Projections for the sales of multimedia hardware and software worldwide in 1994 are in the order of £7 billion. Putting together multimedia development teams, however, seems to present companies with a number of problems. Most companies have difficulty recruiting multimedia staff and those in charge of recruitment may have an imperfect understanding of the new medium that their company is moving into and their exact recruitment needs. The following information has been compiled from acknowledged published sources, by letter and telephone responses from multimedia development companies polled and from published job advertisements
According to one agency (Recruit Multimedia), 22% of the multimedia professional employers they cater for are in design/presentation, 20% publishers, 19% multimedia production, 18% corporates, 10% financial services and 11% others. Training in the area is still catching up with industry needs. What companies are looking for, in the main, is multimedia professionals with a sound understanding of both technology and design issues, flexibility in working with different software packages, strong social skills, specially the ability to relate to clients, and project management skills. (David Guest, "Window of New Opportunity", The Times, June 10 1994, p.33.) Preston describes the need for talented and adventurous people with backgrounds in film, TV or corporate video, and book publishing. (J.M. Preston, ed., Compact Disc-Interactive: A Designer's Overview, Deventer, The Netherlands, 2nd edn., 1991, pp.55Ð56).
In the multimedia industry presently, recruitment is frequently through headhunting and personal contact. In part, this is for reasons of efficiency and economy. Advertising is costly, and shortlisting and interviewing candidates is time consuming. None of the candidates interviewed may be suitable and the job may have to be readvertised, requiring that the whole costly, time-consuming process be gone through again. The cold-turkey approach of sending CVs to companies seldom bears fruit -- a small number report relying to some extent on unsollicited approaches and may file promising CVs for future reference should a vacancy arise.
Specialist agencies can help employers find suitable candidates. A number of employers confidentially report dissatisfaction with agency placements and use the agencies for short-term-contract/freelance multimedia personnel only. Equally, a number of employers use agencies as their main channel of recruitment for full- and part-time staff.
Employers will also advertise through national newspapers (the Times and Guardian, mostly), trade magazines (such as MacUser, XYZ or Creative Review), and the local press and job centres.
Most employers express dissatisfaction with one or all methods of recruitment. However, it may be that company expectations are unrealistic. Experienced multimedia candidates are few and far between, and training courses have difficulting keeping up with industry needs in this rapidly developing, complex field which calls for rather unique skill-mixes in designers and producers. Traditionally, the education system has been geared to the production of those with specialist skills and has strengthened the divide between what C.P. Snow calls "the Two Cultures": those inclined to the arts and those inclined to the sciences. Multimedia design companies, at least in these early stages of its history, seem to be looking for multidisciplinary-skilled professionals -- "renaissance" people, equally at home in the arts as in the sciences, comfortable and productive in the areas of communications, graphic design, programming, copywriting, photography, video and music production.
It is always possible for employers to ask to see examples of multimedia design work. This work could be communicate in the form of a diskette. Indeed, some employers already invite this approach. With the growth of the InterNet and access to it becoming easier, it is also possible for propective candidates to more remotely advertise their CVs and skills interactively and to a much wider audience. This would allow an employer to quickly get a rounded picture of the candidate and their experience, bringing more employers into touch more effectively with a greater number of candidates in a shorter space of time. It would also allow access to relevant information in a most appropriate form, using the medium itself, interactive multimedia, to communicate and demonstrate capability.
Testing candidates as to their capability is another strategy in recruitment. It is expensive and time consuming to devise a searching test, set up the conditions to carry it out and then mark it, but the end result can be worth it, if only to separate out those who claim to be able to use particular tools from those with real experience.
Some employers tend to be nervous about further training, in case their designers move on.
Courses in interactive multimedia design and authoring have been offered by a number of agencies, including the following:
Some design specialisms are so narrow that designers can feel isolated. In an area where the market and productivity tools are changing so rapidly, keeping up with new developments in the field is vital.
User-groups and Associations:
The largest electronic discussion forum for design professionals is Compuserve (yearly membership subscription is approximately $30; connection charges are ...) Other areas to investigate on the Internet are (list to follow).
As already mentioned, many companies recruit through informal personal-contact channels. Contacts are established and maintained largely through meetings at exhibitions and conferences. The biggest interactive multimedia design conferences and shows scheduled each year are as follows: (list to follow).
UK IMM production houses include the following: (list to follow). In 1991 there were approximately 125 interactive multimedia programme makers in the UK.
European Multimedia Yearbook 1994, Interactive Media International. Tel: 071.490.1185; Fax: 071.490.4706
David Guest, "Window of New Opportunity" The Times, June 10 1994, p.33.
J.M. Preston, ed., Compact Disc-Interactive: A Designer's Overview (Deventer, The Netherlands, 2nd edn., 1991.