Creating a Professional Presence on LinkedIn for Stage Managers | brokeGIRLrich
I’ll admit that I don’t think LinkedIn is the main way to find jobs in the arts, but as someone who does some hiring, I would find it a little weird if someone didn’t have a LinkedIn.
I also do some solid stalking of other stage managers career paths. I find folks doing the jobs I want to be doing and look at what they were doing a few steps before.
So what to focus on when creating a LinkedIn profile. Let’s start simple.
The first thing anyone sees is your profile photo and background photo.
For a profile photo, I’m looking for a fairly recent photo that is primarily focused on your face. I use these photos to confirm I’m now looking at the profile of the right person, if I’ve met you in the past, or I file away what you look like so I can recognize you when you arrive to interview or shadow or whatever the reason is that we’re going to meet.
I always see tips that the picture should look professional, and it should, but that’s an interesting concept sometimes in the arts, right? But it is a thing to consider if your dream job is like to call The Lion King and you’ve got purple hair and tons of piercings. You might be the best show caller ever but Disney is a massive corporation and you might want to check out what other Disney stage managers profile photos look like. Disney may well be one of those companies with dress code policies – the parks and the cruise ships certainly have them.
The background picture should showcase your work somehow. You can use dynamic pictures from performances you’ve worked on (if you have permission from the photographers/production) or even use bits of paperwork that display your organization skills (again consider any confidentiality issues).
I like to use a picture from a French Scene document. It’s got enough going on but it’s not so busy it’s hard to look at.
Under your profile picture is your name and then a sort of professional subtitle. It defaults to your last job title but you can edit that. If you want people to realize that you do more than your current job title, feel free to edit it and let folks know.
Below that you’ve got your About section. I’ll admit, I completely cop out here and personally I have a little note directing people to my personal website which contains a more detailed portfolio of my work.
But every single article by people who are very skilled at creating LinkedIn profiles point out that I am failing here and this should be a solid paragraph about my skills, wins and competencies I have brought former employers and will carry on to the next one.
One tip here is to utilize the power of ChatGPT. Share your resume with it and then ask it to write you three different About sections for your LinkedIn profile. Compare and contrast what you like about each one. Tweak the winner a bit. And there you go.
As an employer, I’d certainly look at your Experience. This is a great place to really expand on your work in a way that a traditional resume doesn’t allow. Maybe you wrote you did a production of Romeo & Juliet on your resume but it was a massive production in a large or unusual space – utilizing pictures from the show or links to reviews with pictures can make that point for you.
If you’re a strong contender for a job, I will actually go through your profile pretty carefully, so if you’ve also highlighted job duties on the Experience section, that can help me feel confident interviewing or hiring you. Technologies used. Duties like show calling or scheduling. These things are great to mention.
Under Experience is Education. With enough Experience, I don’t really care about Education, though I will certainly give it a glance to see if you studied at a program I’m familiar with.
Next you can list any Certifications. For a stage manager, I’d be a bit surprised if you didn’t have a few – especially a basic first aid and CPR. You can also stand out a bit here too. Say you are obsessed with Cirque du Soleil and part of your plan to work there involved getting SCUBA certified. Here is a place you can make sure folks know you have that skill.
Below that is Skills, which is actually a little beyond your control. Other folks endorse your Skills. However, it does look good to at least have a few endorsements. It only takes someone a minute to endorse you for a few.
Alternatively, Recommendations are also very nice but do take more time for someone to write. However, if you ask, a lot of people may not mind writing you a Recommendation. I don’t even think there’s a problem with writing a post mentioning you’re trying to brush up your LinkedIn profile and if anyone has a few minutes to write you a Recommendation, you’d really appreciate it.
Finally, you’ve got Courses, which can be used to highlight some skills you may have that aren’t full on certifications. I also think that this can be a useful space for someone who is still a college student, though I would probably edit it shortly after graduation and remove the university course info.
You can round out your profile with any Honors & Awards and little badges of any Organizations you are a part of. This is another good spot to look for groups we have in common. It never hurts to find a connection.
