I remember being asked to write my first curriculum vitae at just sixteen years old. I sat with my mum and discussed my strengths and weaknesses and how my cv had to reflect my personality as well as my skills and experience within the work place. Since then my work cv and my professional dance cv seem worlds apart. I would never submit my dance cv when applying for an events or promotion job, I might mention that I trained at musical theatre college as this can be beneficial within the promotional industry, but the dance jobs I have done are not relevant in the field of events/promotions. Therefore I adapt my cv on a regular basis to ensure work from different promotional agencies. In terms of my dance cv that I take to auditions it is very straight forward consisting of my headshot, my training, past performances and my statistics.
Online cv's are becoming increasingly popular with sites like stuck for staff, reed and evermore job sites there is a lesser need for a hard copy cv. The same is to be said within the musical theatre world, Spotlight is a site which has a vast amount of performers, agents and casting directors on it. When signing up to spotlight your agent will submit a cv for you and pictures.Spotlight is very black and white, you cannot show any kind of personality on there it is simply statistics. However if a job is posted on spotlight you can email the casting director and sell yourself with a 'cover letter' type email. Cover letters, for me, have to be short and sweet, always 'leave them wanting more'. Here is a link to my spotlight cv.
http://www.spotlight.com/interactive/cv/2450-4535-9338
The task is to rewrite your cv as my blog profile, A blog to me is something more personal than a cv which is why I have decided to include information on my family life and why I made the decisions I made. I think it is hard to express your true character just using the web so I hope I have given you enough detail to give you a true representation on myself and my story so far.
I welcome all criticism so let me have it!
Hi Lizzie. I totally agree with you and I also find myself having to adapt my CV for different auditions/interviews etc. I now actually have three completely separate CV's, one I call my 'performing' CV which I take with me if I have an audition, I also do a bit of teaching and found myself creating a separate CV for this so it did not take up valuable space on my 'performing' one. And then finally I have my employment CV (for all the retail/bar/customer services jobs that I use as fillers between my performing contracts) I don't think Boots would appreciate my experience of acting in live-action scare maze haha!
ReplyDeleteLovely 'About Me' section, I like how personal you have made it e.g. the inclusion of your family and it is something that I may add to mine.
Like the conversation about CVs - like the links Lizzie - I am really interested in these and want to know more about the personal and professional sites - I think the professional sites are changing rapidly - maybe becoming more demanding - have you found that?
ReplyDeleteLizzie, I have just started BAPP course, I hope you're well! I found you're blog really helpful when trying to start my professional profile. As you have opted for a more personal touch and this is also the route I wanted to go. It has been really interesting reading all your points about the different CVS and how you have to adjust them for different jobs as I also found this when looking at my performance and my work CV.
ReplyDelete:)