Advice to enquirers thinking about careers in web design or joining a web design agency.

Q.  Email from <A Prospective Employee> <??????@hotmail.co.uk>

Good afternoon, just a quick query. I don't know if you can help but I am interested in starting a career in Webdesign but would like to find out what sort of qualifications companies look for. I am taking a CIW course and wondered whether this would be acceptable??

 I look forward to hearing from you
A Prospective Employee

A.   Hi <Prospective Employee>,

We can't speak for other web companies, but we would only interview applicants for web design posts if they have a good degree (i.e. an upper second) and a good portfolio of work (four or five nice commercial sites in use) OR if they had a GREAT portfolio (four or five lovely, functional sites in use by good-sized companies or professionals, with very enthusiastic client references for each one). We have to set the bar very high as our clients really need a blend of high quality training, talent and experience. You can't pick that up in a few weeks or from a CD. You can certainly make a web site with what you will learn from a short course - as many so-called webmasters do, but in our view, not one that will be suitable for a serious business or organization. A CIW qualification may - or may not - be useful to learn the basics - we can't say -  but it wouldn't get you into National Web Design by itself. We'd judge you on your portfolio and references in that case. References for each site are very important as they reflect essential requisites that are not necessarily tested in formal education such as reliability, professionalism, flexibility and how easy you are to work with. The portfolio of working site is important as it is a showcase for talent (even brilliance) as well as core competencies which are essential.

If you do need to learn the basics I'd suggest the more widely recognised,  prestigious and much cheaper Open University qualifications http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?C01TT280 and move on from there.

Good luck!