The Blog Studio’s Project Manager and Humber College alumni Nalin Sharma (@nalins) was recently invited by his alma mater to give a career talk to students. Sharma graduated from Humber’s Web Design, Development and Maintenance program in 2008 before joining us at The Blog Studio. Professor Thomas Borzecki (@iborg) and Amit Chail (@achail) invited Sharma and industry colleague Mike Clark (@shapelike) to share their experiences as two young professionals detailing every aspect of their corporate journey: graduation, job search, and beginning their respective careers.
Nalin and Mike addressed Humber’s students and faculty to guide them through Web Design post grad: they discussed program highlights, offered job search tips, assessed expectations, and shared their experiences.
Nalin’s key message to Web Design students was to recognize that Humber provides the opportunity to work with a myriad of different software and concepts. Consequently, it is important to realize that this introduction allows you to choose an area of specialization in your professional work. For instance, Nalin is a specialist of front end coding (HTML and CSS) and has parleyed his knowledge of this industry to oversee business administration within our company.
Mike was able to offer an honest perspective on the highly competitive and intense nature of interviewing as a Web Design candidate: As a current employee of the University of Toronto, Mike successfully completed several panel interviews. The wide scope of Mike’s job in terms of UofT’s international visibility and reputation requires extreme accuracy and dedication. He has learned that in junior positions companies are less interested in your CV—every candidate has the basic requirements—and are more focused on your motivations, willingness to learn and ability to work cooperatively within a corporation. Personality and professionalism has just as much to do with a successful hire as a strong resume.
After the talk, Mike spoke with us and said, “I really enjoyed heading back to Humber and speaking with the current group of students there. They showed a lot of enthusiasm and asked some smart questions about topics I wish I had thought about when I was in school. We spoke about a number of subjects, from project planning, fair rates and client management to standards-based accessible design and using open source projects like WordPress and jQuery. I’m looking forward to seeing the students progress and make a place for themselves in the local web community!”
Nalin added, “The Humber students were really engaged; they participated in the discussion and asked some really well thought out questions! Mike Clark and myself both tried to stress the importance of web design specialization and as well as personal development. One thing I found was that the students really benefited from working through potential interview questions. We provided some insight into different approaches to answering difficult questions and insight on how to stand out. I will be going back to Humber when the class presents their final portfolio assignments and am really excited to see the development of the students individual skill sets.”
The students were extremely engaged and took this opportunity to openly communicate with Nalin and Mike: No topic was off limits. Professor Borzecki was pleased with the wealth of information endowed to the students and commented, “The students and faculty of the WDDM program expressed gratitude for the invaluable information that Nalin Sharma of The Blog Studio brought to the class. It was a very informative and productive session, providing students with answers to questions they may have otherwise been unable to resolve.”
Here is a link to Mike Clark’s notes and recap on networking,specialization and other useful career hints: http://forum.wddmportfolios.com/topic/mike-nalins-talk
Nalin is a graduate of McMaster University, and also Web Design Development at Humber College. He then began freelancing for tech companies in Toronto learning the ropes before joining the team at The Blog Studio. He has an eye for design, development skills and is a damn friendly fellow. Nalin is a truly gifted communicator who specializes in bridging the gap between the deep tech world and everyone else. Nalin spends his days riding hard on all The Blog Studio projects to ensure that every client gets exactly what they want at the end of the day. When he’s not keeping the wheels greased at work, you can find him following the NBA (Go Raptors!), swinging a tennis racket or hanging from a climbing rope somewhere. He’s excited to take on new challenges at the Blog Studio and brings things to a whole new level.
Victoria is a devotee of all things surrounding design and social media. She’s a social butterfly that combines her gift of gab with an innate ability to write publicity love notes on all of her favourite subjects. Having studied English Lit and Communications at UofT, she’s written for Holt Renfrew—who deems her work “truly inspired,” Toronto’s 
Mike Dolan
