 We get lots of clients who have parallel career trajectories – they’ve been a producer for years but have also worked in events, or they’ve worked equally in TV and branded content, or they write while holding down a steady day job, or any number of other dualities (as resume writers and entertainment professionals ourselves, we fall into the same category)! But what does this mean for your resume and LinkedIn profile? How can you prove to a hiring manager that you’re interested in a specific job, when half of your experience is in a different part of the industry (or a different industry entirely)? First of all, you will almost certainly need at least two different resumes, one focused on each trajectory. The particulars depend on the specifics of your situation -- that's why we advocate for letting your story guide your resume format, not the other way around. Generally speaking, there are two ways to go about this: 1. If you can leave one path out without creating gaps, only include related jobs in your timeline and allude to your unique perspective in another way, like a call-out in your professional summary or skills & interests section; 2. Include both sets of jobs in your timeline, and for the divergent career path, only include transferable, relevant skills. If your timeline overlaps, put the more relevant jobs first. If you're looking to combine your two skillsets for an entirely new role, you'll need a strong professional summary or even a functional resume that allows you to organize your work by core skills -- these being, of course, the skills you'll bring to the new role. But what about LinkedIn? You can’t have two LinkedIn profiles. Before you write off LinkedIn as a tool for your career, consider that it offers a huge upside compared to your resume. LinkedIn lets you write in first person and tell your story in a truthful way -- it's an opportunity to add context to the simple chronology and explain what your unique perspective is. And with two backgrounds, you certainly have a lot to say! If there’s one side of your two career paths that you’re leaning toward more heavily, focus more on those skills on LinkedIn as well and express the other work as a side interest, highlighting what you've learned from those experiences that enhances your work in your primary path. But even if you’re looking for jobs in two fields equally, you can use your professional summary section to outline your unusual career trajectory and explain that you have two different passions, each one informing the other in its own way. Explain that you're open to roles on either side, and frame it as a value-add. Take the opportunity to give reasoning behind your career choices and explain how the things you have learned through each enhance your business approach. However, there are some times when you may want to be a little more vague with your LinkedIn profile -- if your boss doesn't know you're looking for jobs and expects your profile to reflect your full-time position, if you use LinkedIn as a sales prospecting tool in your current role and need to show focus to potential clients, or if there are other political reasons you need to maintain a level of privacy, that's fine. We still recommend you have a profile so that you can connect with people, but you may prefer to keep your profile sections short and sweet. When you've moved on to your next role, you can build your profile out more. One key thing to remember – no two people have the same career trajectory. In fact, the things that make you an unconventional candidate might be the same things that make you stand out from the pack! Take pride in your ability to excel in more than one area and come up with a few different frameworks to express your skills and background, so hiring managers get the information they need to see. It may take a bit more work to craft your story for your audience, but with two careers, we know you're no stranger to hard work, and in this industry, no stranger to storytelling! We're here for you during this uncertain time. Visit us at www.hollywood-resumes.com to take advantage of our services. If you have questions about resumes, the job search, or navigating a career in Hollywood, email us your question with the subject line "ASK HR SUBMISSION," and we'll answer your question in a future newsletter! Don't worry, all questions will be kept anonymous! Know someone else who should be getting these tips? Share the Hollywood Resumes insights with your friends, family, colleagues, interns, uber drivers...whoever! Have a great day! Cindy & Angela Want more Hollywood Resumes? Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ -- and make sure you're subscribed to our emails. If you work in entertainment, you’re a storyteller, in one way or another. And when you’re looking for jobs, those storytelling skills should be put to use when you write your resume. Every good resume tells a story – the story of your work history and why it makes sense for a specific employer to hire you. And every good story has a beginning, middle, and end. Keep this in mind as you start to craft your resume – it will help dictate the structure, format, and verbiage you use. The beginning of your resume is where you introduce yourself. When you meet someone new, you typically shake hands and tell the person your name. You can’t shake hands on paper, but you can put your name across the top in big, bold letters. Announce yourself proudly – you’ve got a lot of great stuff to share! Additionally, an