Transcript
Speaker: So ask yourself, is my resume specifically relevant to the company I am auditioning for? You might have different versions of your resume for different companies you're auditioning for because maybe for one company, you want to highlight that you worked with a certain teacher or choreographer more or that you did certain roles more while others may not find that as relevant.
Speaker: You're trying to show them why you are the employee that they should hire.
Speaker: I'm Kaitlyn, a former professional ballerina turned dance educator and career mentor, and this is the Brand New Ballerina podcast. I am here for the aspiring professional ballerina who wants to learn what it really takes to build a smart and sustainable career in the dance industry.
Speaker: I'm peeling back the curtain of professional dance world with open and honest conversations about the realities of becoming a professional dancer. Come along to gain the knowledge and inspiration you need to succeed in a dance career on your terms.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Brandy Ballerina Podcast. Caitlin here and today's solo episode is talking all about dance resumes, do's, don'ts, and best practices.
Speaker: Audition season is coming up quickly and I want to make sure that your resume is top notch before you head into auditions. professional resume is really essential for all dancers. It's going to give directors a quick snapshot of your background and your experience, and it is your first opportunity to make a good impression, often before you even step foot in the studio.
Speaker: So let's talk about things you definitely want to include on your resume. First of all, personal information. Directors need to know who you are and how to contact you. Include your full name, your phone number, your email address, your location, your date of birth, and your height. You might also need to include citizenship depending on the company and where it's located versus where you're located.
Speaker: You may want to include your social media handles, but only if they are professional and relevant to the job. So don't include your personal social media handles. where you're putting all of your pictures, going out with your friends and that kind of thing. It should be a social media that's dedicated to you as a dancer that shows videos and photos of you in really good light that directors may want to see.
Speaker: This is definitely optional and only included if what you have is going to show you off really well. If you've worked professionally before, you definitely want to include your professional experience. If you don't have professional experience yet, you could also categorize this as performance experience and list the performances and roles you have danced here instead.
Speaker: So you're going to want include company name and location, your artistic director, your title, in performances or notable roles danced. So make sure that the information you're including is relevant to your audience and it is universally understood. And what I mean by that is if you danced a masterwork like Revelations by Alvin Ailey, that is instantly recognizable. Anybody looking at your resume is going to know what that means.
Speaker: But maybe you danced an original ballet commissioned for your company. This was the case for me as a dancer quite a bit. We were able to do a lot of original new works as a contemporary ballet company. And we worked with amazing choreographers and really well-known choreographers.
Speaker: So in this situation, you want to make sure that you are definitely including the choreographer and highlighting that over maybe the name of the piece. Because... For instance, I got to dance in a ballet by Penny Saunders. She's an incredible, really well-known choreographer.
Speaker: But the work that she choreographed on us is not a well-known work. It was specific to our ballet company. And so I want to highlight that I was in her work more than I want to highlight the name of the piece.
Speaker: So just something to remember as you're considering how to frame all of your experience, you need to make sure that it's going to make sense to the person looking at it, not just to you.
Speaker: You also want to include your education or your training, So including your university if you went to college or your education where you were growing up, your studio, the school name, location, artistic director.
Speaker: Include the years you went there and the degree earned if applicable. Your instructors potentially and the styles trained in potentially. So if you're just starting out and you don't have professional experience to include on your resume, you may want to also make note of your instructors and the styles trained in.
Speaker: Especially if there's a mutual contact between your instructors and your the company that you're applying to. Because if they see that, they could also reach out to that person and potentially get some more information about you.
Speaker: it could help sway them to want to learn more about you or work with you if they know someone you worked with. And at the beginning stages of your career, you also probably want to include summer intensives. But as you gain professional experience, this is some of the first information you can begin to drop off as it becomes less relevant.
Speaker: So as you have more professional experience, you can definitely take off all of the instructors, probably just keep your director. Definitely take off the styles you trained in at this point because we know if you're a professional dancer, you are trained and you can take off summer intensives once you have more experience too.
Speaker: You might also want to include related experience, something like television, film work, theater work, continuing education or workshops you've been to, freelance projects, special skills related to the job, teaching experience, choreography experience.
Speaker: Depending on the job you're applying for, whether it's auditioning for a company or applying for a teaching position, you would have different resumes for these things that are highlighting the different parts of your experience. So while you may just want to put one quick line about your teaching experience on a performance resume, especially if you see that that company is hiring a lot of their dancers in the company to teach in their school, telling them that you are available for that too is great.
Speaker: But if you're applying just for a teaching role, you're going to really highlight that experience much more, have a whole different resume for that. You might also want to include your awards or honors like competition placements, scholarships, academic honors. Again, this is going to drop off as you get more professional experience, but it's good to have when you're first starting out.
Speaker: I also encourage dancers to include a small thumbnail headshot on your resume like the upper left corner, mainly because sometimes headshots and resumes can get separated or can be hard to flip back and forth for audition director if they're trying to see your resume and your photo and see you and see all the people in the audition. It's a lot going on.
Speaker: So if you put your little thumbnail headshot in the corner, it can help them in case your resume and your headshot get separated or just to help them more quickly gather the information that they need. But keep it small. You don't want to waste too much space for that, just enough so they can quickly find you.
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Speaker: So the big rules of thumb are to only include relevant information. So ask yourself, is my resume specifically relevant to the company I am auditioning for? You might have different versions of your resume for different companies you're auditioning for because maybe for one company, you want to highlight that you worked with a certain teacher or choreographer more or that you did certain roles more while others may not find that as relevant.
