Resumes Matter Little

I have hired hundreds of people as a production manager or producer over the last 15 years.

Most of the time I did not hire them over just their resume, their resume mattered maybe 30% of the time.

I have never hired someone because of their IMDb link.

I hired people from recommendations.

Why Doesn’t IMDb Matter?

Let’s look at the IMDb profile first.

There are roughly 5,000 to 10,000 movies released EVERY year in the United States if you take into account cinemas, streaming, Vimeo, YouTube, Amazon direct, etc. All of those sources matter because anyone who has uploaded their finished film on YouTube can also upload the film into IMDb to which it will be part of their credits.

Most of us only know about a hundred new released films each year. So 99.9% of the films we see connected to some ones IMDb profile we have never heard of.

What difference does it make if anyone can put their film/credits on IMDb?

If I am looking to hire a Production Designer and two people apply both only providing their IMDb profiles. One film may be a feature length film with a budget of $25,000 and the other a budget of $1,000,000 - but I have no way of knowing without doing further research.

The difference between those two budgets is that one Production Designer most likely had experience with a larger team, a more specific and detail Art budget, and other logistics that the Production Designer on the smaller budget film has not had experience with. And I can’t tell that just by looking at an IMDb profile.

Now imagine getting 50 applications for Production Designer. It would take me a long time to actually hunt down the body of work listed on their IMDb profile and look at what they did in the film.

For that reason IMDb is not a good main source for choosing and hiring crew.

You should think of an IMDb profile more like a landing page for your personal website than an actual resume for jobs. It’s more of a fun/interesting way to show people what you have worked on. This is great for making new connections and finding new collaborators.

It’s not really that great for finding a job.

Why Don’t Resumes Matter That Much?

Resumes have a similar flaw to IMDb. The films listed don’t give you much information. However, a benefit that resumes do have over IMDb is that they can list various work you have done, various credits(commercials), and more specific details about the work you did on projects.

Depending on the position you are applying for, a resume plus a reel and or portfolio will go a long way.

I have hired people based off of this material only.

As I mentioned in the beginning of this article, maybe 30% of the people I have hired were hired from their resume + reel/portfolio only.

Recommendations are the #1 Hiring Tool

Before we dive into this. I don’t want anyone thinking, “well Tyler that’s the way YOU hire people. It’s probably not like that for other producers/production managers/department heads”.

But it is. When I started out, it’s how I got hired on more and more work. Sometimes it would just be a phone call, I didn’t even submit an “application” for the job. A department head would call and say “I got your name from XYZ and I need to fill JOB and I am wondering if you are interested…here are the details about the project”. Not only did I not even apply for the position they were offering, they also didn’t ask for a resume.

The most common route when hiring for a new project is that I make calls to my closest colleagues and ask them if they can recommend someone. Not only that, but I will also reach out to people I have hired in the past that I really liked and trusted and then I would ask them if they could recommend someone. My circle even grows for those who I look for recommendations from. Every time a production wraps I usually meet at least one person that I really liked, enjoyed being around, and ultimately would trust to give me a recommendation if I needed one in the future.

Depending on the role I needed to fill would depend on if after the recommendation I looked at their resume or not. In essence the bigger the position the more likely I looked at their resume after getting the recommendation.

Now this isn’t to say the recommendation meant they would get the job. It would not be uncommon to reach out to a few trusted colleagues and ask for recommendations for the same position. Most of the time you are in a hiring time crunch so you need to fill the role quickly and will try to get in a handful of recommendations as quickly as possible.

The phone call mattered as much as the recommendation.

I need to talk to the person I am hiring because I need to get a sense of who they are. I will hire a person who is kind and can boost their crews morale over someone who has more experience.

That is what I am looking for when hiring. This is where people differ. Some care most about the experience and others care most about how they will work within the context of the whole project (certain types of people and their actions can affect schedule and thus budget).

For me it is a combination of recommendation + personality.

I want to mention something very important here. Personality doesn’t mean super outgoing and cheerful on the phone. You can be shy and quiet. There are certain key things I am looking for in our conversation that will tell me what kind of person you will be on set and whether or not that is someone I want to hire.

How Do I Get Recommended When Just Starting Out?

When you have no experience you will probably have no recommendations. So you just have to work hard and get your name and face in front of people to finally get on a show/project as a PA or assistant. There are so many tips and advice out there on how to get your foot in the door on your first gig, but I won’t dive into any of those today.

Once you are hired on your first project, work your ass off, be kind, and be a team player.

One of the key tenets of improv is: "yes, and...".

That should be your tenet as a PA/Assistant. If someone asks you to do something, you say "yes! and...what else?" The best way is to say yes, then figure out what the ‘AND’ is and take the initiative yourself.

When you go from just doing the task at hand and instead start to see tasks ahead, that shows preemptive problem solving, which is what department heads look for in someone who can help run a department. Those are the types of people they will be recommended to someone else.

I’ll give an example of myself. When I was in grad school a reality tv show was coming to our city and they were looking for PA’s. This was one of those 24 hours a day in a house reality tv shows, that also involved city life too. There was a LOT of work to be done prior to filming and there were over a dozen PA’s hired.

On my second day as a PA I was put under the audio department because there were microphones all over this house thus thousands of feet of various cables that needed to be ran. I was randomly assigned this job. One of the cables I had to run was a stinger(extension cord) through a whole floor of the house then outside and around the house.

After I ran the stinger I got the department head and showed him that I finished the task. The problem was, the stinger looked awful running around the outside of the house, it was draping and an eyesore. He was disappointed because that was almost an hour of work I would have to redo. He let me know his frustration. I said sorry, got to work fixing it and then thought, “well if I have to do this stinger this way, I’m guessing the rest of them that are running from the control center to the satellite ports will need to be done the same way". There were 5 more of these things. So I did them all without asking if that was the next task or waiting on the next task.

I got my supervisor, I told him I was done, he told me to run the other ones, I told him I actually already did that, he looked at how they looked and was happy.

After the end of my 12 hour day he told the Production Manager on the show he wanted me to work specifically for his department. My second day as a PA I was in essence promoted as an A2 for the audio department and my day rate DOUBLED. The best part, for the next 8 weeks, my jobs as an assistant was far easier in the audio department than the other 12 PAs who were exhausted constantly. It was also a blast!

Two weeks after that job ended I got a call for another job from another sound mixer telling me he got my name from my former department head. I was offered a full time job in LA on top of that in the audio department on another job. I took neither because I was moving to India.

It all happened because I said yes, stayed kind, didn’t complain, solved problems, and when I made mistakes, didn’t make excuses or “talk back”, I just went to work fixing them.

That is how you get recommended!

That is why recommendations matter most. Those of use who are hiring have been through the grind. So when someone we trust recommends a person for a position, we know that that person knows what it takes to do their job.

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