introductory conversation often begins with where you’re from – in a resume, that takes the form of contact info. This should all be in the resume header. Whatever goes next on your resume is going to be the information that gives the hiring manager context for all the other stuff they’re about to read. The first section after the header varies from person to person, depending on what’s most important to get across. For recent grads, it should be education, and your story will read as “Hi, I’m a recent grad looking for an entry-level position. Look at all the impressive stuff I did while I was in college!” For many people, experience will lead the resume – “Hi, I’ve spent the past 5 years as a development executive at Comedy Central.” Hopefully that first thing has a natural lead-in to whatever job you’re applying for. If it doesn’t, you may want to consider a professional summary that calls attention to your areas of expertise and specializations. A professional summary or list of core skills is also helpful for executives with a dense work history – if the hiring manager only read the professional summary or saw a few words called out in bold, they’d be able to get a sense of what the person brings to the table and can choose to read further if that person sounds like a fit. Think about how you want to frame yourself, and let that dictate however you start your story. The rest of your resume should unfold naturally based on whatever information you’ve set up at the top. Typically, this takes the form of a timeline that shows your trajectory in reverse chronological order. A hiring manager should be able to see career progression and any key achievements that happened along the way. Within your resume bullet points, you will provide supporting information to back up the argument that you’re right for the job, including the relevant skills you’ve acquired in each role. And the end of your resume should be the “extras,” stuff that doesn’t need a whole lot of space, like computer skills, languages, and interests. Sometimes this is a spot to get in keywords for applicant tracking systems. But it’s also a place to share information that’s going to round you out as a person and make it seem like there’s more to you than the stuff you’ve done at work – like volunteer work, hobbies, and various achievements. Again, this stuff all depends on the specific person, but it’s a nice way to tag your story. Keep in mind that your story may need to change slightly depending on the job you apply for. It all goes back to tailoring your resume to the job posting. There’s no way you can fit your entire work history into one or two pages, but by choosing the most relevant information selectively, you can build a profile that positions you for the role you’re interested in. Just remember that the story you need to tell is the one the hiring manager is looking for (in the same way that you’d pitch the type of project you think a development executive is looking for). Be authentic, but present information in the way they’ll be able to understand it. -- Angela Silak & Cindy Kaplan
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 Are you one of the many entertainment industry professionals that works primarily on a freelance basis? If so, you may have experienced some frustration when trying to craft your LinkedIn profile. When you've got a list of 20 credits, it's really hard to align your experience with a LinkedIn template. Your instinct might be to keep your profile as thin as possible, and that’s certainly an option -- but if you’re looking to transition from freelance to full-time, if you’re pursuing jobs outside of the industry, or if you’re looking to build more of an online presence, you’ll probably want something more robust. There are a few ways to go about this, but the key is that the most important information must be at the top. Meaning, your professional summary is critical in setting up your work history and goals. Highlight a few key skills and achievements in this section, and consider name-dropping your most impressive credits. If you're looking for a job, you can say so, or take a moment to note what type of content you're most passionate about. Many people won't read past your summary and first couple of entries in the experience section, so make sure this part shines. As for the experience section, if you’ve primarily worked on projects that might not have name recognition, you can organize everything by job title or job function -- i.e. "freelance story producer." In each section, you can list credits and your main job responsibilities. It's also helpful to give a little description of the projects for context. If you’ve worked on notable content, you’ll want to highlight those bigger credits more clearly. We suggest putting your job title and the show name together as your “Title” (for example, Story Producer, REAL HOUSEWIVES OF BEVERLY HILLS) and the production company name as the company. Your instinct might be to include the network here because it’s more recognizable, but don’t! By linking yourself to a production company, you’ll become more searchable when people look for connections at that company, and you’ll pop up as a suggestion to more people you may know. Too many people work at a network or studio for that to be useful for you. When it comes to dates, you’ll want to lump all seasons of any given show together, even if there’s overlap. Your profile will be too long and confusing if you separate each season of a show as