One of the top support requests we receive at Calltime are questions about how long it takes to get a job or a gig after posting your profile. Typically the questions are something along the lines of:
“I posted my profile last week and haven’t gotten a job yet, why not?”
Calltime is an auditioning platform built for professional talent and professional producers. Competition is fierce for real entertainment jobs, and as talent you need to present yourself in the best way possible. Your profile is your professional commercial – you need it to make you stand out from the other 750 people in the room. So the answer to the above question is:
How long it takes to get hired depends on you.
How much time do you devote to your craft? Professionals on Calltime have spent a lifetime practicing, singing, acting, dancing, acrobatics, circus arts among other skills.
Producers have professional reviewers (musical directors, choreographers, directors) reviewing what you present on your profile. Does it showcase your talent to the fullest?If not, producers will hide your profile from consideration.
How much have you invested in your professional promotion? Professionals spend thousands on demo reels, head shots, online marketing, audience development, and promoter/ producer outreach.
Remember, you are competing with professionals dedicated to their craft and industry. Are you one of them?
“But I am a professional and I posted my picture and my contact information.”
It is important to remember that in the same way that Calltime verifies TALENT profiles, we research and verify PRODUCER profiles as well to ensure that they offer high paying opportunities and are genuine producers of real entertainment. These are high paying real entertainment jobs for entertainment professionals, these jobs are rare and casting directors are very selective in their hiring processes.
“OK, but what does that mean?”
Firstly, on the talent side, that means that if you do not have a complete profile that is manually verified by Calltime staff and is verified “professional”, your profile DOES NOT EVEN APPEAR in the the default producer search results.
“Why do you do this?”
The approved producers using Calltime control millions of dollars worth of annual salaries for talent and we do not want to waste their time with non-professional or incomplete profiles. Our goal is to get them the best talent as quickly as possible for their productions, off of the website and back producing shows. The 2-way verification of both talent and producers is the biggest “value-add” Calltime brings to talent hiring for the entertainment industry. Talent jobs range from $1000 per week plus expenses and up, and the hiring professionals expect to deal with professional talent.
“OK, I am a professional performer, I have uploaded a complete profile, enhanced my profile by upgrading to premium and it has been verified as a “professional” profile and I still haven’t gotten a job, why?”
A good way to think about your Calltime profile is a “professional commercial” working for you 24 hours per day and 7 days a week. The profile should be optimized with the best material you can perform. It is important to remember that Calltime takes the place of you auditioning in person for the producers using Calltime for casting. Just like a live audition, a Calltime profile is not a guarantee of a job.
Calltime saves you the time and money that a live audition costs by getting you in front of hiring producers when they search SPECIFICALLY to fill positions needed in a production. Producers use the Calltime casting interface to screen and make their first, second and third cuts before requesting a custom audition. If you receive a custom audition request, you have already passed multiple rounds of casting, without even knowing it! Additionally, a large percentage of contact made through the site is “availability requests”, requesting information if you are available and interested in a specific job the producer needs to fill. In these instances, you have completely bypassed the casting process altogether!
It is important to remember that auditioning is a “numbers” game.
Some of the producers using Calltime have indicated that they have held auditions in New York to cast vocalists for a production and have seen 750 people, kept 10 for callbacks, and put 2 in their “ok to hire” folder. That is a .2% percent hire rate – less than ONE percent! Why so low? Casting directors are looking for something very specific before they even walk in the door, much deeper than the “ranges” posted in audition advertisements. In the above example, 10 fit the basic requirements and then 8 couldn’t perform the custom material to fit the production requirements. Calltime seeks to fix this problem by not wasting 740 people’s time going to a casting call that they have no hope in being hired for the position and not forcing the producer to cut 740 people to see the 10 people that fit. By providing quality on both sides of the equation, everyone benefits.
What is a typical producer workflow and timeline for hiring?
Longer running productions (6 month contracts or longer) can be cast 6 to 12 months out (or even longer), especially for contracts that change casts on a regular basis (cruise line, variety house or longer casino contracts). Producers typically scan and create an approved “bank” of performers to call on for replacements for their long-term contracts. This bank is also used for emergency replacements in the cases of performers departing their contracts early. A good way to understand the workflow from a producer side is to watch the video series on using the Calltime application from a producer standpoint in the Calltime support portal.
Good luck!
The Calltime Team
