Here are some tricks and tips to help graduating students and novices to create a functional professional resume. Bear in mind that a good resume will not get you work. At best, it will get you an interview.
Over the years, I have found that most of my employment offers originated from word-of-mouth referrals by people that I had worked with in the past. Good skills and good attitude are remembered. But it never hurts to spread your name around by sending out something in the mail. Who knows, someone at the receiving end may recognize you!
[Name and Contact Info]
To begin with, your resume should begin with your name and phone number. Address is optional; use good common sense. Single women should NOT publish their residence, since resumes may fall into many hands. Use a PO box or some other mail drop.
Since you will be expecting potential employers to phone you back, erase that silly answering machine message that served you so well during college and put something more professional sounding in its place. Keep your outgoing message as short as possible, and include a first name so the caller knows they reached the right phone.
Along these same lines, it may be time to establish a new email account to replace your old college monicker. Bizarre, freaky, or tasteless nicknames may have been fun and worked for communicating to your friends, but names like This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. are not the professional image that you need to convey to potential employers.
Specialization
What is it that you are applying for? Be specific, just put down one thing that you want to do. For example, "Production Sound Mixer," or "Assistant Editor."
Be prepared to create different resumes for different positions that you may apply for. Hollywood adheres to the concept that people can only master one group of skills; if they see too large of a variety they will tend to dismiss you as inexperienced and incapable. It is a bias, but it does exist in the real world.
Union Affiliation [optional]
If you belong to a trade union, list the local and full name of the union, such as Local 695 International Sound Technicians of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). Indicate your job classification (such as Y-1 Sound Mixer). List any offices or committees that you are involved on.
Note that stating membership in the union will qualify you to apply for a union show, but will frighten producers of a low budget non-union show. Have two versions of your resume.
Additional Areas of Professional Emphasis or Areas of Professional Achievement
Use this space to summarize your technical skills (don’t get overly specific) as well as to list your other types of production skills. Even though you are a production sound specialist, you may also have editorial, camera, writing, or producing experience.Avoid listing every single camera or piece of equipment that you have worked with; just summarize such as: "Familiar with all 16mm and 35mm Arriflex and Panavision Cameras".
Feel free to add special skills/hobbies that would be relevant to the job position. Example: equestrian experience if you working on a Western; or PADI/scuba certification if you working in deep water; language skills if you are working abroad; and so on. Again, create custom versions of your resume to appeal to a particular project's unique situation.
Professional Experience
This section should immediately follow. List any jobs, full or part-time that support your specialization. Create a summary listing for FREELANCE, if applicable.
No one really cares that you slopped hash at the university cafeteria, but working in the Editing Lab would be relevant. Show any professional employment at production companies. List internships if you have them.
You might embellish what you have done, but never exaggerate what you know how to do! For instance, say you worked in a Dept Store. Marketing/Local & Point of Purchase sure sounds better than Sales Associate.
Education
This should feature your college degrees in descending order. Indicate the college or university, city/state, and years attended. Show the degree earned, and your major. List any awards or special ranks. Embellish within reason. Dean’s List, Departmental Honors, (Greek) cinema honors societies, that sort of thing. Sounds impressive, and is often not reflected on your transcript Only list High School if you received special academic degrees or awards. Otherwise, no one cares.
Production Credits
No one cares about your student filmmaking experience, unless you won a major award. Show the titles and production companies of the films you worked on. Indicate the nature of the project (35mm feature film, commercial, corporate, pilot, movie-of-the-week, etc.) Indicate the capacity in which you worked (Sound Mixer, Boom Operator, 2nd Assistant Camera, etc.) Most of your credits should reflect experience that supports your area of specialization.
If you need to creatively embellish, then do so. Choose a title that sounds similar to B-movies or MOW’s. But never claim credit on an actual production that you did not work on!
Don’t be ashamed to list industrial or corporate credits. These are the types of productions that you would have been most likely to have worked on. A mundane training video about steel tipped safety shoes for a Fortune 500 company is a credit that no one will challenge. Claiming to have been the D.P. on Beverly Hills 90210 might raise a few doubts.
Pay close attention to your time constraints. A full-time college student would not have the opportunity to work on two major features during the school semester! Maybe some industrials during the breaks, and maybe a low budget independent during the summer. Part-time employment or internships during the semester would be plausible, but do not over-do it.
If you do choose to list student productions for experience, then try to make them read as non-student productions. Stretch things a little.
I would suggest that at the end of your credit section, insert an entry summarizing that in addition to the above, you worked on numerous student projects during your college years. No need to be specific, since no one really cares. But it will lend credibility to your other "professional" credits, and make lead people to assume that they were not student films.
Publications and Awards
List them if you have any. Remember, if you don't "toot your own horn," no one else will. However, don't go too overboard. Citing your elementary school film festival wouldn't really help your image -- unless you know for a fact that your interviewer could really be impressed by it (for example, that they also went to that elementary school).
Professional Affiliations
This should be your final topic. List membership in professional associations, such as SMPTE, NAB, ITVA, CAS, and any other organizations that you belong to and are relevant. Indicate any positions or committee chairs that you hold.
References furnished upon request is the tag line that ends your resume.
Your completed resume may be one or two pages in length, but try not to exceed two pages unless your really have a lot of bona fide good stuff.
In closing, I think back to my own early days as a Mixer. One day, I woke up to the fact that I had finally "made it in the business" when I realized that everything on my resume was true.