its own job and intersperse those credits with jobs you took over hiatus. If you’re seeking entertainment industry jobs, you can rest assured that people understand the seasonal nature of your jobs -- and if you’re looking outside of the industry, you just need to be clear in your job descriptions. Often, freelance job descriptions will get repetitive, because you’ll have been hired to do the same thing on multiple shows. We find it’s best to include some top-level skills in your first few jobs and offer some highlights about working on the show. But as you get deeper into your work history (and into the “Show 5 more experiences” section of your profile), it’s okay to get more fragmented and just list high level information about the show itself. Overall, don’t let the LinkedIn template freak you out. Your freelance experience is no less valuable than that of someone working a more corporate job -- it just takes a little more creativity and finesse to display online! --Angela Silak & Cindy Kaplan Think creating a LinkedIn profile is as simple as copy-pasting your resume into the online platform? Think again. Though both your resume and your LinkedIn profile are marketing tools you can use to secure a new job, they serve slightly different purposes. Your resume is a quick, at-a-glance recap of your work history with a few select responsibilities and achievements highlighted. It functions best as a direct response to a job posting, where each of your bullet points reflects the listed qualifications. Your resume should be tailored to each job description and should tell only the story that’s necessary to prove you can do the job you’re currently applying for. A LinkedIn profile, however, is a more complete overview of your professional expertise and career history. Sure, you can use your LinkedIn profile to apply for jobs, but you can (and should) also use it to attract the attention of recruiters, connect with your professional network, and supplement the story you tell in your resume. Your LinkedIn profile should be written conversationally, and you should supply more background about what you do day-to-day, any specific achievements you are proud of, and why you’re passionate about your career choice. Think of it as an extended version of your resume, mixed with a more detailed version of a cover letter, plus some fun highlights that you might share elsewhere on social media. If you choose to replicate your resume in your LinkedIn profile, it’s not like anything bad will happen, but you will miss out on the opportunity to show some personality and give hiring managers a better view of the well-rounded person you are. We highly recommend taking the extra time to craft your LinkedIn profile -- it will allow you to utilize the site to its fullest extent. --Angela Silak & Cindy Kaplan An informational interview is one of the best networking tools you can use during your job search. But how should you go about setting one up? The ideal way to set up an informational interview is through a referral, where one of your contacts introduces you to someone he knows via email, and the two of you set up a meeting from there. Sometimes this will come about as the result of a casual networking conversation or drinks with a friend, but you can also be proactive about setting up informational interviews. Identify the top companies you want to work for and target people at those companies for potential meetings. LinkedIn is a great tool for figuring out who you know that could refer you to someone at a company you're interested in. Because they allow for someone to vouch for you, you'll have the most luck with setting up informational interviews via referrals, so use this strategy as much as possible. However, you probably won’t want to ask the same contact to refer you to a ton of people (unless that person is more of a friend than a contact), but you can build your network quickly by turning each meeting into another one. For instance, if you ask a question in the informational that someone in another department might have a better answer to, ask for an introduction when you send your thank you email. Or, if you really hit it off with the person, you can ask if he knows anyone else you should be meeting with. You’ll build a long list of contacts if you can keep up this pattern. But be cautious not to ask for the next meeting until you've built a solid rapport -- no one wants to feel used or mined for their Rolodex. What if you don't know anyone with a connection to someone at your dream company? There's no harm in sending a cold email -- the worst thing that could happen is that you get ignored and never have the meeting, which is the exact same outcome as if you had not reached out at all. See if there's anyone you can email that you have an organic connection to, even if it's thin -- maybe you share an alma mater or are both members of a certain professional organization. If that’s a challenge, you can always email someone blindly and hope that they write back. As long as you're professional and courteous, there's nothing to be afraid of! One final thing to remember -- put the other person's priorities ahead of your own. Shift your schedule so you’ll be able to meet them at their preferred location and time. The last thing you want to do in setting up an informational interview is to pose any inconvenience to the other person – after all, they’re doing you a favor. --Angela Silak & Cindy Kaplan |
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