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3 Tips To Stay Motivated When Looking For a Design Job

Michael DiTullo's great advice for what you should be doing in an employment drought

By Rain Noe - May 11, 2020

in Industrial Design Tips

The best pieces of advice are always hard-won, and here Michael DiTullo starts when he was at the bottom: Just blew a shot at a dream job, forced to move in with his folks, can't get a job for months, and ready to accept a major indignity at the end of it.

Today DiTullo runs his own firm, and has seen twenty years of ups and downs. From these experiences he's distilled three excellent tips on what you should be doing when looking for a design job:

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Michael DiTullo

5 years ago

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Small update on this. Because of this video, Dad Schenone, the head of design at Nike in the 1990's who offered me that job, reached out to say that he had offered over 300 jobs to designers in his time there. Only 2 had ever turned him down and I was one of them. It was so amazing to get his side of the story and a relief to know I didn't totally mess up my chances there with that one mistake. Whatever you are doing, keep trying!

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Devin Sidell

5 years ago

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My 12 year journey as an Industrial Designer has been an incredible yet difficult experience. I honestly never thought I'd be where I am now simply because in Philadelphia, Industrial Design jobs were almost non-existent. We were told we'd all get jobs after graduation, probably in CA, NYC or Chicago. What they didn't tell us was that it was going to be one of the hardest things you could imagine doing and there were no guarantees. Most of my class went on to do other things, some moved away and a small few pushed forward despite the lack of experience in the professional world. I interned for free as a welder for a local artist my Junior year for 6 months. Then I detailed cars my Senior year. I also worked in the wood shop for 2 years as a Manager.

But obviously none of these things were the ID I was told I'd be involved in after graduation. My Professors showed videos of the work cultures and projects coming out famous companies like IDEO, Frog, Apple and OXO during my senior year as a way to motivate me. It was actually more demotivating than anything. I say this because the when I graduated and had my portfolio custom designed, printed and mailed out to dozens of firms and studios, there was radio silence. I didn't get it. Where was this job I was promised? It took 3 months of this to make me realize that I had to be more proactive. I became a Salesman. Not for Insurance but for ME.

I ended up with my very first "ID job" in '07 at a local company that I never even heard of despite their 100 year history in the area. I say "ID job" because it was actually just a model-maker position that had the potential of turning into a "real" ID job, aka actually designing things and not working on existing designers projects. The culture of the company was also horrendous. Yet despite the circus-like work environment and even a death-threat I knew though that if I pushed hard enough and became the best model-maker out there maybe upper management would notice my skills and give me that job I had asked for 5 years earlier. It worked! I got the opportunity to prove myself only one time with my very own project and I guess the rest is history.

The moral is no matter how hard it may seem, you simply cannot give up. If design is your true passion then why would you let anyone or anything stop you? I always believed that no one actually gave me a job, I created it for myself. In the early days I "pretended." I hired myself to do what I love. I never stopped designing. That kept me motivated to always continue my passion no matter what and it still does.

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