I worked for a year in an advertising agency that was doing lots of creative graphic design work, I was doing social media marketing there, but the people who were doing graphics were extremely qualified, apart from the leading graphic who had something like 15 years hand on experience, all the younger ones had 3 years of full time graphic design/software course at the design institute and had done at least 6 months as interns before being hired.
It seems harder and harder to be seriously taken into consideration for jobs unless you have very formal qualifications
I have over 10 years experience making websites, logo's and printed materials. But only completed the 1st year of two separate degree courses. (2 certificates of education I think they are called. One in Digital & Lens Media, the other in Film and media production) I know they mean nothing really..annoyingly
I am hoping I can convince em with my portfolio and wide range of skills (web, identity, and print design. SEO, knowledge of social media, setting up domain names, hosting, emails, ability to use adwords effectively, and use google analytics, CPANEL X, FTP clients, Flash animations, animated gifs, wordpress installation, (creating or skinning/modifying existing themes. Using it as a complete content management system, not just for the blog etc.) Can hand code HTML and CSS too. know about web standards, good coding practices, image optimisation etc. for faster downloading content/less bandwidth usage. Can design sites that are responsive in design, so they look good on all sized devices etc.
Can take photos, or aquire them from stock photo sites; editing them in photoshop if required. Movie capture and editing/uploading; including sound recording/editing.
Basically everything apart from Javascript, PHP, Pearl. (programming side of things) But I know enough to edit existing scripts , depending on the complexity...
I am hoping that I can at least get my foot in the door at some design agency. Maybe I'll have to start off working for free to prove myself, or if they were to pay for my travel. But I'm fairly confident I know what I am doing. It's just getting a chance to prove that...
EDIT: and plan to be able to use InDesign to make interactive books/tablet content too; in the near future.