Why employers are beating down the dude's door

A good friend of mine is beating the odds against a sucky economy. Without actively pursuing employment, he's had three (3) design firms personally approach him, offering him a job.

Many people are having a tough time jumping out of the unemployment line and this happily employed dude gets three (3) out-of-the-blue job offers. How? Lucky streak? Good karma?

Well, I don't believe in luck or karma, but I can tell you what this dude** does posses that turns him into someone who is sought after by rabid employers. Rabid, I say.

1. I don't mean to insult your intelligence with the obvious, but what the hell: The dude knows his craft.

"Well, duh," you say. "So do I!"

Sure you do. You and a thousand million billion other designers out there. Even if the work varies from weak to excellent, any graphic designer (or copywriter, art director, pool cleaner, etc) worth their saltines knows his or her craft.

While knowing what the hell you're doing within your particular profession is extremely important to getting the job done, that is only a small portion as to what would make an employer kick in your door.

2. The dude has a killer work ethic.

When someone is early to work, eager to work, likes his work, and cranks out work that is of a high quality, then such dazzling work practices get noticed. The dude has made plenty of connections through his freelance jobs. As word about his honesty and integrity in his work spread, so did his job offers.

3. The dude is not arrogant about his work.

Some may think, "People mistake arrogance for confidence." Yeah, only arrogant people say that.

When someone is arrogant, it's hard for them to see their mistakes, although it seems to heighten one's abilities to see the mistakes in others' work (usually to try and cover insecurities in their own work). Because of that, people will not really want to come to them for advice on…well, anything. Arrogance is the cock block of teamwork, and if you're not a team player*, employers don't have much use for you.

4. The dude's helpful.

Simple, right? If someone has a question and he has the answer, he'll help out. You would be surprised at how many peers enjoy watching others sink or swim - especially if they sink.

Another friend of mine writes code at a local web/design firm. We'll call her Sally. When a new employee came into the office for orientation, Sally thought it would be nice to write out a few things to help the newbie get situated. Why? Because my friend had an absolute hellish first month when she started at the company. While her manager at the time was very accommodating, her peers were not only unhelpful with any questions or problems she faced as a new employee, they were downright mean.

Sally wanted to help out, not to brown nose the boss (because she didn't blab and blab and blab to her boss and the rest of the office about how she is taking it upon her fragile shoulders to help the poor new employee), but just to be team player* and to genuinely help someone avoid some of the pitfalls she experienced.

5. The dude is nice.

This appears to be an add-on to #4 since "helpful" and "nice" seem to go hand in hand, but you don't necessarily have to be nice to be helpful. You could be a world-class asshat of a mechanic and still help people to get their cars working.

What I mean is this: Have you ever worked with a peer whose attitude was so piss poor that they made everyone else in the office uncomfortable? The angry grumbler who surrounds him or herself with the eggshells upon which you must carefully tread?

Some people are so full of suck that no one in the office wants to work with them. Which, by default, places them in the "difficult" and "not a team player*" corner.

6. The dude is not a freaking drama queen.

Bringing personal problems to work, constantly panicking about every little thing, crying, pouting, and being the personification of a sore that itches does not make others want to work with or around a co-worker. Giant freak-outs about a moved deadline or a typo are not warranted.

Put dramatic spasms into perspective: Cancer is serious. Car wrecks are serious. Getting mugged is serious. A color change on a proof is not.

At least not enough to wave the arms all around and scream throughout the office like a crazed banshee, making both peers and boss sick to death of the dramatic crapola.

THE MOST IMPORTANT REASON PEOPLE WANT TO HIRE THE DUDE:

7. He owns up to his mistakes.

Yep. Anyone who will throw others under the bus in order to cover his or her mistakes is someone NEVER to be trusted. Why? Because when someone makes a mistake at his or her job and doesn't come clean about it, they are essentially lying.

Owning up and willing to correct work-related mistakes shows character-built integrity and honesty. If all someone can do is find ways to cover their tracks and point fingers at others who have nothing to do with the problem, then word will spread fast enough to brand the person completely worthless and untrustworthy in their job.

