Why are there still no entry level roles?
It's time to focus on the future of our industry.
Recently Hana Brown-Onigbanjo posted a comment on LinkedIn about entry level content design roles. Hana asked “How can we help people get a foot in the door when we can't even find the door?!” She was referring to her inability to signpost people to organisations hiring juniors or graduate schemes.
Seeing Hana’s comments made me disappointed once again that our industry is still not doing enough to support the next generation. This is something I wrote about over a year ago with a focus on summarising a LinkedIn post that sparked a lot of discussion around service design specifically.
The main barriers at the time were:
Clients dictating the level of experience they wanted from consultancies
Service design being seen as a senior level skillset
Lack of access to training and development
It’s been over 12 months since that passionate discussion on LinkedIn and I think it’s safe to say that little has changed. Although I do acknowledge it’s been a challenging year for many organisations and that there are some folks doing great things like TPX Impact’s Graduate Scheme, Nexer Digital’s Inclusive Employment Partnership and I’m sure others which I’d love to highlight.
I speak to people via my Walk n Talk calls on a weekly basis and people are struggling. These calls have turned from a joyful way for me to give back to the industry into a sometimes upsetting exchange as the realisation lands that there is very little I can do to help someone who’s working in hospitality while applying for job after job, that hundreds of others will go for. These are applications they may or may not receive feedback on, and every job they are rejected for chips away at their confidence a little more.
Recently Sarah Drummond and Lou Downe ran a free event through The School of Good Services focused on supporting people to enter the industry. It was over subscribed in hours which shows just how big this problem is. They wrote this blog post off the back of the event and shared the presentations that were given in that free event.
As a contractor I have played around with ideas of things I could do to help. Could I offer project based placement opportunities to entry level folk and give them a cut of my day rate? Could I convince other contractors to do the same and get some sort of collective together around this or produce a toolkit for doing it yourself?
This also makes me wonder why our industry doesn’t offer placements. Recently I was in Edinburgh where I did my first of many graphic design placements, one of which eventually led to my first job. While I’m not advocating for a regression back to the days of unpaid labour, I wonder why more companies can’t offer 1-3 month paid placements.
What we really need though is government departments, local authorities, the NHS, private sector companies like the big banks and design consultancies to step forward. There is now a service design apprenticeship available, as there are other apprenticeships in the user centred design family. I was really pleased to see a charity leading the charge on this one with this amazing role at The Children’s Society recently being advertised however I hate to think how many applications the team had to sift through.
What is important to point out here is that organisations with an annual payroll bill of over £3 million must pay an apprenticeship levy to the Government. Many organisations are simply taking a hit on this rather than putting the money to good use and actually integrating apprenticeships into their organisation. Considering the current demand for opportunities like this it strikes me as a massive waste of both money and talent.
Because that is what’s happening here, the talent that our industry needs is starting to look elsewhere. We have spent decades building an industry with excellent work behind us, standards, service patterns and impact. But we’re pulling up the ladder behind us by not providing a way in for people. Is it not our duty, as senior level practitioners and business owners to do this work? Not only to ensure the industry doesn’t die when we slope off into retirement but to make sure our industry continues to challenge itself with fresh thinking.
The world of user centred design and service design is changing. Many of us want to see the days of double-diamond dogma become a thing of the past as we move to a more consciously aware practice with justice and equity at its centre. But we can’t make this a reality without a diverse workforce of skilled professionals who are passionate about helping to use design as a force for change.
Thankfully I’m not alone in this thinking. Clara Greo, Dean Vipond and I have started to have conversations about this. And this weekend Sarah Drummond, Lou Downe, Emily Bazalgette and I had a productive brainstorm over delicious Thai food in Exeter. We’re all freelancers and we’re really keen to do what we can but we need others to join us. None of us want to be in charge of ‘starting a thing’ but we do feel like we’re at the point where we need to move to action. No one solution will fix this, a collection of interventions, large and small, are needed and we’re hoping we can motivate people to not just think about what they can do but start doing it.
So, what are you going to do? What’s your pledge for 2025?