How to 'win' your next audition or job interview
Welcome to the ArtsBound Newsletter. Every Tuesday, I share three thoughts or insights meant to help performing arts students and young professionals flourish in their life and career. Today, we’ll look at how to ‘sell’ yourself to potential employers or audition committees in three sequential step inspired by the product development framework used by commercial companies.
- 5-minute read -
(NOTE: I started ArtsBound because I believe the world would be a better place with more people living their true calling. If you know a student or young professional who is searching for their niche in the performing arts world, consider forwarding this email to them. If this email was forwarded to you, you can sign up to receive my newsletter every Tuesday. It's free, and I’ll never share or sell your data.)
1. Proof of Concept (i.e. knowing yourself and your audience)
When a company has an idea for a product, they do research to determine:
a) if the idea has validity; and
b) if people will want to buy it.
If you are trying to create your own gig or start an organization, you need to ‘find’ or ‘build’ your audience of buyers. But if an organization is hiring, or if a school or production company is holding auditions, you already know they are buying.
The question is: will they want to buy YOU?
If we are to continue with this metaphor - viewing YOU as the ‘product’ others are buying - we need to start with this foundational assumption:
You are always valid in the unique value you have to offer.
This applies to your unique personality, your lived experience, and your top skills, be they performance skills, teaching skills, marketing skills, etc, etc… The trick is finding a match between your unique value and what the ‘buyer’ is looking for.
Testing proof of concept means asking the question: Can this work?
The first key to success in an interview or audition is doing your research on YOU. What are your core values, strength, favorite skills, and crucial experiences? Starting your search for a job or school from a place of profound self-knowing brings great ease to the process. It is far easier to focus on the opportunities best suited for you and graciously dismiss those that aren’t.
Next comes the research on your buyer. What do they aspire to by offering you a job or accepting you into a program? Is there alignment between this and the value you offer?
Although you are always valid, you will not find that every opportunity out there is validating. This is true for opportunities that aren’t a great fit for you, as well as some that are; different buyers want different things and competition can be tough.
But remember this: as long as you are dedicated to what you love, honoring who you are, and persistent in finding your niche, there is room for everyone in this industry.
(The episodes of The ArtsBound Podcast featuring Chris Leidhecker and Tess Marshall both have fantastic discussions of this concept.)
Acknowledging all the challenging conditions of the marketplace can help you to clearly articulate the unique value you offer, leveraging these realities to your advantage and thereby making a strong case for your employment or acceptance whenever you find the right fit.
This is your proof of concept: doing the research on yourself and your audience and finding alignment between your respective values.
2. Prototyping (i.e. visualizing the value you offer your audience)
After you have proof of concept (Can this work?), it's time to ask the next question: How will this work?
To approach this question, I recommend returning to the buyer’s aspirations. What will it look like when you help the buyer accomplish their goals? The more details you can bring into this vision, the more compelling your story will be when you make the case for your employment or acceptance.
Of course, the vision you conceive of comes from your thorough understanding of the buyer’s aspirations, not what you think they are or should be. If you’ve done your homework on the proof of concept, you’ll have no problem here - you’ll have already fallen in love with what the buyer is hoping to accomplish, and thus be able to formulate this vision quite organically.
Once you have a clear picture of what success looks like for the buyer, then you proceed with crafting a narrative of how you will help them get there. As you do this, you want to weave in your skills, passions, past experiences, etc. - everything you know about yourself that makes you ‘right’ for helping the buyer accomplish their goals.
This all may make perfect sense if you are applying for a job to help an organization further its mission. But how does a student help a college or university accomplish its goals? Keep in mind that, to present high quality performance and productions, performing arts colleges rely on the value offered by their students. Plus colleges like to boast about their students' qualities. Do you play a rare instrument? Does your lived experience offer a diverse perspective they are looking for among their student population? Do you have skills or personal characteristics that could make you especially helpful to your professors and/or classmates?
Finally, remember that prototyping is an iterative process. Even after having a strong proof of concept, it may take several conceptions of answering ‘How will this work?’ before you land on the ideal narrative.
Think of you and the ‘buyer’ as two complexly shaped puzzle pieces that might fit together in a few different configurations, but one is the most snug, and you need to turn both pieces around and test several possibilities before you find it.
Daydream. Journal. Share your thoughts with loved ones. When you hit the ‘right’ idea, your intuition will let you know. Then it’s time to get your narrative into production.
3. Development and Production (i.e. putting the vision into practice)
Now you are ready for communicating your case for employment or acceptance. When we talk about ‘production’, we mean constructing the narrative of how you will help the buyer accomplish their aspirations - and accompanying artifacts and evidence that help to tell the story - so they are all ready to present to the buyer.
Depending on the nature of your interaction with the school, program, or employer in question, your ‘product’ will likely have a few of the following pieces: an application, a performance, an interview, transcripts, an essay, a cover letter, a portfolio, a resume, etc.
This is the step that will require the most ‘grunt work’: hours in the practice room, memorizing and polishing a monologue, writing and editing your cover letter, assembling a portfolio (and, perhaps, making duplicate copies for multiple committee members), etc. But again, if you’ve done your work in the previous steps, this will just be a matter of executing what you have already designed based on your deep knowledge of yourself and your ‘buyer’.
Remember that every detail of each piece plays an active role in telling your story, including the details you neglect. Proofread. Get feedback from others. Consider visual appeal. Take care with selecting repertoire. Look for little ways to add personality into your materials and demonstrate how important the opportunity is to you.
If you or someone you know could benefit from working with an experienced guide while going through this process, don't hesitate to reach out.
See you next week!
Lee
PS - I started ArtsBound because I believe the world would be a better place with more people living their true calling. If you know a student or young professional who is searching for their niche in the performing arts world, consider forwarding this email to them. If this email was forwarded to you, you can sign up to receive my newsletter every Tuesday. It's free, and I’ll never share or sell your data.