On the death of the job title

You may have personally experienced it by making yourself a business card, opening a profile on Linkedin or simply when meeting a stranger. Defining what you do when you are a design professional with years of training in various creative skills and disciplines, is something that needs more time and space than a two-words answer or 18 characters. It is often an agony. But we have good news about it. First of all, you are not alone. Extravagant names like Digital Guru, Design Ninja or Cultural Animal that proliferate on Linkedin demonstrate the limitations of the old title system for creative professionals. Secondly, Linkedin is not the right place to look for your next job – keep reading for more information – and finally, the professional title is losing relevance in favour of the transferable skills and the projects in which you have participated, so do not despair and embrace your wonderful complexity!

Linkedin is not for you, there are alternatives 

You have probably wondered if you need a profile on Linkedin. You have discarded the idea several times and you have finally fallen into it, without much conviction, just in case. The case, however, is that Linkedin is not for you, as Pip Jamieson – founder and director of one of the most powerful alternatives for creatives: The Dots – has been warning for a long time. She is clear about it, Linkedin still defends a linear career model that is too traditional to work within the current creative industry, a sector in constant evolution and driven mostly by autonomous, independent and multidisciplinary professionals.

Jamieson is one of the messengers that has promulgated with optimism the death of the professional title in favour of personal skills. She has done it from her expert perspective as director of The Dots, a platform (currently only available in England) that has earned the popular description of “Linkedin for creatives”, not only for its careful aesthetics, but for the functionalities it offers: allowing jobseekers to expose their talent not so much through the CV but through the skills that have been developed over several projects, and putting these projects into value. In Spain, there is still no platform like The Dots, and creatives are still in a grey area when it comes to job-seeking, or limited to platforms specialized in attracting just freelance professionals such as Upwork. Platforms like Behance resemble The Dots but leave less visual professions aside, such as the case of editors, cultural and project managers or curators.

Do not forget the power of direct contact

A reality of the moment we live is that we are often so imbued in our digital life that we forget the great effectiveness of direct contact. That is why The Dots, complements its functionalities as a digital platform with face-to-face masterclasses, where a careful selection of candidates has the possibility to present their work live to creative headhunters of the different companies that use the platform. These sessions have a very positive placement ratio, with 50% of attendees receiving job offers at the end of the session. But masterclasses are not the only option: attending events, volunteering in non-profit organizations, teaching or doing workshops are opportunities to meet people and demonstrate your talent by leaving a direct imprint much more effective than your digital print.

Despite the “relative” ease of applying to online jobs and sending emails, personal contacts are still the most effective way to find work today, especially when many processes in the field of digital recruitment are being automated, falling dangerously in systems governed by algorithms because the demand is so high that it is difficult to process the applications manually. These systems automatically discard profiles identifying keywords without taking into account the actual content of the applications they process, making the final selection of candidates an absolutely biased choice. Platforms like The Dots are highly critical of these practices and try to advise companies seeking talent through the platform to use other systems that are fairer and more effective when it comes to recruiting.

Defend your hybrid profile and be proud of your slashes

In her last conference in Barcelona, within the framework of the Art Directors Club of Europe Festival, Jamieson sent a message of reassurance to multidisciplinary creatives, encouraging them to defend the richness of their profile. A profile “with many slashes” in reference to the slashes that separate a broad set of skills.

In a context marked by hyper-specialization, with a historical proliferation of masters and postgraduate programmes, it is not surprising that multidisciplinary profiles have not yet found their spot in the market. The reality, however, is that a large part of today’s creative work positions require not only multiple capacities but also unusual perspectives that can provide new solutions. If you are one of these hybrid creative profiles, do not hide, be true to yourself and be proud of your baggage, the talent of the future is multidisciplinary!

Author: Sol Polo