Finding new Interior Design interns can always be a challenge. Bringing new members in to our tight knit and dynamic team is extremely important as our staff provides an integral part of our service. Everything that we do from blog posts about designs through to how fabrics are labelled when we do a design presentation include our interns – we see it as a chance to educate the next generation of interior designers and prepare you for what the world of design will throw at you. Many people see interns as the bottom of the ladder, at Kia Designs we don’t we see our interns as the most important of building blocks. We value every hour that our interns but in and how much passion they have for the industry and that’s why picking the best person for our team is always important.
So who better to pick the new interns than the whole team?! That’s right. We aren’t looking for a HR team or recruiter who will be picking the “best fit” based on what’s written (or, if you read our post on internships, what isn’t written!) on a CV. We use the whole team to make sure that the person we are bringing in brings a new perspective to the overall team. We aren’t looking for carbon copies, we are looking for new innovative people who are also aiming for the same thing we are: making an impression in the fabric of the interior design world. Sorry, I couldn’t help the pun.
One of the biggest things that I find when interviewing and looking through CVs is bias, it has been proven many times that people who present themselves with a different first name often fair better in the job pool (link through to the article). To avoid this kind of possible bias we remove quite a few pieces of information that could lead people to make judgements based on bias. These include gender, disabilities, country of birth, birthdays (why is this still a thing on CVs?), marital status (okay, now this really shouldn’t be on your CV), names and addresses. It won’t be a case of “my ex-best friend is called Anna, I couldn’t work with an ‘Anna’”. So we try and take all this out of the CV process, we don’t allow it to change how we view people who are employing – this is at every level and starts at the most basic of levels for an Interior Designer in London – intern.
We have found that it means our interview process includes a wide variety of candidates all who could offer something as unique as them to our growing team and offers our interns a placement in a company that is looking for a good fit so that they should instantly feel comfortable in their placement.
We will soon be launching a few very excited schemes for budding interior designers who are looking to get an internship in interior and further their skills so please sign up for the below mailing list to be the first to hear about this amazing opportunity.