Leeds Digital Jobs Festival

Annabeth informed us via email of the Leeds Digital Jobs Festival.

I knew from browsing the website that the entire job fair would not be entirely relevant to my practice, but what gave me faith was seeing 'designer' in the list of who the employers were looking for and of course that can be translated into animator.

The job fair was an interesting experience and it was pretty much what I'd expected with a few nice surprises. When I was walking around talking to people, I made sure to not just say, 'hello, I'm a graduating animator' instead I decided to say that and that I am a designer and am interested in working in video editing. I felt like it was very important to mention the range of skills I have. I also decided against simply asking everyone if they have an animation department and instead asked them if they do animation. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that quite a few people said that even though they did not currently have an animation department or even do animation currently they are keen to get into that field, therefore were happy to take my business card. I gained the sense from talking to people and handing out my own business cards that they were interested in what I do and keen to help me out in any way they could.

I felt like the experience was very successful as as a result I am currently waiting for one of the individuals to arrange a meet-up with me as he said he was keen to discuss job/internship opportunities with me as animation is something he wants his company to get involved in. This is encouraging to me because I feel that I could have a lot to bring to an animation department that's just starting out and they would benefit from my ideas and enthusiasm.