1. You don't have much time to impress someone so keep it snappy. Make use of those short films and videos you made at university or college and put together a show reel of your best work. Companies will not want to watch your student version of Lord of the Rings but are happy to view a few minutes of your best stuff. A short clip is more than enough to give potential employers an idea of your skills and imagination.
2. Know your audience. Don't send production people DVDs — no one will play them. You want to make it as easy as possible for your work to be viewed and websites such as YouTube and Vimeo are great for this. Just don't forget the URL when writing to companies and make sure the link is in a prominent place on your CV.
3. Have a passion for the topic as well as for TV. Target the companies of the programmes you really love, and enjoy watching — if the content of the programmes is indeed close to your heart, it will be much easier to convince someone they should hire you. But it's not just about telling them you've got passion, show how you've used it outside of your career. For example, want to work for a production company that make a lot of cookery shows? Take a cookery course. Want to work in comedy? Get some bar-work in a comedy club. Anything which shows you as committed to the subject will help you stand out.
4. Market yourself. Yes, everyone's doing it but that's no reason not to try and make your voice heard before you even get to interview. Its easy to set up your own webpage these days so use one to create a blog and give constructive feedback on what you like and don't like about the current output on TV. Use Twitter and Linked In to start conversations with those in the sector, be self-promoting and direct them towards you work (see point 2).
5. Heard the one about the guy who doorstopped a commissioning editor...? No? That's because it's a bad idea. Whilst you might think finding the home address of a producer and hanging around outside waiting to confront him with your wonderful idea shows initiative, in fact it's been done many, many times before. No one likes to be confronted like this no matter how charming you think you might be. If you're set on doing some guerilla marketing, find out who works in his or her team — someone lower down the pecking order might be more receptive to this approach.
6. Be prepared to work extremely hard. You might be the next Martin Scorsese but for now accept that you're probably only going to get a job as a runner. Everyone has to start at the bottom so make the most of it, build contacts, charm colleagues and perfect your tea making skills. This might seem like menial stuff but filming on location can be tough. You're working to extremely tight deadlines, it's long hours and your social life will be curtailed, if you can put up with this and still make tea with a smile you're the sort of person the crew will want back. And maybe this time they'll listen to your idea for The Godfather IV.
Joe Mahoney is Managing Director of ProductionBase