Although such a person deserves to have their freaking teeth knocked out, doing so would brand you as a rash and violent person. So don't go around knocking people's teeth out no matter how much they have it coming. Be a team player* and do your job well, knowing that the moron must learn not be such a lying clown shoe or they could be bounced out of a job.


*Let me end here and explain what I mean by "team player".

A team player is not necessarily someone supportive of design-by-committee or to bend over backwards for the detrimental-to-your-work benefit of the group. It's not about group brain storming or sheep-like group think.

A team player simply recognizes that they work for a company with a group of other individuals, all of whom should be treated with professional respect. No more, no less. They have a job to do, you have a job to do, and you are all (ideally) on the same team.

Employers like to see this dynamic work, and if you are the one pissing all over it, then don't expect anyone to do you any favors.


** No relation to Lebowski.

My first job: Shocked, I was.

My first real job was a marketing/graphic design intern position with a local construction company.

Like many growing companies, these guys were sick of paying the relatively high prices to outsource their design work. They would spend a pretty penny having someone else put together their project books and print ads.

So they decided to bring all their marketing and design in-house...and I was it. Design department? Marketing? Me. The intern who was still in school.

Wet behind the ears is understating the cliche. I was soaked from head to toe, but it was exciting and now as I look back, I couldn't have started my career at a better place.

You see, I came into this internship from a job where I answered phones and figuratively changed the diapers of those attempting to fill out their college financial aid forms online. Out of all the jobs I've had, the freaking phone-answering job had to be the craziest and most stressful.

If I had to go to the bathroom, I had to "punch out" of my phone so that management knew I was not available, and I had TWO (2) minutes to get to the bathroom and get back or I was in trouble. It didn't matter if I had to go number 1 or number 2, I had to push fast and sit my half-wiped ass back down to answer the phones.

I worked at this place full time to get me through design school. When the opportunity presented itself in the form of an internship doing design work for a construction company, I jumped at it. I was overjoyed that it was a paying gig and I could quit my hectic job with Big Brother.

Imagine my shock as I left a job where I didn't have time to piss to a place where they sat me at my own desk to perform a couple week's worth of...web browsing.

They wanted me to design a new web site for the company and they wanted me to take a look at other construction companies' sites to see what I thought worked.

I was shell-shocked because after the first couple of full days, I had sketches and notes up the wazoo for a new web site. The rest of the week was just cruising the net. They didn't have anything else for me to do just yet, so I was to simply sit tight.

Well, I at least wanted to get started building the site, even if they didn't have all the information I needed ready to go.

Since I knew both diddly and squat about coding, I told them I needed...haha...I told them that for me...hee hee...for me to build the web site, I would need...I would need...hahaha...Microsoft FRONTPAGE....

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA....OH!....HAHAhahahaha.....*tear*

Yeah. Intern.

Anyway, after my first week there of noodling around on the internet and eating candy, I started to feel guilty about getting paid to do this "job". I mean, after almost two years of getting hammered day in and day out on the phones by people who didn't know how to clear their browser cookies, I felt like I was stealing from my new employers.

I told my brother, who works as a web programmer, about my feelings. He laughed and told me to chill and soak it up because the slow pace will come and go, and when it goes, I'll understand why the company hired me.

He was right. The slow couple of weeks came to an end and suddenly I had a ton of construction project books to design, as well as the site, print ads, newsletters, and press releases.

Then a couple more slow weeks. More internet noodling and candy.

I was sad to leave that company (although the money I was to make at my new job would cheer me up considerably) because it was a great first job that yielded much time for me to learn my craft.

One last thing. Those of you who are starting late in the design profession, or it is taking longer than usual to finally get through school, know that when I accepted my internship, I was 30 years-old.

Yep, a 30 year-old intern working in FrontPage. Don't let that image make you sad because I am now onto better things in my career. If I can do it, anyone can. Trust me.

Polishing a turd

I'm not sure if it was a coincidence or not.

My friend told me about a flyer he has been working on for the last two months. Oh, he got it done a long time ago, but it keeps getting sent back to him for revisions. By one executive.

So far, this executive has asked for 11 revisions on a project that was literally sent through all the channels, signed off on, and was put to bed.

