Got an interview...

For a web design company today. The owner is family to a friend of my mums...so he said he would like to meet me and see what I can do, maybe take me on part time while i'm going through uni, get me experience and make me learn much more.

It's for this company

I need to be ready for it though. I don't have a portfolio made up (which I don't think he expects me to anyway), so i'm just going to upload a bunch of stuff to my host and show him some things i've done that way.
He can't be too hard on me, I mean I think i've done pretty well with creating myself a website and developing it (it gets about 1000 uniques a day at weekends, about 850-900 weekdays and it increases quite steadily).

I know at least the basics of SEO and some about online marketing.
I code valid structured XHTML strict, unless I need to use something that I can't in strict, then I use transitional (but only on rare occasions).
I code valid structured css.
I code basic php (not able to connect it to mysql yet and make a site, really need to learn this), basic SQL, basic coldfusion.
I can use photoshop, flash, dreamweaver, illustrater, fireworks all to an extent.

Anyone got an advice for me?

 

Where you lack experience, show your willingness to learn.
In areas that you have experience, talk about previous projects where you incorporated your best skills and the successful outcome of the projects.

Good Luck!

 

Thats the thing. I'm 19, i've not really had much experience in projects. I've made 3 sites for people, 2 of which are not even worth showing as they were before I started coding valid, etc and one which fell through half way, so I only have the design and the main page coded. The rest have been for myself, and most don't look very graphically appealing (as you can see from the first site in my sig...) as they were made a while ago when I wasn't as good at using PS and other programs. I have images of examples of things I can create in PS, so that should be okay.

Ah i'm sure it'll go okay, if not i'll just say that it'd be great if I could come back once i've been through university fully, show him what i've learnt or something.

 

Just be yourself. Or maybe not.

Seriously, tell him how great you are and that his company won't survive without you. Bosses love to hear that kind of stuff. Maybe he'll be impressed if you tell him how many posts you have on DP....

 

Be yourself, show enthusiasm when talking about web development and the opportunity to learn new things in the business. Be excited about the stuff the company do....

Not a good idea...

 

if you lack a portfolio, just show your excitement to get started with your clean code practices! You'll be fine! Good luck!

 

perhaps you could show an example of where you'd be useful, for example look at there homepage, it has 44 errors with W3C checker, you could start of by offering to clean up the code on there own website first... that might be impressive, and what web firm these days wouldn't like there site to be clean coded. http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mtcmedia.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0

 

The interview went well, he said he will keep in contact with me and wants to hear from me when uni has finished for summer if i'm looking for a summer job (so he pretty much gave me a summer job).

He seemed impressed that i've actully got a site up and running with that traffic, so that was a good thing. Also seemed interested as it's a myspace layout site, and he said some of his clients had been looking for him to make them a myspace page along with their website but he had to turn it down as he hasn't a clue about it

 

good to hear that twistedspikes, congratulations!!

 

Well Done!

 

nice one twisted

 

Thanks

It'll be great to get some proper experience in a web design company.