What kind of jobs do our students qualify for?

The application time for the Media and Art education is running still three weeks.  Should you apply?

To see the art of our art and media students visit
the Finlayson Open Exhibition at Tampere main
library Metso (Open until January 25)
Photo: Kirsi Marjamäki
Many people pondering is it worth the trouble to do the pre-task and fill in the forms to apply for a study place at TAMK Media and Arts education might wonder where the education really leads to. Although the illustrations of study contents are appealing the studies do not necessarily lead to a meaningful career?

To help applicants to have some idea where the degree can lead to it is useful to have a look at what the graduates do. Here you have the most usual present titles of persons who have studied at the School of Art and Media since 1991:

The highest frequency of occurrence of titles is (in alphabetical order): 2D Artist, 3D Artist, Account Manager, Animator, Art Director, Artist, Concept Designer, Creative Director, CEO (Chief Executive Officer), Communications Designer/Manager, Creative Director, Director, Freelance, Game Artist, Game Designer, Graphic Designer, Interaction Designer, Journalist, Photographer, Producer, Project Manager, Sound Designer, UX-Designer, VFX (Visual Effects) Artist, Visual Designer, Web Designer.

Quite many graduates are entrepreneurs - Owner and Founder are common titles. The “Serial Entrepreneur” is also presented.

Head of (something), Managing Director, Specialist are also very popular titles and quite many have "Senior" or “Independent” before their title.

One title - Product Manager - has dropped out from the top titles list. (A minimum of three occurrences are required for recognition on this list. The most popular title Graphic Designer has 30+ hits.)

There are also some art/media teachers, one professor and one Director of Education.

Our degree programmes seem to have given qualification to some not-so-obvious careers like Cleaner, Sailor, Sales Person and Vice Mayor.

The biggest employers are Anima Vitae, Nordkapp, Rovio Entertainment, TAMK and YLE, the Finnish National Broadcasting Company. (Two years ago Nokia was on this list but Rovio didn't.)

How was this research done?

The source of data for this note is my LinkedIn account list of connections. I have tags for my former and present students. With the help of those tags I can generate a list of employers and titles and I can sort the list to be able to identify occurrences of them. The list is based on information given by 365 persons.

The increasing popularity of LinkedIn makes the outcome of my little study quite representative. Young professionals seem today to be very active updating their details on the service.

The population of this study does not represent all School of Art and Media students equally; I have been working more with students of our former multimedia, web media and interactive media programmes. Thus the shares of students of fine arts, film and television are not representative in this sample.

Read more:
My previous post two years ago about the job titles of our graduates
Applying for a study place
Finlayson Open Exhibition
Mediapolis

The Art&Media Campus will move next autumn from Finlayson to Mediapolis.
Screenshot from Mediapolis web site.