Mentoring

I've always mentored people.  Even when I had just started my career at HBO I would try to find time to talk to those interested searching out a job in television.  It was so exceedingly difficult for me to find my first jobs.  I didn't know anyone in the industry. I had come from a state college in Connecticut. There was no real "career development" department at that time and though my internships were great, they did not point the way to any lasting employment.

My father had worked for the phone company and my mom was a grade school teacher. No one, among my family or friends had ever worked in or near the object of my career passion...entertainment.  No one ever moved to NYC.  I was so green and so, I did a lot of things the hard way.  I made so many mistakes as an early job seeker.  I bumbled around New York City bumping into walls and going down a lot of blind alley's as I evolved my inadequate resume and my limited interview skills into small success after small success.  Then... a big success when I landed my first real job.

When I got my first job I found it wasn't the end of the road, it was the beginning of a 20 year path to learning about how to move through the maze of career opportunities and challenges  with an eye on the prize, a rewarding journey!

Along the way I've tried to help people skip over the first part, the great divide between what you as a job seeker don't know and what everyone with a great job in entertainment KNOWS.  Some is plain and simple (and seemingly obvious) advice like, "don't say you want to direct".  Other insights are not so obvious to an outsider, like to say you are open to "project work" instead of saying you just want a job.  Many good tv and digital media jobs start as projects.

So much of the insight to how to navigate early job market comes within the process of job seeking, so I mentor and I help guide at that critical time.  It costs me nothing and I like having a network of younger careerists out there.  It eventually ends up being mutually beneficial, along the way.

The people I mentor come to me from family, friends and colleagues.  "Will you talk to my son" or, "can I have my best friend's niece call you".  I always say the same thing.  I ask them to email me.
When they do, I send a fairly standard email back to them with a lot of information and directives about getting started with a job search.  This step actually weeds out about 60% of those who contact me because it requires some work.  Once they complete this initial research we'll get on the phone and begin.  It is these people, who are eager and prepared, that will take well to mentoring.  I try to be a collaborator, coach, idea generator and a co-writer as there is a lot of correspondence in this game.

I try to do a lot by email but I'll sometimes get on the phone.  I try to be that someone I wish I had known back in the day when I was wandering 6th Ave in search of a gig.