[thelist] Recruiting Web Design Staff (UK)

[Tara Cleveland]

Kimberly Carroll wrote:

>
>
> [snip]I am finding lots of people with (ok)html skills that have no
> creative ability at all and lots of people with good print designskills
> but no web exposure. Are other people having same problems or am I
> looking in the wrong places.
> ---
> Richard,
>
> Our locations may be different but our problem is the same.
> I've been looking for talent for six months or more and have been going
> through agencies in addition to my own searches.
>
> opinion is that requirements for a solid designer are more involved than
> ever before, and the talent pool simply has not caught up.
> To make matters worse, the reality of the marketplace has not sunk in
> and expectations on salaries vs skills remain unbalanced.
> Anyone else care to weigh in on those two ideas?
>
> Kimberly

I've seen jobs that are advertised that want people with Flash, Dreamweaver,
hand coding, JS, JSP, ASP and VBScript skills, and a full portfolio of
design work going for the equivalent of $20,000 USD. I've seen an ad for a
network administrator, general IT, db administrator, fix-it person going for
$400 Canadian a week! That's about $250 USD a week. That's only a little
more than minimum wage here. Full time job too - not part-time.

So yes, I've seen a major shift in expectation on salaries vs. skills, but
probably not in the way that you're describing.

What do you think the requirements for a designer are? I'm curious because
the opinions of people seem to be all over the place. Some people want
coding/programming designers, some want designers who can also write, some
want designers that are Flash experts... it's hard to know what skills you
should have.

I think it's a hard time for everyone. The job market is changing and
everyone needs to adjust.

Regards,
Tara

--
Tara Cleveland
Web Design and Consulting
http://www.taracleveland.com