"It’s fair enough if you haven’t had the opportunity to work on commercial projects when you are starting out, but it shouldn’t prevent you from starting your own projects. If you’re sending out job or placement requests for web design or developer posts and don’t have any evidence of the quality work online, then that will definitely count against you. Get your own domain. Put a portfolio up. Contribute to an open source project. Set up a blog. Get your own Twitter following. Be active online. Show us that you care."

Made Media’s own Tim Kitchen talks about getting your first gig on B-Hive. Nurturing Birmingham’s Creative Talent.