Creating your check list of action for looking for work
So hopefully you’ve come up with something that looks a little like this:
Go the end of the each thread, and write out all the ideas you’ve come up with. Hopefully it’s a long one!
Now, if you’re like me, you’re probably going to start making making judgements on them:
- that one’s going to take ages
- I hate cold calling
- sending emails never works
- no one likes my posts
- I don’t have enough followers
Try your hardest not to listen to those voices. You never know what will work. As a company, we’ve had people find us through Twitter, had people recommend us, others have found is from a Google search. We try to keep all of these activities going (I’m not saying we manage it – far from). But I do know trying to do a little bit of everything spreads your odds!
Kind of Looking for Work vs Actually Looking for Work
It’s very easy when you’re building your list to start putting things like:
- post more on Instagram
- like posts by great Studios
- connect with more people on LinkedIn
- update my showreel
These are great activities to be active in the creative world you want to work in. And of course, they raise your profile, and someone might see your work and want to find out more about you.
But I want you to ask your self:
Is this action actually looking for work?
Or is it just ‘kind of’ looking for work?
I break down these actions into three groups:
Gathering Tools
That’s where you’re getting the collateral you need to show your skills and abilities. Writing your CV, updating your showreel, building a website.
These are essential to winning work (you’re not going to get work as a camera person or an animator without being able to demonstrate the work you do) but they are not looking for work.
Social Presence
Posting to Instagram or connecting with people on LinkedIn might lead to work, but it’s a big might. They make you feel active (I know I’m guilty of writing LInkedIn posts that rarely get liked or shared, but they make me feel like I’m doing something).
Social presence actions are important, but again, they are not looking for work.
Looking for work
The only things that fit in this category are the really pro-active actions like:
- picking up the phone and calling a company
- asking someone you’ve worked with if they know anyone they can introduce you to
- Writing an email to a company you haven’t worked for before
- applying for a job you’ve seen on a website
Review your list and be really firm with yourself. Have you got enough actions that are “Looking for work”? You need to have 50% of your list in this category if you’re going to succeed in finding work, as these are the most proactive actions you’re taking.
Now you have the list, the next task is to set targets.
Setting Targets
When I was coaching one animator, she said to me:
“I used to work in charity sales… and when it came down to it, it’s a numbers game.”
This is absolutely right. The more action you take, the more likely you are to have a result.
Let’s say you’re a camera person. You’re working on one or two day projects, currently working 25 out of the 40 working days in the average month.
If you need to make 10 calls to find one day’s work, then you need to make 150 calls to fill your diary entirely. That’s a heck of a lot.
That’s before you factor in that you’ll probably lose 5 days a month because one person that hires you may move on from that company, and the new person has their own black book. Or they find someone else to do the job. Or they stop offering that kind of work.
The quicker you start, the more calls you make, the better changes you have of getting work. It’s an old cliché, but each call saying “no” means you’re one closer to a “yes”.
But having identified that it’s going to take 150 calls, how many are you going to make a day? If you make 3 calls a day, it’s going to take you 10 weeks to make those calls. If you’re doing 20 a day, it will take you a week and a half.
You don’t want to set yourself unrealistic targets. It’s better for your well being to say 3 calls a day and hit that target, than saying 10 and constantly failing.
As we proved in the previous lesson, it’s not just about calls. There are many different actions to take. These can go on your 12 Weeks of Winning Behaviours spreadsheet.