What skills you should include in your LinkedIn profile to boost your entertainment career?8/19/2022
 Your LinkedIn skills section is critical when you’re trying to catch the attention of recruiters or applying for jobs through the platform. It allows you to include searchable keywords and match criteria in job listings. It’s important that you update your skills each time you’re looking for a new role or after you’ve expanded your job responsibilities, because it will help recruiters find you more easily, and it will improve your search algorithm when trying to find open roles. When building your LinkedIn skills section, choose skills that are searchable. You’re able to type freely into this section, but there are also skills you can select from LinkedIn’s pre-existing list. Many of the skills we use in entertainment aren’t included in their list, but there are adjacent skills you can select to help your profile appear in recruiters' search results (though you should make sure the appropriate industry terms are elsewhere in your profile, ideally in your summary and job descriptions). You’ll know whether a skill is searchable if it auto populates as you type it in. You might consider adding synonymous skills, like “leadership” and “team management,” if you have the space, since different job postings or recruiters might use different keywords for the same skill. You have space for 50 skills, so feel free to use it! Secondly, you want to make sure your “top three skills” are relevant to the people you want reading your profile. These are the only ones people will see without having to expand your profile, so make them count! You can reorganize your skills at any time, and you should do so each time you embark on a new job search. Finally, many candidates make the mistake of ignoring the skills section altogether and/or forgetting to remove outdated ones. Say you moved to LA straight out of film school and included technical skills like editing and camera operation because they were relevant back then. Now that you’re a few years into your career as a development executive, you should remove them – you don’t need to clutter your profile and confuse prospective employers with skills that don’t align with your work. Don’t worry if you’ll lose some endorsements from back in the day. These are not so relevant, and certainly not as important as telling a cohesive story. Your skills section, like the rest of your profile, is designed to help communicate your professional story and brand. By keeping it relevant, focused, and updated, you'll be well on your way to a successful profile! -- Angela Silak & Cindy Kaplan LinkedIn isn’t exactly designed for Hollywood jobs. But it’s still an incredibly useful tool for our industry, both to find job postings and to manage your network. Here are 5 tips for crafting an effective LinkedIn profile: 1. Use a conversational, first-person tone. LinkedIn is a social media platform at its core. Even though it’s more professional than Facebook or Instagram, it’s about you and your work persona – which means you should write in first person and in a conversational tone. Use your profile as an opportunity to describe your work experience, passions, and goals the way you would to a friend. Networking connections and recruiters want to get a sense of your voice and personality and see the human being behind your achievements. 2. Go beyond your resume. Your resume is a short document that explains why you’re suited for a particular role. Your LinkedIn profile is a space for you to explain who you are professionally and why others should want to work with you. Yes, you can apply for jobs using your profile – so it’s a good idea to use some relevant keywords and include appropriate skills – but your profile shouldn’t be identical to your resume. Don’t copy/paste your resume, and don’t simply turn your bullet points into sentences. Add elements that you can’t include in your resume, like anecdotes about a particularly interesting project, or what you learned from a particular role. 3. Maintain your summary, or keep it evergreen. Your “About” section is the primary portion of your profile, since it’s the first thing connections and recruiters will read. You don’t want it to get outdated easily! Make sure you edit it periodically as you take on new projects, develop new skills, or get a new job. If you work on a lot of different shows or projects and don’t want to update LinkedIn all the time, consider a summary that doesn’t name drop your most recent credits, but instead focuses on evergreen elements, like your skills and professional interests. Check your LinkedIn profile every few months to make sure it’s aligned with your current experience. 4. Make sure your experience section is easy to read. Much like your resume, you want the most relevant experience to show up near the top, and you don't want readers to have to dig to find the information they need. In entertainment, it’s pretty common for freelancers to have a lot of similar project-based roles, but on LinkedIn, all that experience can be cumbersome. Instead of listing each show separately, you have the option to create one entry for all similar roles, with the company listed as "Freelance," and the dates inclusive of all the years you’ve had that role. This will cover gaps/hiatuses and let you talk about your experience in the aggregate. You can list out credits in the job description after explaining the overall skills you’ve gained and any achievements or highlights. Of course, if you are not a freelancer or have spent a lot of time on one project or with one company, it's better to create a separate entry and link to the company for searchability. 