The flyer was about to go to print until he saw it.

Now, you have to understand how this executive thinks. He actually told a girl in the marketing department, "Yeah, you'll never want to show me anything because I will make changes."

Nice.

As I said, my friend already went through all the channels regarding the flyer design. He told me that a bunch of people had predetermined how this flyer was going to look, so when he was originally finished, he had already deemed it a toxic addition to his portfolio.

It was a "turd," he said.

But the flyer was done and he was more than happy to close the book on it.

Then word came back from marketing that one of the suits saw it and requested a change. Fine. He did it, sent it back, and went on to his next job.

The next day, word came back that the executive didn't think he got the change quite right. Fine. My buddy made the change, sent it back, and washed his hands of it.

After all, the flyer was ugly to begin with. The executive's requests were simply making the damn thing uglier and uglier.

Needless to say, the changes continued. Since no information was being added or delelted, the changes were equivalent to "Could you move the blue line up 10 picas?"

Essentially what the executive was doing was polishing the turd. Move the freaking blue line up and down all you want, it's still going to be a steaming pile of gridless information.

To add insult to frustration, the flyer was an internal flyer for employees only. Thankfully, this was not for public consumption, but what was with the constant fixes?

Well, that's what I asked my friend - "Why all the bother?"

He told me, "He's just one of those guys."

So the bottom line is that there were no real reasons for the executive's changes. He's some dude with a hankering for adding his two cents.

Now back to my original statement. I'm not sure if it was a coincidence or not, but after my friend told me about his misadventures in committee design, I stumbled across this article over at Smashing Magazine (LINK).

I read the article on the pitfalls of design-by-committee and chuckled to myself. I even left a comment there, linking to an article about a terrible redesign of a logo, directed by focus groups and stakeholder input. HA-HA! Yuck.

My friend's experience and the article got me thinking about my own design work and the occasional compromises I have to make in the name of the committee.

Thankfully I learned to never be married to my work. Take pride in my work, sure, but never get too attached because complete creative freedom is hardly a reality.

Otherwise frustration will rise when you're faced with an executive who likes to move around your blue lines.

Protect yourself from the office weasels

Unfortunately within many departments, not just the design department, there is an element which could be extremely detrimental to your employment. It's called the weasel.

Or the snake or worm or any other creature used to describe a person looking to use exaggerations and manipulation to toss you and your career under the bus.

Right away, most of you thought of that one person at your workplace that fit the description. Weaselsnake-worms are the people with which you purposely do NOT share personal or professional information.

Why? Because the Weaselsnake-worm will take that information, jumble it up just enough to either make you look bad or to make them look good (usually both). They will then find a way to regurgitate this nonsense to anyone in higher management.

So what you thought was just a typical conversation about work, co-workers, or your boss has now become job-threatening gossip. Even if the conversation you had with the Weaselesnake-worm was harmless or joking, a few missing details could transform it into a malicious bitchfest. Now, after selectively choosing what the Weaselsnake-worm will tell management about your conversation, you are now on the sh*tlist.

Such behavior perpetrated by the Weaselsnake-worm is deemed acceptable to them because they somehow mistake backstabbing and juicy douchebaggery for hard ambition.

So you learn early to find out who is the Weaselsnake-worm and steer clear.

Easy way to determine a Weaselsnake-worm:

- They try to cozy up to the boss in relatively uncomfortable ways. While its perfectly acceptable to be on friendly ground with your boss, it's another thing to clamor for a BFF relationship with him or her. This also includes getting angry if anyone else in the office is getting any type of positive attention from the boss.

- You will rarely if ever get a compliment out of them if everyone else (including the boss) has paid you some big kudos on your work. You see, you just "one-uped" the Weaselsnake-worm, and that is simply unacceptable to him or her. OR...

- You will get a healthy dose of compliments for your work to try and drag you into personal conversations. These conversations will quickly steer into your personal feelings regarding you job and co-workers. This is like poisoning your own drink.

