes that include product launches, published articles/books/etc., increasing your customer/fan base, completing marketing campaigns, receiving media coverage (press), winning industry awards, and/or achieving goals within your organization. All of these results should be documented accurately.
- Collaborative Indicators: Engage in partnerships with designers, writers, strategists, producers, developers, clients, founders, or interdisciplinary teams.
What work needs to be cut before applying?
Cut anything that requires the hiring team to spend too much effort determining your worth. Creative individuals typically accumulate a variety of experiences, side-projects, experiments, and previous identities. This variety may provide an advantage, provided that you edit it down to create a consistent application.
If an item of previous work no longer reflects your style or ability, you may want to remove it when applying from creative jobs. Previous student work, earlier freelance work, and work from other fields can all be relevant for demonstrating transferable skills; however, these items should not take away from the stronger and more current items that you have developed. Any piece of work in your portfolio that requires you to explain why you did it, what went wrong, etc., is probably too weak to include in the initial presentation of your portfolio.
You should also be very cautious of visual clutter. Excessive decorations on your resume, a large variety of different font styles, excessively sized icons, and cluttered portfolio pages are all things that may take away from your content. Good editing does not remove your individuality; rather, it removes anything that creates unnecessary friction in the process of viewing your work.
What factors influence your decision on which parts of the text to emphasize?
Highlight where there is a direct relationship between the strongest aspects of your past experience/work and what the employer needs immediately. Rather than being flashy, some of the most effective creative job application advice focuses on showing the person reviewing your application that you clearly comprehend the requirements of the position, and that you have the ability to contribute to the company’s success with minimal effort required from the reviewer to “connect all of the dots.”
Proof of Craft
The strongest example of you creating the item that is required for the position; examples include but are not limited to, campaigns, scripts, branding systems, photo edits, social media content, product copy, illustrations, video content, and experience creation.
Building a more powerful resume and portfolio combination
Your resume and portfolio do not need to contain the same text. Consider your resume to be the guide and your portfolio to be the evidence. Your simple resume provides background information; i.e., what you did (role), how you did it (responsibilities), what tools you used (skills), who you worked with/for (clients/industries), and some of your achievements. Your portfolio should show your decision-making process when using the tools listed in your resume.
Each of the roles/projects on your resume should be supported by a portfolio item. If you have written about developing brand campaigns, then you need to provide an example of one. When you write about social media, you need to show you can create content tailored to those platforms. When explaining your role in managing creative production, do so as part of the entire process rather than just providing the end product.
Compelling project case study does not need to be overly lengthy; it may include the following:
- The goal of the assignment.
- Your specific role within creative jobs category.
- The audience for your message.
- The most important decision I made was to use a simple typeface with clean lines that would be easy to read and understand. I wanted something that looked professional, yet accessible, and not overly designed. Another critical decision I had to make was whether or not to include images in my design. While it would have been nice to include visual elements, I felt images could take away from the message. In addition, I also had to decide what type of layout I wanted to create. Since this is an informational piece, I chose a straightforward, multi-column approach so readers can quickly scan the information. Finally, I had to decide how much white space to include in my design. I wanted to give the reader ample breathing room, but I didn’t want to leave so much empty space that it would look unfinished. Overall, these four creative decisions were very helpful in guiding the development process.
- If possible, the end point or actual results.
- Constraints to be used in making the work look better, i.e., constraints on time (shorter) or constraints on resources (less).
The purpose of this approach is to provide hiring teams with all of the information they require to make an informed decision regarding a potential candidate while avoiding unnecessary bureaucracy. This method is particularly useful when you are working on projects as part of a team; by clearly identifying your contributions, you establish credibility among your peers.
Last Revision Prior to Sending
Prior to submitting an application, take some time off and come back as your hardest critic. Find things in the application that seem irrelevant, outdated, exaggerated, or are simply distractions. Because creative applications will be evaluated quickly, each part of your application must be relevant.
Make The Final Checklist
- Is the first thing you see when you visit a website/app clear as to what it is that you want to accomplish?
- How easily will someone be able to locate your strongest and most relevant project(s)?
- Did you remove those weak samples that were making your best work less than what it could be?
- Are there examples of how you have achieved results on your resume rather than general statements about your abilities?
- Does your portfolio clearly identify your personal contributions? (Reflecting on the creative jobs category)
- Have you customized your application for this specific employer, or did you apply with a general application that could be used by most employers?
- Are links, file names, contact information, and permissions functioning properly?
Keep the parts of your resume that show why you are a good match for the creative jobs; remove the parts that make it hard for employers to understand who you are; and emphasize accomplishments from your previous experience that will prepare you for the next step in your career. When you do this, you create a job application that looks purposeful and confident and is more likely to be accepted.
