I'm not being coy when I say that you have a few seconds to impress me, and the color of your paper rarely does that in a positive way! When embarking on the job search, there are two sides to the equation: you want work, and it's someone else's job to sort through a pile of information to hire someone like you. This dynamic can be helped or hindered by your use of language and the layout of your résumé and cover letter. As a production manager, I hire about 17 staff each summer for a four-show season. My attention in this document is directed at those interested in technical internships and staff positions, including stage management, for a summer-stock theatre program.

I'd like to address the issue of the cover letter first and then move on to the résumé. Always keep in mind that these are my personal preferences. . .others may and invariably some do have alternate preferences which may be in direct contradiction to those I express.

COVER LETTERS:

I'm a huge fan of the single page cover letter. As an employer there are two bits of information that I am always in search of in the cover letter. The most obvious is what job are you as an applicant applying for? You'd think that would be pretty obvious, but I get a fair number of cover letters each year that make me hunt for which category to place the applicant in–that should be right up front in the first couple of sentences. The second piece of information that I'm gathering is where you heard of the job I'm offering. It is fine to reference ARTSearch or BACKSTAGE or another trade source. . . it's also a great place to drop a name: "I read your ad in ARTSearch and my friend so-and-so who worked with you at XYZ theatre said I should apply because she respected working with you and thought I'd be a good fit." Now, there's no guarantee that your friend was my friend, but this is a business of names, and I have worked for and supervised individuals over the course of my career that I did not personally care for–but I'd work with again because they were great at what they do.

So, with a simple 2-3 paragraph cover letter you can tell me what you are looking for with my company and where you heard about us (and please tell "me" not "Dear Sir or Madam"–it's way too easy to find out what gender I am or who I am online (my name is not androgynous! Others may require more research or a phone call to the theatre, and it shows that you care enough to look for 5.3 seconds to determine this information). Please, don't tell me your life story, or how much you love to work in theatre, or explain anything about what you've done, unless it is extraordinary: I'm pretty good at reading the résumé for much of that information.

One more thing about the cover letter: if you are applying to multiple positions at the same time (and, let's face it, who isn't), please, please, please, make sure that the letter you send to me is addressed to me and not someone else, or to me at some other theatre. That immediately turns me off your application because it speaks to how careful you are and how much attention you pay to details. . .like where you might spend two and a half months of your life at the beginning of your career. If you don't care enough to get my name and institution right, I probably don't want to work with you unless your name is Ming. . .but he won't be applying to work with me. I do receive numerous letters that are mislabeled or misaddressed. It's an unnecessary embarrassment to you that may come back to bite you.

RÉSUMÉS:

On the résumé front, I much prefer the single page model. Unless you have hundreds of shows–and yes, I mean hundreds of shows–there is no reason for more than a one-page résumé. I'll address amassing information for the résumé later, but let's just say that it is far easier to cull data than it is to try to recall it years later (at this point in my career I have a tough time remembering details from a few months ago). What I'm looking for in a single page résumé is the following support information: who you are; how I can contact you (email, facebook, cell, snailmail address–pick at least two); a brief list of work you have done that demonstrates some competency and experience in the field you are applying for; some suggestion of the skill set you are comfortable with that is pertinent to the job you're applying for; and references (with contact information on them). Now for some dos:

• List production work in order from most recent to oldest.
• Group producing companies (or schools) where possible to avoid repeating the same information over and over again.
• Include some sense of how long you've been doing this.
• Include any academic degrees you are working on or have completed and where you did your studying.
• I do look at the theatres where you've done your work–after 25 years working professionally, I have a lot of friends around the country, and I'm just as likely to call someone I know at a theatre for a reference as I am to call one of your listed references.
• If you have worked both professionally and academically, you might consider breaking those categories out separately.
• If you have worked with well known directors and designers, you might find a way to list them besides as your references (your high school teacher may be very well known locally, but unless he has worked beyond the high school, it's unlikely that I've heard of him).
• Do leave white space on the résumé in which I can make notes on what I see or as I'm calling your references.
• Do have a story to tell about each line on your résumé–I may ask about a show I've done or am doing and will be curious to hear how you dealt with things. Even if it's a story about a disaster, be prepared to talk about how it made you a better craftsperson.
• As a close friend and artistic director used to caution us: "Have your smarter friend proof read the résumé." That means that spelling errors count, and spell-check doesn't catch them all. It speaks to your attention to detail.

