selkiesun asked:
Hi Josh, I've been trying to transition into narrative design for a couple of years now and I find that most posted jobs are for Leads. Very few roles for Juniors ever come up, and tbh it usually feels like they're just there to facilitate internal hires. I know you're not a hiring manager, and I know you can only speak to practices at your own company, but do you think it's worth it for Juniors to send in a resume unprompted to a company they're very interested in? I'm honestly struggling to come up with other possibilities as a marginalized person now that Twitter networking might be going the way of the dodo...
I think that if there are no listing for narrative designers, I wouldn't send applications
as a rule. There may very well be no positions open, and sending unprompted resumes and getting no response or a bunch of "no open positions" responses could be demoralizing.
If there are one or two companies you're really interested in, I don't think it would be
bad to send in your resume, but it still might be demoralizing.
What I would say is if you see postings for intermediate/staff-level writers, apply to those even if you don't have the listed experience. I'm not going to say you have a good chance of getting the job, but sometimes intermediate positions don't get filled for a while and the goalposts shift to one or more junior/associate positions.
Also, if/when junior/associate positions open, if your resume is already somewhere in the stack, there's a chance a hiring manager might hit you up because someone actually laid eyes on it during the last round.
Sorry it's rough right now. Good luck.