The Job Hunt

The job search has been an interesting prospect. I have learned that given this world economy architecture jobs are not as easy to come by.

I spent the first two weeks in Wellington, post flatmate search, working on my resume. Of course being Kristen M. Neri I could not just let my resume be a black and white list of achievements and experiences but had to make it something truly Kristen. It is a colorful well designed piece of art that I sent out to every firm in wellington. Only receiving back replies of currently not adding to their work staff and invitations to happy hour and for tea, with one invitation to a office putting competition, what I have learned is that a large firm in wellington is about 10 people, and a medium is 4-6. Also it seems that NZ firms are not laying people off, and have not seen their project load diminish that much, they are just sitting back and waiting to see where this world economic downturn leads the projects in New Zealand.

I decided to not let this get me down and use this as an opportunity to explore other interests in the world of design. So I adjusted my resume and sent it out to a series of different exhibition design companies, only 5 really in wellington. I received a response from Izzat Design, a company that does both exhibition design as well as everything under the sun including props and sets for movies. Their response was “we really want to meet you and we can schedule a time for you to come in to visit”. Now being how casual things are here I wasn’t sure if this was just another meet and greet or an interview so I prepared for both. I arrived at what was a large warehouse in the Miramar section of wellington better known for the studios that Peter Jackson owns and the Weta workshop/digital where a load of Lord of the Rings was produced, never mind several other projects. In this extremely large warehouse was 4 really cool guys who seem to just play around designing and producing stuff all day, my kind of environment. It ended up being an informal interview with them looking for someone with computer drafting experience given they are more hands on designers and just create, but they would need someone to take their ideas and produce them into drawings. I received a tour of their studio/warehouse which was amazing. They do everything, including having several dozen roman helmets that they cast for an upcoming Jesus epic that was/is to be filmed in NZ called “Kingdom come” but has been put on hold after the US filmmakers already spent upwards of $80 million on preproduction and sets are set up all over NZ. So it seems this was a very productive visit and hopefully something will materialize.

However with funds starting to run short I need to start looking into other prospects. Currently looking at retail and bar work but think that maybe this is the time to start focusing on my own art and my design company KMNdesign, http://www.kmndesign.com/. Again maybe this is fates way of getting my creative juices flowing and really doing the thing I have always wanted to do in making KMNdesign a fully functioning entity. All I know is I will do what I do best and DESIGN!!!!