Are you switched on to the smartphone market?

By Neil Clements, Major Players lead consultant for Digital Jobs 
 
The booming smartphone market sees mobile poised to become one of the biggest consumer avenues of the next decade, with analysts predicting more people will use phones or tablets than PCs to surf the web by 2013. Already Major Players is seeing a rapidly rising demand for Flash and other web developers who can translate their skills to mobile platforms. So with demonstrable experience a necessity, how should you be skilling up to crack the mobile industry? 
 
We asked the advice of mobile expert James Pimentel-Pinto, co-founder and CEO at agencymobile, one of the UK's premier mobile innovation companies with over 12 Apple App Store No.1s.
 
1. Gain Cross-platform mobile development experience
 
“Having the ability and desire to develop cross-platform is the most important element,” says James. “You need to be able to code for both Android and iOS and understand web standards, or have similar transferable development skills. For a good web developer it is an easy enough transition to up-skill in this area, especially if you’ve come from a parallel discipline such as Java or Actionscripting which provides a nice transition to Android especially. The challenge is getting that experience.
 
“The ideal scenario is working in teams where someone is more skilled in Android and another in iOS, this strengthens the team as a whole.”
 
2. Create your own app
 
“If you don’t have the professional experience you should make personal experience. Creating your own little app is a great way to demonstrate your skills. One guy came in with a clever idea to help opticians’ customers using the handset camera, replacing the use of a professional machine. It was such a good idea he was able to pilot at his local opticians and successfully licensed it to a larger opticians company. It showed creativity, skill and entrepreneurial spirit, which is just as valid, if not more so, than having a list of published mobile work under your belt.”
 
3. Understand web services and data
 
“Although many developers are primarily expecting to translate front-end and user interface development skills to mobile, a good solid understanding of back-end systems and web services is vital. We produce many data intensive sport apps such as The FA’s Official England app and the RBS Six Nations Rugby. These require us to intelligently pull live data in over the Internet and filter and cache that data both at the server and on device, so this is another skill developers need to be able to demonstrate. If you haven’t got strong understanding of web services, XML data and databases then it will definitely limit your growth as a mobile developer and the type of work you can produce.”
 
4. Don’t blag it
 
“Over the last five years, we’ve seen a lot of sub-standard people come through the door of agencymobile, because they have caught on that putting Android/iOS experience on their CV is a foot in the door. Many people claim to be an iPhone developer and have done one or two apps but their involvement is quite often minimal. If you are honest about even having limited experience, a good prospective employer will respect that and want to give you a chance to improve and build on your skills.”
 
5. Work with a quality product
 
“There are a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon. Some brands and agencies are guilty of exploiting this gold-rush mentality to the detriment of the product/brand and ultimately creating a low quality or irrelevant app is bad for the developer in question. Use of mobile needs to be part of a wider integrated strategy and that comes from asking key questions. Why are you making this app? What are you using it for? How are you going to measure its success? How can we make it better?”
 
6. Experiment
 
“I find we are now increasingly hiring people who are fresher and new to the industry – they are the most experimental and hungry and that’s where the most innovative ideas are coming from. My advice is that you will always do better by starting low and working your way up legitimately. If you are good you can jump from junior developer to senior in less than a year. It’s there for the taking. Talk to people, collaborate with other experienced developers and you can do it!”
 
If you are a Flash developer with an aptitude for apps please get in touch or click here to view the latest jobs. Or if you are after a creative bright spark please submit a brief or speak to one of our specialist consultants.

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