I’ve just read an article by one of my Twitter friends @missrachilli and felt I needed to offer a little bit more advice to students and graduates looking to get themselves out there and in the industry.

First of all let me say I can’t really disagree about the social networking side of web design as the last two jobs I’ve had in the industry came from seeing recruitment tweets and following them up. I also agree with the opinion that without publicising yourself no one will ever know you exist.

I also think however there is one thing that has been possibly over looked by the article, I’m looking at the this from a student/graduate perspective in this instance.

If you’re only thinking about your portfolio and socialising towards the end of your course, I would say it’s probably too late.

In terms of getting out and about it’s never too early and there are some great conferences and meetups out there that offer healthy student discounts. The things you can learn from meeting people already doing things even at only a slightly higher level than yourself is invaluable at this stage of your career.

I also think that at the higher education level which most people will be studying at, there is often a lot of negative press in terms of the level of web design courses out there.

I think having studied a specialised web design course in the last few years I’m in a position to say that the course is only as good as the students on it. If you have possibly 2 to 3 years worth of studying your future profession and find it difficult to find a job when you finish there is no one to blame but you.

In my experience, it didn’t click with a lot of my peers that the education they were receiving wasn’t going to get repeated and they should be taking something from each and every lecture and project and trying to relate it back how this would help them out there in the real world.

My advice would therefore be to take every little thing you can from day 1 of your course and keep comprehensive notes. If you’re not sure of something go over it until you understand it. At the higher education level the lectures you attend should be a starting block for your learning and you should be looking to increase this knowledge EVERY SINGLE DAY!

I’m sure there are plenty of great web design courses out there but my personal experience of web design education came from FdA Web Design if you live in or around the North of England I would definitely advise you to consider it in your options if you want to become that employable graduate at the end of your course.