Starting assisting on company's website - really like it and want to do it fulltime

[slumpey326]

I didnt know if I could post this here in this part of the forum also. If not, please delete and I apologize.

I currently work for a financial institution in nyc and help maintain our website. I was initially put on a project in mid 2010 to help rebuild our department’s website and had no experience at all. I started to take a few classes that a tech-teaching firm was offering in nyc and I really enjoyed it a lot. For my company’s website I basically help with the html coding and css updates when need be. I really enjoy when I get to update our website but that is not my full time job. I would really love to find a full time job doing this somewhere, but don’t want to go the freelance route. I have a good understanding of html, css but feel like I can always improve. I also have a basic understanding of jquery.

I am always willing to learn/improve if I can find a job that will help me learn while I am assisting with the website upkeep. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Also if anyone knows of any job openings in nyc that I may be a good fit, please let me know. Even if it is a beginning position in web design, I really want to get my foot in the door.

[Fumigator]

From my experience, there are not a whole lot of full-time jobs where you focus and work only with html/css. In fact, I've never heard of such a job. More typically, html and css knowledge is a given; front-end web designers have to be experts with photoshop/graphic design, and have a healthy exposure to Javascript (not just jQuery, which is Javascript, really), and typically some experience with server-side stuff as well.

The challenge you face is every "decent" full-time job you apply for you're going to go up against designers who have tons of experience and a big portfolio. You might get a break, but really your best route is to build up your own portfolio by taking up projects for people you know (for free at first). (Make sure you retain a copy of everything you do, on your own server (or shared hosting), so if and when these little projects you've done disappear off the web, you'll still be able to demonstrate them to clients and future employers! There's nothing more annoying than browsing through someone's portfolio and half the links don't work.)

[slumpey326]

thanks for the advice. I am trying to get as much experience with my current job when I do the website updates. Hopefully I will get a break somewhere or try to do some websites on the side.

It is alittle tricky lately, just had a newborn. :-)