How to find job listings online


Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

While most production/crew jobs are found through direct contacts, other kinds of showbiz jobs will be listed – that is, advertised in various places. Whereas once jobs were advertised in newspapers and the trades, today almost all listed jobs are found online. The advantage to applying to a listed job is that the duties and expectations will generally be spelled out more or less clearly, while the disadvantage continues to be a heightened level of competition.

According to various sources, many job vacancies across all industries are not listed but filled by word-of-mouth or head hunting (keep on networking!) especially at C-Suite level. However, you can still seek out job listings and make applications within the Entertainment industry to further your career, expand your network, and send out your dreams and wishes into the universe. So often the moment I started sending my resume to listed jobs, I received calls from people I knew wanting to hire me. Remember, if you are looking for full time work, you should be looking for work full time.

The kinds of entertainment jobs that are listed tend to be support services, facilities, and office jobs in studios, networks and production companies, jobs in education, jobs in marketing and social media, and jobs in service vendors like sales or equipment rental houses. The major creative jobs for individual projects, like Director or Screenwriter, are not usually advertised, at least not in general public channels. Approach such jobs being advertised by small companies with caution – they probably don’t know what they are doing and may have a limited network.

Where can you find listed jobs in entertainment?

Major jobs boards

The general job boards like Indeed have nice search engines that allow you to browse for appropriate jobs based on keywords. Indeed and a couple of others send out spider bots that crawl the entire web and bring jobs back to post on the compilation boards. Most boards allow you to post a resume to the site, the keywords of which will then be used to select what the site would consider appropriate job listings for you.

The obvious disadvantage to that is that your resume cannot then be customized to any specific company and should be as broadly expressed as possible. Another disadvantage is that the keywords tend to be broad as well. “Art Director” as an example of one of my job title keywords, tends to bring in jobs in all kinds of manufacturing and graphic design areas. That’s not what I do. On the other hand, when applying to jobs via boards like Indeed, there is usually the opportunity to choose a resume to upload to the listing, as well as the chance to create a customized cover letter.

The other kind of jobs board are things like EntertainmentCareers.net – a site I have mentioned often. Here the jobs are categorized by type of job, and usually show the company that has posted. Even if the job itself is limited to members, you can often find the listing on the corporate sites.

Corporate Careers Pages

All the major studios, networks and production companies have careers or jobs pages. Even if you find a job via another source, it is always worth checking the corporate site to ensure that the job is still available. You will want to research the company anyway.

Go ahead and bookmark these pages at all the studios, production companies and networks. Don’t neglect the new media services – Netflix has been hiring like crazy recently. Your path to a career in production could easily start as an assistant in the acquisitions or physical production department. Set a time to do make a regular check on these sites once or twice a week and put it into your calendar.

Networking Groups

People in real life and online networking groups sometimes hear about and post job listings before they are available to the public. You might find a group that allows you access to the UTA job list, which is generally not posted online, at least not in a timely manner.

LinkedIn and Social Media

Ensure you have a keyword loaded, up-to-date profile, with a keyword loaded resume posted, and Linked In will send reasonably appropriate job listings directly to you. Join industry relevant groups on LinkedIn and be active there, and you will receive even more likely jobs. One of the biggest problems with LinkedIn is the sad statistic of how very rarely people visit the site to check their messages and notifications. Again, as a serious job seeker, add this activity to your calendar and do it regularly.

Facebook is also starting to list jobs and has a searchable database. If you search “Facebook jobs” you get jobs at the company. If you search “Jobs on Facebook” you get taken to the job search page on the platform. It seems to come pre-loaded with a broad range of jobs based on the keywords in one’s profile. Anyway, they have a ways to go before they are as efficient as some other job finding tools.

Agencies – and I don’t mean Talent Agents

Caveat Emptor.

In recent years there has been a proliferation of industry-specific agency sites. Most agencies have a free level that allows you to post a resume, along with a browse-able jobs board with limited available data at the free level. They also offer to send your resume to hiring companies that advertise their jobs on the site.

The advantage would seem to be a huge time saver for job seekers. These agencies sometimes tout their jobs as “exclusive”, although a simple search can often prove the fallacy of that. The obvious disadvantage, again, is not being able to customize to the job or company offering it. However, further disadvantages are being one of any number of similar candidates also submitted by the agency, and the fact that many of the best job listings will say “No agency submissions” or “No Recruiters”.

Usually there are many testimonials from happy job seekers who have found either work or internships via the sites. You can check on these for yourselves. However, I wish I could say that any of my clients have had success through these groups. No-one I know personally has. I just don’t know which are solid and which are not. I tend the lean towards the sites that offer a great deal of useful information to job seekers, ahead of ones that have a meager blog and are mostly sales pages.

Bottom line: don’t rely only on these agencies for your job leads. You will get ahead faster if you commit to doing the work yourself, even if it feels tedious.

Not Really Recommended

Craig’s List – free to list jobs boards often attract low budget, low paying, often temporary hirers. Once your email is in their system, it can become a spam magnet. Use a great deal of caution if you find a listed job for work in the industry on this source. See if it appears anywhere else and check out the company before applying.

YMMV. Sometimes you get lucky, but it can be quite laborious to scroll through all those shouted offers for NO EXPERIENCE!! 100% PAID TRAINING!! to find the few real gems. Meh.