What media and design panels look for

A media or design panel usually has the communications manager, a programme or marketing manager, someone from HR, and sometimes a senior designer or editor. Two of them are not creative people; they want to know whether your work brings results and stays out of trouble. And unlike most interviews, part of your score is decided before you say a word: your portfolio is on the table.

• Portfolio first: bring it on a phone or tablet with the files saved offline, a link, and for designs two or three printed A4 pages. Choose three pieces for this job, and for each one be ready to say the brief, your exact role and the result.
• Accuracy and ethics: how you verify a claim or a viral photo before publishing, and how you get consent for photos of beneficiaries, especially children and survivors of violence. NGOs and UN agencies call this safeguarding and score it hard.
• Audience and results you can measure: who the work was for, and what happened: reach, engagement, coverage in other outlets, and real actions such as clinic visits, enquiries or applications.
• Tools, truthfully, in three levels: use daily, have used, have only tried. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere, Canva, CapCut, WordPress, Meta Business Suite: name the ones you actually open, with the project you used them on.

Expect a practical task. For communications posts it is usually a press release or three social media posts written in 30 to 45 minutes from a one-page brief, often in English and Somali. For designers it is a design brief: a poster for a vaccination day or a one-page flyer, done on your own laptop in an hour. For video editors it is a 30-second cut from footage they give you. Ask HR what to expect when you confirm, bring your laptop with your software installed and charged, and practise once at home with a timer.