Significance of the University Education for a motion designer

Certificates vs Skills

There's no doubt that education plays crucial role for finding work. Recruiters are filtering resumes and only those participants who spent enough time by filling each cell of proposed experience and education will have a chance to appear in the list of top applicants.

If you would be a recruiter, you'd probably be doing the same. Because number of participants are enormous, but there are always a requirement: to find someone good, normal. To put another "+" into the KPI of your work. The rest is not your problem.

So, a magical and the most important is a proof of your Normality is the ability to start and finish big projects. Acquiring the Bachelor of Arts or higher degree is the most obvious measurement. In theory, the best applicant is that, who has a degree, plus highly skilled, and experienced. So, the education plays at least 33% role in the hiring process, but to initiate this process - this role will be close to 100%.

If you can initiate the process in some other way - then you can try to rely on your skills and proven experience.

The real situation

Was is it ever needed to show my diploma during the hiring process? Never.

Nobody was asking about my education. Only my salary expectation, experience, portfolio.

And if you'll ask, in reverse, was there a difference in interest of recruiters after adding my certificates on LinkedIn platform - yes, almost instant. When you filling all skills and specifics of your education, your profile receives much higher attention just like "out from the air". Maybe search engine refreshes the profile page and pushes it higher. But I didn't notice much difference after editing other profile's tabs.

Where it's necessary

By examining a couple dozen Apple's profiles of designers, art directors and motion designers I didn't find anyone who doesn't have mentioning about BfA or MA degrees from the most famous universities and several from less known ones. There's also some pattern of years of education, universities and even majors. So, probably many of them was studying together or knew each other many years before got a position in the same company. What a surprising coincidence! Nobody is responsible for your career and efficiency at work. But those connections may help finding "right job" and apply in the "right time". There's a price of your skills, but also somewhere is a price for your ability to be a friend and interesting person for people, who have built a road to big companies. Being lucky enough is to be attentive and collaborative towards such "isles of stability" in a creative ocean. You can't swim just by your own all the time.

In the top companies the education is obviously the requirement, you can't avoid. But smaller ones can be less strict about it. And I guess it never plays a role, when you're doing projects on a freelance basis. Clients just want to be sure that your services will be on the highest level (in your price range).

Achievements

Your client's list and awards may provide a much higher value for other clients and recruiters. But it's usually a level of big companies, and big projects. Which is leading to the problem of collaborative team work. So, in this case, nobody in a team of folks will be asking you about your education. Just provide a good result, and it will be your investment in a project that can win some award.

Who won't be asking about your education and background is YouTube. Making a channel on some particular topic can attract other artists to participate in a social-valuable projects. And by mentioning their names you can show that the idea is supported by several people, without the aim of profit. But for some working background, which is aimed for growing and earning more ;) Tough YouTube channel is a "Business Card" for a motion designer or a video editor nowadays. Learning and practicing video production technics can be so important that university education can step aside in many cases during the interviewing process.

Moreover, YouTube can pay while you're studying, not vice versa as with a university. And it's showing real grades of your ability to start and finish projects. The scale and complexity of the project is defined just by you.

It requires your total involvement. There's no guarantee that you will get high position in a top company, but who knows: bloggers can be in a constant high demand in the future. More demand - more variants to choose from.

Comparingly to a degree in arts which can provide almost immediate professional growth (after 2 years or more) at the cost of $10k per year for a remote education, makes a YouTube channel to look like a lottery with a questionable outcome. But ideally it should be going in parallel, which is absolutely not a simple task. No one said it would be easy...

Conclusion

In a creative world all turns around long-term cooperation and connections. Losing the opportunity of making new friends with the aid of someone you know already is a reckless generosity in a bad way. Even attending courses in a high paid university can be useless if you can't build good coworking or at least friendly relationships. The enemy in this case is a remote communication, it washes away all small emotional threads that are appearing during a real-life communication. Which leads to another significant topic - your personal style and interpersonal skills. Which again leads to the importance of seeing yourself. How you talk, behave, look. Making educational videos for YouTube, Vimeo or other platforms just creating a workflow for a remote communication with your future friends, clients, top hiring companies. Content strategy is what can help really change the way of how things going. Imagine it as a small window through which you're seeing the world and world is seeing you, sharing the information, educating and learning.

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