ARTICLE: Job Interview Starts BEFORE you step in the door

[MatthewShiner]

http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2012/09/21/the-receptionist-is-watching-you/


A very good reminder . . . a smart boss will be looking for input from everyone.

[Thespi620]

On a similar note--I have had many a director/producer tell me prior to auditions that they want to know if an actor is being rude in the hallway outside the room. Just goes to show, theater really is just another job--and an audition just another interview--in many ways.

[ejsmith3130]

I have experianced the same thing at auditions- casting has come down to how people treated others in the holding room, and the stage management staff. It is also interesting that it is easy to gague how people will fit into the 'corporate culture' of a show based off of how they behave at audtions. That would be one of the things I miss about collegiate theatre now that I am working professionally- you miss out (usuallly) on the audition process.

This has also taught me to ALWAYS be polite to EVERYONE when I'm on my way to a job interview... you really never know. And it's just good karma to be a nice person 

[MatthewShiner]

I ran auditions for the young child in Miss Saigon twice.

The person doing the casting spend the first round of the auditions in the waiting room, while I put them through the basics.  Run to the X on the floor, kneel, sit, stand . . . some basics.

Then call backs, he would come back in the room and work with the kids - but he based a lot of the decisions based on the parents and how they interact with their kids in the waiting room.

[SMrose]

Not only will the receptionist notice your attitude and attire but also whether you arrived on time or a bit early to the interview.

[dallas10086]

he based a lot of the decisions based on the parents and how they interact with their kids in the waiting room.

Parents don't realize that they're under scrutiny too when their child auditions. I've seen a parent pushing to have the director listen to their child sing when the audition doesn't call for it, or they have two children and the one they didn't expect to get a callback gets one and the other doesn't, or their child doesn't get a callback at all and they call someone on the board to complain. It's a mental black mark.

My current company is in the process of launching a search for a new artistic director. Every person in the company sat down together and went through a checklist of what type of person would be best for the company; when a serious candidate walks through our doors, every person who interacts with them will put in their two cents worth. The board may get to choose the next artistic director, but it will come from a pool of candidates who have passed the employees criteria.

[loebtmc]

I am an AEA monitor, and I see auditioners shoot themselves in the foot all the time by the way they treat the monitors and assistants, and word gets back to the CDs, directors and producers immediately! The worst (or best example) was during the local auditions for the first national tour of WICKED.

It was a huge huge call, but since they were seeing the dancers in big clumps I had asked the CD to have mercy on the long line of nonEqs and had been able to get most of them (future members after all) into the call, at least to be typed in or out after the AEA folks had been seen. Two of the nonEqs, tho, had wandered off before this happened, and were nowhere to be found for a long time. They stuck their heads back in at the very end of the call day, by which time the casting director had cut off seeing any more since they were about to start the agent call and needed a pit stop first.

Despite attempts to calmly sympathize with their predicament and help them look for alternatives, these two kids argued with me vociferously that they had been nearby (they weren't, I had gone hunting for them three times, and my outside voice is amphitheater size). Despite their abusive attitude, I offered to check w the CD's assistant for them, but she also concurred with the CD's cut-off, since he and the MD hadn't had a break.

Then, while the assistant was still watching, the two actors started loudly berating me and threatening me, insisting that their missing this opportunity was my fault, that I was blocking them deliberately for some imagined reason, that this was their big break and they were sure to be cast and I was standing between them and a Broadway job.

The asst took me aside and thanked me, having taken their names (I'd shown her their pic/res when I asked if they could be fit in) and said if they sent headshots to the CD's office while she was there, she'd flag them and make sure they were never not ever hired on her watch because of their attitude and treatment of me. She also kept an eye out as I left, since these two were still actively physically threatening me; this was the only time I didn't feel safe walking to my car after I closed up.