Speaker: You're trying to show them why you are the employee that they should hire. So you're going to have to ask yourself this for each company. You also want to make sure, as we said before, that it's going to make sense to someone who doesn't already know you personally.
Speaker: Can they understand what your experience means, even if they've never met you? And again, does it give the director reason to believe that you would be a good fit for their company? At this stage, you are an employee. This is a professional job.
Speaker: so you want to paint the picture for why should they hire you. You also want to be concise and consistent. You only have a few seconds to get your information across before you're the director. goes on to the next resume.
Speaker: They are seeing a lot of applicants. You need to get their attention very quickly. So keep your resume to one page. If it's more than one page, I guarantee you there's things that we could take off or formatting that we could do to get it down to one page. I've never seen a resume that I couldn't get to one page.
Speaker: You're going to organize your experience by categories, like we talked about before, professional, education, awards, honors, that kind of thing. So it's very easy to see quickly. Start with your most recent experience and list everything in reverse chronological order and format it so concisely. Challenge yourself to get your point across in as few words as possible.
Speaker: Utilize headings and be consistent with fonts and spacing throughout. This will make it so easy to read and easy for the director to find exactly what they need to know about you. So this is not the time to get flowery and tell your whole life story. You want to keep it simple and straightforward.
Speaker: Make sure you are proofreading. Attention to detail is a key attribute directors are looking for in dancers. And they're looking for it not just in your dancing, but also on anything you turn in, such as a resume.
Speaker: So double and triple check the spelling and the grammar on your entire resume, but pay special attention to proper names or names of ballets, including accent marks, hyphens, spaces.
Speaker: Make sure you are doing your due diligence to make sure those are all accurate. Some things that you should not include on your resume. One, an objective statement is not needed for a dance resume. We know if you're auditioning that your objective is to get a job as a professional dancer. You don't need to lay that out for us.
Speaker: We got that. You don't need to include your weight. Companies do still want to see heights, but you do not need to include your weight. And if you are being asked to include your weight... I consider that a huge red flag that would make me even stop to think if I even want to apply to this company in the first place.
Speaker: So as a general rule, we are not including weight. You don't need to include references on your resume. You should have three to four references on hand to produce if asked for. So three to four people that you have communicated with who know you well, who know your work and your work ethic, who could speak highly of you if contacted, and who have agreed to be contacted.
Speaker: But they don't need to be on your resume. And if they ask for them, you can include a separate page with those references listed. To be quite honest, the dance world is so small and any instructor, director, choreographer, or mutual connection that's listed on your resume will likely be called upon if there is a connection there.
Speaker: So again, have references available if asked to produce them, but they don't need to go directly on your one page. You also don't need to include training and instructors who are not formative to your education.
Speaker: So my rule of thumb is if I called up someone you've worked with, they should know who you are and be able to give me information about your work ethic. So with this in mind, you know you don't want to include maybe your first creative movement teacher.
Speaker: They obviously sparked your love for ballet and they are a super important person in your life. But unless they continue training you all the way through your pre-pro training, They're not going to be able to speak to who you are at this stage in your life.
Speaker: We also don't need to include that famous dancer you took class from one time at a giant convention ballroom or at a huge master class. They don't know who you are. And we really can't be claiming that they were formative to your education. You may have taken a great class from them and really enjoyed it and it really spoke to you.
Speaker: But again, if I call them up, would they know who you are? No, you were in their class one time with a sea of people. they're not going to remember you. So don't include all those random teachers you had throughout your training.
Speaker: You also don't need to include extras just to fill the page. It's okay to have some white space. Everything needs to be relevant and adding things just for fluff is just going to be overwhelming and make your resume harder to read.
Speaker: So keep it to what is relevant and important and don't worry if you don't have enough to fill everything. I promise you soon enough as you get more professional experience, you will have more to put on your resume.
Speaker: I have an entire audition guide that goes over everything we just talked about for resumes and includes five different templates that you can use to create your resume if you need some more support.
Speaker: The audition guide also includes information about cover letters, references, videos, photos, finding auditions, budgeting for auditions, best practices, what to wear. You name it, it's in there. I'll link it in the show notes. but This is a great resource to have if you need a little bit more support.
Speaker: And it just helps to have everything in one place. So instead of saying, I need to Google this every single time something comes up, getting your information from sources that you don't know are trustworthy, it's all in one place.
Speaker: easy for you to find. You can reference it for any question you have. And I also do dance audition material audits. So say you have a resume already made and you want to know, is this good? What should I change?
Speaker: You can also book one of those and I'll give you my really direct feedback based on all my years of experience as a professional dance dancer and as a teacher working in this industry. I will also link that in the show notes if you'd like to book an audit.
Speaker: Resumes are one of my favorite things to do. I know not many dancers really like this part of the career, but it's one of my favorite things to look at. So please reach out for help if you need any support. And just remember, it's just a quick snapshot of your background. It's not your entire life story. It's just giving us enough information to go on to get to know you quickly and see if the director thinks you'll be a good fit for this company.
Speaker: Married for your audition season, and please know that I am here if you need any help.
Speaker: Thank you for tuning into the Brainy Ballerina podcast. If you found this episode insightful, entertaining, or maybe a bit of both, I would so appreciate you taking a moment to leave a rating and hit subscribe.
Speaker: By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode. And you'll join our community of dancers passionate about building a smart and sustainable career in the dance industry. Plus your reigns help others discover the show too.
Speaker: I'll be back with a new episode next week. In the meantime, be sure to follow along on Instagram at The Brainy Ballerina for your daily dose of dance career guidance.
