Dear Cathy,

I grew up in the days where a "good college education" would lead to a successful career. Nowadays, as we get into this Internet world, is education important or experience when I am looking to hire someone to build my web site?

John Montgomery

Dear John,

My answer here is going to be somewhat biased. You are writing to a person that has a degree in advertising design and beyond the fact that I can not draw water, I am entirely self-educated. I do agree that you want to make sure that your lawyer or doctor has a degree and experience but through my trials of hiring and firing many web site designers I have learned a thing or two.

First of all, most webmasters are either fresh out of school with little or no experience and don't have the work ethic that we grew up with and possess, or they have learned to create web sites on their own and may have been a lawyer in a past life and decided to change careers. I ran into one of those.

John, the best bet on this topic is to search the net and look at several web sites that you think are appealing graphically and download fast. I found that if a web site impresses me I try to find the person responsible for the writing of the site. Be careful in your approach as some web sites might be the work of three different people. A graphic artist, the "webmaster" that writes the HTML and a programmer that might write a database program.

All in all, it is not the education that makes a great webmaster or web site developer, it is how they apply the knowledge they obtain whether they are school taught or self educated.

This Month's Topics:
General Business
Advertising and Promotion
Selling Your Products
Education vs Experience
Web Site Development