• Do not lie or enhance your experience.
• Do not pad your résumé.
• Do not list an "objective" on your résumé: space is at a premium–I know from your cover letter that your objective is to land a job with my company as XYZ for the upcoming season.
• Do not abbreviate (unless you've very clearly identified what the abbreviation stands for).
• I do not use hyper-abbreviation; keep them out of the résumé and cover letter or I'll CUL8R.
• For your own sake, talk with those you are using as references and make very sure that the contact information you give for them is correct. I've called numbers listed as references and gotten entirely different people–sometimes with very bad tales to tell that may sink your application, as happened recently in my experience.
• Language matters. Do not give me any excuse to discount your application.
• Don't include everything you've ever done on your résumé. Apply for the specific job: I don't have time to read through a lot of entries about acting if you're applying to be a carpenter though in some cases having carpentry skills may be enough to open a door with a company just enough to get your foot in it, so for actors reading this far you may want to find a way to include additional skills in your application to non-AEA companies). If you've got a variety of skills–electrician, sound, and a little carpentry–have several different formats of your résumé to send out that accent the different skill sets you bring.
• Don't use tutti-frutti paper: if it obscures the information it hurts you; if it's too heavy, it may read as pretentious; I prefer to see a white or off-white paper. Do use consistent paper between the résumé and the cover letter.
• If you are applying on-line, send a PDF of your résumé and cover letter: That way it is locked just the way you formatted it. If you send it as a Microsoft Word document, some of the fancy layout you spent hours worrying over may be destroyed and lost in the translation–one applicant used an unusual font that opened on my computer as Greek. Fortunately I've worked in academic institutions long enough to sound out the name based on frats and sororities.

GATHERING INFORMATION:

I'm a Virgo, a technical director, a borderline type-A personality and a trained historian, so I keep lists. I started keeping lists as a college student. For a long time I listed all the theatrical jobs I did as a work-study student, but along the way I lost that list. Similar lost information is the five years worth of IATSE calls that I worked as a stringer while simultaneously working my first teaching job. That is information that I'll never be able to recover. But the lists that I did start keeping included show titles, years, producing organization and my position with the company for the show–often this included multiple positions. About four years ago I was looking at a friend's on-line résumé and saw that she'd included directors' names on the shows she designed. . .so it took a little bit of mental archeology and several calls and emails to put directors' names to the 21 years' worth of designs I'd done, but that is now a category on my spread sheet.

If you can manipulate and sort spreadsheets electronically, that is going to be the simplest way for you to research your own work for job applications. I have a master list that breaks out all that information chronologically. There is no reason you should not start such a list now and update it at least every year–I actually tend to make my entries when I commit to a job. If you let this go too long, there will be information missing. . .and you never know when you're going to apply for an animal (or child) wrangler position that you know you did, but can't remember who you worked with, or where. Trust me: if you are young, you believe you'll remember all the details. . .you won't. Ask yourself, do my parents remember all the details? That's where you're headed; and it gets here faster than you might anticipate.

So, that's a bunch of information for your consideration. I hope some of it is helpful. This is your career and your application; use what you find useful and disregard, after consideration, information you think is not useful. We are in the communication business after all. Sometimes it is what you say, write, draw or react to that count most. . . sometimes not. Be careful whose toes you step on and don't burn your bridges. But as a friend of mine once said, "if you're going to burn a bridge, nuke it; it's really not worth just annoying someone." I don't know what he's doing now, I heard he'd left the business, and I've never felt compelled to burn any bridges in 25 years in the business, though there are some I won't venture out on again unless I have to. Still, it's good to know they're there.

Good luck, and remember theatre is both family and a damn small world; there're only 200 of us working in the business and we're all over-worked and under-paid. I'll see you around the theatre. . . .