Job prospects review

For the first question, I thought that talking about issues such as accessibility would be a good direction to go in, and that I had some business awareness. I think that my answer was a bit vague, and I should have directed it firmly at the company I was applying to. Having only a few minutes to find a vacancy, this was not a possibility in this situation, but when applying for real I think that looking at the work the company has done and doing research into them is needed before going to the interview. This would help me construct more direct and relevant answers.

I said that my greatest strength was applying an appropriate strategy to suit each client. I think this answer was correct, but I believe I should have looked at it from a more creative point of view. I should have focused on my ideas generation techniques from the start of the answer, and not at the end. An ‘appropriate strategy’ sounds too formal, and would not suit the target audience of a creative director at a company.

For my greatest weakness, I talked about my limited technical knowledge. However, I put a positive spin on things by saying that I constantly look to build on my abilities and am willing to try new techniques. I believe this was the correct way to approach this, as it shows that I want to improve and that I can identify that this is an area which needs some work.

The ‘5 years from now’ was by far the hardest question to answer. Again, I identified that my skills would change considerably over the next 5 years, and that I would like to be managing other people to complete project. However I did not mention this company in particular, and this lack of loyalty would probably be a big negative for the employer. Next time I think that I should again focus this more on the company that I am applying for rather than generalising. I should have said that strong working relationships both with clients and colleagues at work was essential for being productive, and that jumping from one company to another would not be in the interests of my own personal development.

For the current innovation part, I said that video was something which excited my about the future. I believe this answer showed that I had a good knowledge of the future of the internet, where video will become more and more commonplace as bandwidth increases. I also mentioned that accessibility was also an important part of the future, and that the two combined created many challenges. I think for this answer I should have talked more about what clients needs would be for this, as working at this company would mean creating products for clients on a daily basis.

For the hero question I chose to a mature answer to this by naming Richard Thompson as my idol. I think that choosing someone from the industry such as Jakob Neilsen would have sounded very predictable and could have raised a few eyebrows as to if I was just saying what wanted to be heard, rather than what I actually thought. I tried to link the career of my idol with what I wanted my own to be, in general terms. I think this answer was ‘right’ because it shows that I have interests other than design, and having an interesting personality can help when working with colleagues.