Do You Need More Than One Resume for Your Entertainment Career?

Writing a great resume takes a lot of work. So you may be disappointed to learn that you might need more than one resume! 

Often, you can gently tweak your existing resume for each job. If you’re applying for similar jobs, we recommend you do a quick once-over of your resume, compare it to the job posting, and swap in any relevant keywords to match. For example, if the posting uses the word “communicates,” and you use the word “liaises,” a simple verb swap could help you get through a rigid ATS filter. Similarly, you may want to add in a bullet or two that highlights a unique capability for the specific position. For example, if you’re applying for film development roles, you might leave off your festival strategy management experience for jobs at the studio level, but that skill would be really important for a role at an indie company.

Sometimes, though, small tweaks aren’t enough, and you need an entirely new document. This is typically the case when you’re pursuing multiple career paths. If you’re a freelancer looking to make the switch to a corporate, full-time role, but you’re concurrently applying for open freelance gigs, you’ll need a credits list that lists your projects and titles, as well as a formal resume that outlines your various duties. If you’re looking for roles within the industry while also considering a transition to a new field, you’ll need one resume that clearly shows your upward trajectory within entertainment and another with less insider jargon, more context, and an increased focus on transferable skills. 

You may need to be selective about which of your previous roles to include on each resume -- some roles will be useful for one career path but less relevant for others, so your timeline could look totally different from resume to resume. This happens if you’ve held multiple freelance or consulting roles at the same time, if you have a side hustle, or if you have an independent creative project. Let’s say you’re applying for a role as a brand copywriter – your experience managing the social accounts for your side business as a dog groomer is super relevant, so you’ll want to include that job on your resume. But that same experience would be left off the resume you submit for a job as a screenwriting professor at UCLA Extension. 

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of writing a ton of resumes, take a deep breath. There are a few ways to make this less daunting. You can create one “master” resume that includes every single job you’ve had with lots of bullet points highlighting your primary skills and achievements. It’ll take a while to create this, but once you have it handy, you can pull the text you need for an open role and just do the aforementioned light tweaking. Another option is to write a resume for each path/opportunity as the roles open up, and label them in your personal filing system with the category name, so the next time a similar role comes up, you know which resume to tweak (think: Jane Doe Resume_development and Jane Doe Resume_marketing). Unlike cover letters, we don’t recommend that you start from scratch every single time.

This may sound like a lot of effort, but having a strong, tailored resume will be much more effective at turning applications into interviews. Consider it an investment in yourself -- the more time you spend on your resume, the less time you’ll spend on your job search. And of course, we’re here to help – if you need multiple resumes, we can provide custom solutions and discounts to support you.