Landing your first job in the creative sector can be difficult when you’re competing against graduates with similar qualifications. Your degree might get your application noticed, but making the shortlist requires more than simply showing that you have completed a qualification.
Avi Ramsundra, Dean at AAA School of Advertising, highlights seven tips to help your application stand out in a sea of sameness:
1. Build a book, not a CV
Junior creatives are hired off a portfolio, and the most persuasive portfolios are full of self-initiated work. Student campaigns, competition/award entries, and live briefs, all count. They show more than design skill: brand awareness, the ability to work to a campaign brief, coupled with a combination of academic rigour and industry readiness.
Six strong campaigns may prove more effective than twenty and knowing which work to leave out is itself a creative judgement. Reviewers notice weak pieces far more than they notice missing ones.
2. Turn each piece into an argument
A portfolio should do more than display polished work. For each project, explain the brief or problem, identify the audience insight, show the idea or strategic approach, and then present the execution. Where the work generated results, include them. The thinking is what's being assessed. A stunning execution attached to a thin idea is a much weaker piece than a rough execution attached to a sharp one.
3. Show what you learnt
Where a project generated results, include them. Where it did not, explain what feedback you received, what changed during the process, or what you would approach differently next time. This reflection demonstrates judgement, adaptability, and curiosity, all of which matter in creative environments.
4. Make your contribution clear
Much of this industry works in pairs — copywriters, art directors, graphic designers, marketers, develop ideas together. Collaborative work is therefore an asset rather than a complication, provided your role in it is legible. Explain whether you developed the concept, wrote the copy, art-directed the execution, conducted the research, or managed the process — and how. If you already work well with a partner, say so.
5. Direct the technology, don't just use it
Digital fluency is assumed now, not differentiating. You don't need to be an expert in every platform, but you should understand how channels, data and technology shape creative work. The same is true of AI, where the bar has already moved. Showing that you have used it is no longer interesting; showing that you can direct it and edit what comes back is. Generic AI output in a portfolio tends to read as a warning sign rather than as fluency. The tools are only as good as the person briefing them, and that is precisely what's being evaluated.
6. Be visible beyond the application
Work that lives somewhere other than your own folder carries more weight. Student categories at the award shows, agency portfolio days, industry events, published side projects; these put your thinking in front of people before your email arrives, and they signal that you're already participating in the industry rather than waiting to be admitted to it.
7. It is all in the evidence
Finally, treat the application itself as part of the evidence. A broken portfolio link, careless spelling, confusing navigation or ignored instructions will undermine strong work, because in a craft business the care you take with your own material is read as a preview of the care you'll take with a client's.
Ultimately, says Ramsundra, the strongest graduate applications make three things easy to see: what you can do, how you think, and why someone should meet with you. "A portfolio is not a record of what you have already been taught. It is the clearest available evidence of the creative thinker you are becoming, and agencies hire that potential long before they hire the polish.”
