Building a career in visual effects
This post comes from a phone interview with Stan Szymanski of StanleyVision, a member of our Advisory Board and a recruiting expert. In our last interview with Stan, we spoke about recruiting and what makes an artist desirable and thus employable. Today we talk about talent management.
1. Stan, how would you help a vfx artist understand what job hunting involves?
What I like to do is explain how a job is created. Here is how production management interacts with artist management, recruiting, resource allocation, human resources, and operations management. So, I basically try to demystify the process for artists, so that they can understand what drives this and how it goes from a script to somebody being hired; how a position is created, how the sourcing works, how the qualification process works, how the interview and the selection process works; how an offer is created, presented and negotiated. So with everything I say I give people the message:
And then I demystify the process of how an employer determines that there is a position to be created and who is to fill it, what a contract looks like, how immigration laws work, what an offer letter looks like, and all of that stuff.
NOTE: for an in-depth presentation of the three key-questions any candidate needs to get a "yes" to in order to be considered for a position, have a look at the first part of our interview with Stan and especially question no.2
2. Stan, let’s say that a young artist comes to you and tells you about their passion for VFX asking for your advice on how to turn their dream into a viable career. What would you tell them?
I’d tell them to do some homework and find out what types of companies are hiring an artist with their skill-set. Visual effects and animation studios get the majority of publicity so they are the first ones that everybody focuses on but this business is in such turmoil and it will be in turmoil for a while… you know you can witness the whole artists-wearing-the-green-shirt-to-Obama thing. And it is due to this crisis that there’s a lot of experimentation in the industry with alternative models.
But going back to your question, visual effects and animation studios are the most obvious choices and that’s where there is the most competition to find a job. The next level down might be post-production facilities. And those are shorter-term projects, you have to be more of a generalist, you have to work fast. And there’s all kind of other industries that people don’t even think about. I mean there’s themed entertainment, which is a huge business, there’s scientific visualization, bio-medical imaging, forensic animation etc. So, I tell people to look at other kinds of businesses as you have to start somewhere. And then I also tell them “look, if you are in Los Angeles or San Francisco there are more opportunities but there’s also more competition. So in many cases you might want to consider secondary markets. You might want to look at Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Orlando, Denver”. So, basically what I tell them is: do some research and understand what the market is and where the jobs are. And then the other aspect of what you need to work on is refining your abilities to present your work, which not only includes creating a demo-reel but also includes presenting that demo-reel to people. I have actually just proposed a class to OTIS which I think I’m starting to teach in the fall and that’s a lot of what I focus on: the art of presentation and the art of pitch, because every time you go to an interview, every time you submit your work, every time you tell a recruiter to go look your website, that’s a pitch and a presentation. And you need to continue to refine it.
3. And what about talent? How important would you say talent is in the looking-for-a-job equation?
Talent is key. Good presentation may get you through the door but talent will keep you there. However, if you are a really talented artist but you suck at presenting yourself, you have a crappy demo-reel, your resume if full of misspellings and you cannot talk to people on the phone because you’re painfully shy, you will have a hell of a time trying to find a job. You are going head on to the “how do you fit-in” question and the answer is “you don’t”. So, talent is key, cause that points to the “can you do the job” and presentation and pitch point to the “will you do the job” and more importantly to the “how do you fit in”.
Stan is an experienced digital media production executive and resource strategist with 30 years of experience in facility management, talent acquisition, and career development. It is fair to say that everyone in the entertainment industry knows Stan and Stan knows them. He currently runs StanleyVision Inc., a consulting recruiting and career-mentoring firm.
