“Everything you’re doing is counting towards something”

Creative Career Conundrums is a weekly advice column from If You Could Jobs. Each week their selected panel of professionals from the creative industry answers your burning career questions to help you navigate the creative journey.

This week’s question:

I’ve been a full-time designer since graduating in 2018. After about a year in the industry, Covid hit. I was lucky to have kept my job throughout the pandemic, but was laid off in 2022 after restructuring. I took a new business design role at an ad agency but quickly learned it wasn’t for me, and moved to an in-house design team at another agency. Unfortunately, I (and my entire team) were laid off, exactly two years to the day of the first. Now I’m back at in a new business design role at another agency. I feel stuck – like I’m treading water rather than moving forward in my career. I’m almost 30 and I feel like I have to go back to square one to start making any real progress. Do I have to? How do I move forward when I keep getting knocked back?

How do I move forward when I’ve been laid off over and over again?

Katie Cadwell, co-founder of branding studio Lucky Dip and The NDA Podcast:

My first question is, why do you feel like you’re going back to square one? I’m going to hazard a guess you don’t have the same skillset now as you did when you graduated. Changing roles shouldn’t mean you start from the bottom each time. So much of what we learn in creative roles is transferable, even if the job description is slightly different.

Not many people start in one studio and steadily move up through the ranks until they are directors. In fact, some of the most interesting creatives have a very zig-zag career path.

What does ‘moving forward’ look like for you? Perhaps you can set out some goals or a 5 year plan of where you want to be. That might make it easier to make decisions now. Something to judge how well your choices align to the end goal.

It must be frustrating that all these moments have been out of your control. Have you considered starting a side project you’re passionate about? Whether that’s an Instagram account, joining a creative group near you, or even a podcast. Having something that you can build and no one can touch might give you the consistency and feeling of growth you’re looking for. I’m inspired by people like Mary Hemingway who started Design by Women, now a pillar of the industry. A project outside of your day job that’s solely yours will give you back some autonomy and help see progression in a much broader way.

Don’t stop hustling. Everything you’re doing is counting towards something, it just isn’t clear how it’s all contributing until you get there.

In answering your creative career conundrums we realise that some issues need expert support, so we’ve collated a list of additional resources that can support you across things that might arise at work.

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