- No accountability. This is a doozy because to the Weaselsnake-worm cannot take the chance of looking bad in front of the boss. Also, since they believe that everyone else in the office is just as "ambitious" as they are, the Weaselsnake-worm doesn't want to lose face in front of the peers who will go directly to the big boss and rat him or her out!

All of these examples lead up to one thing: throwing you under the bus to try and further their career in the workplace.

There are a couple ways to avoid being eaten alive by the Weaselsnake-worm in the office.

- The most important thing is to be direct and honest at your job. People who are honest and truthful without arrogance have integrity, and people see and respect that - especially the boss. This is an important defense against the Weaselsnake-worm's attacks, because when it comes down to believing one word against another, one tends to believe a person with integrity over one who has zilch.

- Leave a BIG paper trail. If you have to work directly with the Weaselsnake-worm on a project, try to get everything in writing via email and make sure you carbon copy anyone who may have anything to do with the particular job, including the boss. You see, if anything goes wrong, the Weaselsnake-worm has a way of "losing" bits of information or lying about what the parameters of the job entailed. For some reason, the lost details always seem to make it your fault. A virtual paper trail will serve well in protecting you against the buss's career-crushing wheels.

- As mentioned before, do not share information with the Weaselsnake-worm. Especially do not say anything about the job, co-workers, or the boss that you wouldn't say in front of them. This is where the integrity part comes in. Such loose-lipped ammunition is all the Weaselsnake-worm needs to bury you, so don't be party to it.

Good luck out there in the wilderness of the office and stay protected!

It's a fun job, but it's still a job

I don't work in a design firm. My job resides within a small department of a financial institution - the creative department, a suburb of marketing.

I don't have the leisure of a jeans and a t-shirt atmosphere. One Friday evening I relived my 20s and shaved my hair into a mohawk, went to a party on Saturday, woke up late on Sunday, shaved the rest of my head that evening for my required clean-cut appearance on Monday.

My co-workers and I within the design department look like the rest of the company's employees with our business-as-usual attire, but those on the outside of our workspace know there is something different about us. No, we're not better or smarter or prettier...we simply enjoy coming to work.*

When you work in a nice, yet sanitized and stuffy workplace, you can literally smell it when someone in the building is having fun at his or her job. And there is the problem: in the eyes of many, if you're having fun at your job, then you don't really have a JOB job. If you're having fun at your job, then you are basically "goofing off".

We are in the department that gets to play with crayons, and crayons are for kids. Doing our little art projects for the company. Having fun. Goofing off.

I can't say I entirely blame others within the company for feeling that way. Every other department has sterile, clean walls and ours are covered with design trends, comic art, and posters. Every other department deals with customers in well lit offices. We work under dimmed lights and only deal with each other. Every other department has an iron clamp on their internet usage while we have unlimited access for research, tutorials, and, of course, stock photography.

I believe the perception of graphic designers as kids in the playroom is universal dogma to those not in the profession.

Once, after a particular stressful day, I mentioned to a friend that I had a tough day at work. He snorted out a scoffing laugh and condescendingly murmured, "Work." He went on to give me details about his labor-intensive job and told me that once I do something similar to what he does, then I can claim to actually work.

Ouch.

I can't apologize for loving what I do. I've worked many, many crappy jobs in the past before I became a graphic designer. In fact, it was working all those terrible jobs that made me want to go back to college and pursue something I genuinely enjoy doing.

Also, the fact that I am having a blast at work doesn't mean I don't take it seriously. I have handled million dollar campaigns, and there's not much "goofing off" when the company is fronting that kind of dough. If I'm NOT serious about my job, the campaign could flop, rendering me an unemployed designer.

I'm not about to convince anyone otherwise who believes my job is equivalent to playing on a playground. Heck, sometimes it is. I just thank God that within the marketplace there is a need for what I love to do.

*We are lucky enough to not work under levels of micro managing middle managers, angry co-workers looking to throw anyone under the bus, or power-tripping suits who see themselves as stand-in art directors. This is a rare thing within corporate institutions and we are fortunate and ecstatic to be where we are.

I know many designers who work in a worse environment than I, but even with all the corporate b.s., they are still happy with their chosen profession. It beats working as a roofer or a king's food taster.