Put Yourself in the Spotlight
At a recent three-day writing seminar headed by L.A. producer and screenwriting guru Barri Evins, one of the fellow scribes came up to me and asked, “So, you teach film at Tri-C?” My immediate response? “I do a thousand different things.” As a writer, I must balance fiscal responsibility with pursuing The Dream. Thus, these days I juggle multiple roles that, mostly, fall into three universes: film, careers and academia. Once in while, all the pursuits come together, perfectly, into one magical Venn diagram overlap.
Two years ago, while getting ready to guest lecture at a CSU Marketing class, I was thinking about how to get the students’ attention. Between their parents, career counselors and everyone else with an opinion on what this generation — facing the toughest economy since the depression — should be doing with the job hunt and resumes, I realized it was time for some innovative thinking.
When I walked into the morning classroom, filled with both the awake and the sleepy, the young and the mature, it became evident that the students were skeptical of whatever yet another expert had to share with them. So I threw them for a loop. My first question to them was, “How many of you have been to the movies over the past month or so?” At least half raised their hands. My next question was, “How many of you saw a trailer that you really liked?” I then called on one of the enthusiastic students with a raised hand and the conversation went something like this:
Me: What trailer did you see?
Student: Avatar. [Other students nodded in agreement.]
Me: Are you going to see the movie?
Student: Yeah!
Me: In the theater, you will go and pay $10 to see it?
Student: Yeah!
Me: Why?
Student: Because it looks cool.
Me: So you want to know what happens? You want to know the story?
Student: Yeah!
Me: That is exactly what your resume needs to be: the movie trailer of your career.
And in that very moment, I knew I had them. I could see it in their eyes: they made the connection between something abstract and vanilla to something tangible and exciting. Suddenly, the idea of the resume was no longer this begrudging, laborious chore. It had, in that split second, transformed into a sexy, visible and desirable goal. Who doesn’t want their life to be a trailer, for global audiences to see?
I have since shared this analogy with my career coaching clients, film students and industry experts on both sides of the fence. This now endorsed realization has gotten me to think deeper. Surely, the metaphor between a good film trailer and a good resume doesn’t stop there?
Know Your Logline!
In Hollywood, when pitching a script, you’re expected to know your logline. This is the one key sentence that tells perspective producers what the film is about: Who is the main character? What does he want? What is his obstacle? There’s been times when, sitting on a stack of unread scripts marked on their spines by script readers, an investment has happened solely because of the logline.
A fun game to play with fellow movie lovers is to go to IMDB, look up favorite films, write down their loglines and then quiz your friends to see if they can guess the movie. For example, “The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.” (IMBD) I do this with my students and it’s amazing how quickly they can name the movie. Why? Because the logline is so well written, we can’t help but know exactly what the movie is.
And, the positioning statement at the top of the resume is exactly the same thing.
While in some industries, like the film business, this statement is frivolous and unwanted, in most sectors, it’s the expectation. As most hiring managers spend thirty seconds reading a document that took hours upon hours to perfect, if they recall nothing else about the candidate and are too busy / lazy / distracted / overwhelmed to read anything else, this two-liner gives them a safe place to go. Who are you? What do you want? And why are you different from all the other candidates? What makes you memorable? What makes you unique? Why should we be coming back to you? And, what are you going to show us that we haven’t seen 1000 times before?
What’s Your Star Power?
A movie draw often depends on, “Who is the star?” Simultaneously, these days, guaranteed box office is a rare occurrence. Sure, Will Smith and Johnny Depp still bring in the crowds — men and women, youth and adult — but for every Pirates of the Caribbean there’s an American Tourist, and when a movie featuring the most likeable big screen duo today, Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, grosses a third of its production costs, big names may or may not deliver the dough. However, there’s a high probability that the same film with famous actors will outpace the exact same film with relative unknowns. (1988’s Dangerous Liasons grossed nearly $35 million on a $14 million budget, while 1989’s Valmont grossed only $1.1 million on a staggering budget of $33 million. Irony, of course, given that the lead actors of the latter, Colin Firth and Annette Bening, are now Academy darlings.)
The point being is that, corporations, from studios to manufacturers, will bet on names and the connections to those names each and every time. Names and brands signal a certain performance, reputation and recognition, and this mitigates taking a risk on an unknown.
Evins, who also mentors interns and has contributed a chapter to the book Now Write: Screenwriting, agrees. “Drop names! The industry is all about who you know and ultimately it is your network that is going to help you find your first job. So drop names, project titles and anything else that might help a possible employer connect to you.”
Also, think about clients, partners, brands, products, distributors, awards and publications: With whom did you work and what did you accomplish? By property of association, like a forthcoming film, you will get people excited if you’ve done well with companies that have box office draw: publicly traded, globally recognized and industry game-changing.
Play to Your Audience!
Finally, when you do go see a movie at a multiplex, the film trailers are all meticulously researched and segmented to the genre and audience of the feature. Say you just attended the Transformers screening. Chances are you did not see the preview to the new Merryl Streep Margret Thatcher biopic. Hollywood marketing people spend millions upon millions of dollars tailoring the message and the audience. The logical thinking is like an Amazon recommendation: If you like this, you will also like that.
Your resume distribution strategy should not be any different. Instead of throwing out a large, ambiguous net into the job ocean, refocus that energy early on, doing the research to see what industries, companies and functional areas are best suited for your skill set and ambitions (talent) and, simultaneously, which firms, agencies and organizations are in need of your expertise (audience demand). Because if they are action/adventure and you are romantic comedy, I guarantee you that you will not be a good fit. Corporate culture is everything and either you’re a character in their success story or you’re on the cutting room floor.
Your resume is like a film trailer in that it teases the most influential industry players with your best box office successes and your biggest co-stars. You want them to know more. You want them to bring you back for a viewing. You want them to pay you for the magic that’s between the lines.
The popcorn is optional.
Read past CareerTOOLBOX columns here: CareerTOOLBOX.
Alex Sukhoy, a globally-networked creative and business professional with two decades of corporate management experience, is founder and manager of Creative Cadence LLC, a growth planning, career development and original content agency. Her career coaching skills have resulted in numerous success stories for her clients. Alex teaches Screenwriting at Tri-C, Business Environment at CSU and, in 2006, she was profiled in BusinessWeek.com.
Her five-star rated novella Chatroom to Bedroom: Chicago just became available on iTunes and Chatroom to Bedroom: Rochester, New York is currently available on Amazon. Alex is currently writing two new relationship books: The Dating GPS™, with childhood friend Anita Myers, and Diary of the Dumped™, a solo project.
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