McGEE, Barry. (2010)

Salary Expectations

May 13, 2007 at 17:23 · Filed under The Big Job Hunt

I had my first web design job interview on Friday past. It went quite well although I wouldn’t hold my breath. This is not because I didn’t perform well at interview, moreso because despite being advertised as a Multimedia Designer position, it became clear early in the interview that they were looking for a candidate with a strong skillset in 3d modelling. Although I have dabbled with 3d modelling to make quite the realistic model of myself in second year of my degree, I am by no means an expert and made this clear to the interviewer.

However, I did impress on the interviewer that I am very willing to learn and believe that starting any new job will involve a learning curve to an extent and that I think that I am more than capable of picking up any multimedia application and becoming quite competent in quite a short space of time. This is something that my degree course has always required me to do as, with the exception of Dreamweaver, I’ve had to adapt to using a range of software throughout my four years from sound editing packages to software integrated development environments.

Towards the end of the interview, the conversation was steered towards the ever sticky situation of money. When asked what my expectations were, I replied that I estimated a starting salary of £18-20,000 p/a. This was met with what can only be described as a look of disbelief and a swift dismissal, informing me that I should be expecting more in the range of £12-13,000. It was then explained to me that this may be more of a feasible salary in mainland UK but certainly not in Northern Ireland.

I had already realised that NI was behind the times in terms of the importance placed on the online marketplace, but hadn’t expected a starting salary to be quite as poor. Its certainly disappointing, especially as when speaking to a friend afterwards, was told that he started on a graduate salary of £11,000 in 1994 in software engineering.  However, its not out of the realms of possibility that the interviewer, also the director of said company, was also being frugal in using shrewd business skills to try and entice a graduate whilst offering peanuts….

The search continues…

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New Forum – nidesigners.com

May 1, 2007 at 16:18 · Filed under Forums

I have launched a new forum aimed at designers in Northern Ireland. The mission statement is as follows;

The aim of nidesigners.com is to bring together web/graphic/print/multimedia and all other designers within Northern Ireland to help, advise and network with the broader design community as a whole.

I set up this forum for a few reasons;

- Firstly, there isn’t currently a community of designers currently on-line from Northern Ireland. Or even Ireland for that matter…however, its not mutually exclusive to the Irish, I hope we will see designers from all over the world logging on.

- It will provide a medium for my soon to be former classmates in Interactive Multimedia Design to keep in touch

- It will provide a place to pool job opportunities within NI

- It will give me a chance to see if I can nurture and sustain an on-line community

- And lastly, through some subtle advertising down the line, I may even make a few dollars off the back of it.

I officially cracked the bottle against its side yesterday and it already has 35 registered members which I expect to grow to hopefully 100+ by the end of the week.

I am acutely aware that a forum can only survive if it has a solid user base so I’m doing all I can to promote it locally, i.e. an email to the entire course of BSc Interactive Multimedia Design, posters around UUJ, word of mouth and other methods besides. I then hope then when the ball starts to roll and the post count builds, Google will then pick threads up to pull in outside interest.

Lastly, if you are a designer reading this post, hop along and sign up, we’d love to hear from you!

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