Hiring Students

If you want to promote an event or job within your organization, please send us a link on Linkedin and we will promote it to our alumni group and on our Linkedin page.

If you want to hire one of our grads please visit ideagradshow.com which has links to all of our grad portfolios.

Are you interested in hiring a current student to work on a design or illustration project?

We get many requests for our students to work on illustration, graphic design and web design projects. We support and encourage paid work experiences. Your financial investment in our students, reflects your investment in the project and outcomes.

Students also volunteer their time to support in-person events, but we do not encourage them to work for free.

No Spec Work

Firstly, we don’t participate or promote crowdsourcing, speculative work or contests. Our students are members of the DesCan Design Professionals of Canada, whose code of ethics discourages spec work. We believe that all creative work has value, even from our first-year students.

Spec (speculative) work is when a client or organization requests designers to submit design solutions or concepts on the chance that they might “win” the contract or a prize. Speculative work – specifically, the request for it – simply put, is creative work performed without fair compensation.

https://descan.ca/pro-practice/speculative-work-contests/

Freelance Basis

Secondly, we rarely incorporate external projects into our curriculum as we need to plan projects well in advance and they rarely fit the academic schedule. Instead, projects are normally completed on a freelance basis. Students undertake freelance work to gain experience and earn a little extra cash.

Students work independently on a freelance basis. They are not supported by faculty. Please be aware that you will be working with students who are still in the process of learning about creative business. They require more support than a graduate.

Freelance Hiring Process

1. Write a short creative brief

A brief or job description must include:

  • Problem or Rational: Describe the need or problem.

  • Audience: Who is your audience?

  • Skillset: what skills are you expecting? Print design, illustration, photography, web design, or something else?

  • Deliverables: What end-product you are looking for? a poster, a book cover illustration, a logo? Or is your problem more open ended?

  • Specs: If you have specific document requirements (dimensions, resolution, file types… please list any you are aware of).

  • Timeline: start and completion dates.

  • Budget: please disclose a total project budget or an hourly rate. We recommend to pay design students $30-45 per hour, depending on their years of experience.

  • Contact Information: Full name, email and phone number

Include a closing date for expressions of interest.

You may ask students to send you a few samples of their work for review (usually a PDF) or a link to online work.

2. E-mail us the brief

E-mail us the brief with “Freelance Brief” in the subject line. The brief can be written in an e-mail or it can be attached as a Word file or PDF. Our email address is idea@capilanou.ca.

The department will post your brief internally where all students can view it, or students of only specified years if you prefer.

3. Interested students will contact you directly

Interested students will contact you directly. Sometimes only one student will contact you, sometimes several will. If none do, please feel free to e-mail us and we can follow up with them. (There could be several reasons why students do not respond – it could be a very busy time in the term, the remuneration may be too low, etc.)

If you like the work of a particular student, you can go ahead and engage them. Please note we encourage our students to ask for a deposit at an early stage of the project. If you like the work of several students and can’t choose, please feel free to contact us with a list of students, and we will be happy to give an opinion of their particular strengths.

Questions

If you have any questions, please e-mail idea@capilanou.ca or call us at 1 (604) 990-7820.

Thank you for considering our students for your project.