5. Tailor your skills section. The LinkedIn skills section can be tricky for entertainment roles, since some of the terminology is so specific. Sure, you can enter in skills that aren’t already in the platform, but that’s going to limit the effectiveness of your profile’s searchability and application matching. Instead, take time to read some job postings that interest you, and pull out some keywords that can match LinkedIn’s skills list. Think about broad versions of your skills as well. “Creating string-outs” isn’t on the platform, but similar skills, like “visual storytelling,” “storyboarding,” and “story structure” are. Make sure you select skills that align with your current career trajectory and remove any skills that aren’t relevant anymore; if you listed something like “film editing” when you were first trying to break into the industry, but you’re not pursuing roles that require editing knowledge, take it off! Once you have a profile you can feel proud of, start using the platform to identify networking targets, keep up with your newsfeed, and look for jobs! -- Angela Silak & Cindy Kaplan If you’re actively on the hunt for a new job, you know you need an updated resume and LinkedIn profile. But what about when you’re settled into a role? On one hand, you know you should tailor your resume to the specific roles you’re targeting, which is hard to do if you don’t have a role in mind. On the other hand, you know Hollywood hires quickly, and you don’t want to be caught without a great resume when your dream job opens up! There are a few different ways to approach this. If you’re primarily freelancing and hopping from show to show, you should update your credits list, IMDB, and/or StaffMeUp profile as soon as you get a new gig, so you can pass your most recent document along after wrap. Your LinkedIn profile should be stable, with a strong evergreen summary that includes your key projects (you can update those as you get more recent credits), and you can list all your freelance experience together, so you don’t find yourself constantly adding jobs every time you start a new gig. If you’re not actively searching but casually open to opportunities should the right one come along, you should have an updated resume that’s geared to the types of roles you’d pivot for. For example, if you’re a development executive at a production company, but you’d jump ship if you had the opportunity to work at a network, make sure your LinkedIn is polished so recruiters can find you. Just don't be too overt about the job search, so your current colleagues and boss won’t think you have one foot out the door. Keep your descriptions in line with your current role and professional persona, while highlighting the key skills you bring to the table to increase searchability. On your resume, add your current role and update the job description as you garner more achievements, work on new projects, or expand your duties. You’ll want to keep the bullets tailored to the roles you’d leave for, so when something opens up, all you have to do is convert to PDF and press send. If you’re happy where you are with no plans to leave, and you’re not even sure what you’d do if you were to embark on a job search, you should use your LinkedIn and resume differently. Your LinkedIn should tell the story of who you are in your current role and reflect an interest in building relationships for your current company. For your resume, we recommend creating an overview document that you can pull from when you are ready for the job search. Include everything you’ve done in current or past roles, even if you’re not sure if they’re relevant. This way, you can select bullets to match a particular job description when the time comes. It’s a good idea to update this document every few months or every time you finish a major project, so you don’t forget your accomplishments. This can also be helpful in case there’s a swift change in your employment status. You don’t want to find yourself with a resume that’s five years old when you’re suddenly laid off and need to find a job stat. Don’t worry too much about this document, though – it doesn't need to be perfect. You just want to have a handy record of your experience that you can easily pull from, so if and when you do decide to start on the job search, you’re ahead of the game. -- Angela Silak & Cindy Kaplan We’re big proponents of LinkedIn – it’s a great way to keep track of your contacts and larger network, and their job search algorithm can be very accurate in its recommendations. But one of the most overlooked aspects of LinkedIn is the newsfeed. While we don’t advocate spending your days wiling away on social media, scrolling through your LinkedIn feed a few times a week can be very helpful, especially if you’re looking for a new job. You’ll see plenty of job postings there, shared directly by your network! Some of these postings will be from first degree connections, but you’ll often see posts shared by second or third degree connections that someone in your network liked, shared, or commented on. When someone posts a job opening on LinkedIn, they are actively looking to recruit someone who is only a few degrees away from them. The door is open for you to reach out directly and get your resume into a human being’s hands. You can either reach out to the person in your network who liked or commented on the post to see if they are close enough to the person hiring to refer you directly, or you can like the post and send a message to the poster expressing how you’re connected and that you’re interested in the role. They wouldn’t have posted the job opening on LinkedIn if they weren’t hoping for people in their larger network to engage with it! In addition to using your feed to apply for jobs, you can use it to engage with your network. It’s an easy way to stay on someone’s radar – just don’t overdo it by liking every single post at one time or commenting excessively. As with all social algorithms, the more you engage with content of a certain type, the more you’ll see. If you’re looking to make a big transition – breaking into the industry, moving from one side to another, or leaving for a new field – this can be especially helpful, since you’ll see more relevant posts that are catered to your interests. As a result, you might even see posts from someone you don’t know announcing a new promotion or a job change at a company you’re targeting. It’s probably not the best idea to reach out the minute someone starts a new job, but you can note the connection and reach out to the contact who knows that person down the line if you apply for a job there or want to have an informational interview. You can (and should!) also actively follow companies you’re targeting in your job search. Read the articles they share and comment as is appropriate (again, don’t spam them!). This is helpful for a few reasons. First, you’ll see job postings very quickly. You’ll also know the latest company news, which can be helpful in an interview. Plus, you might get on the company’s radar as someone who is keenly interested in their work, especially if your comments are insightful. The next time you decide to mindlessly scroll through social channels, consider LinkedIn. Or better yet, block off 10 minutes every day or two to devote to the platform. -- Angela Silak & Cindy Kaplan |
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