Thanks to Paulo Fonseca, we did an amazing workshop at one point in which we literally trained students for job interviews. Paulo even role-played his way through the interviews, pretending to be the hiring manager of any company the students said they would like to apply to.

At the end of the year, almost all students went through an internship with different companies, giving them a first experience of actually being in a job at a tech company.

Still, the market itself is also something we can’t control, and for some it was hard to deal with the uncertainty of getting a job or getting one that felt right.

A few months after the program, the majority of students did get a job in the field but not always in the company/field/country/format they hoped for. And that we couldn’t predict.

I don’t consider this lesson to be based on failure like some of the others here but more of a realisation that today in 2023 makes more sense than ever. No matter how much effort you put in training your new designers, it won’t matter if there aren’t enough positions for their level and specific skills.