As a sound engineer, and in particular as a studio owner, I get a considerable number of job requests each month. These vary from general emails from colleagues letting me know that they are looking for work – usually having finished a long tour – to hopeful requests from young engineers looking for their first employment.
As a freelance engineer myself I still need to constantly network, sending out mails and generally letting people know that I’m around and looking for gainful employment. Because I am fairly well known for working with one particular band, the general assumption is that I am always busy. Luckily a lot of the time I am, but as of this month I have nothing of substance in the way of touring work to look forward to for the rest of this year! I still have a mortgage to pay so I have to constantly be thinking about work.
This is a fact of a freelance engineer’s life. You can never really relax, constantly worrying about when the next job will come in. I still send out CV’s and try and keep in contact with old clients, bands, engineers and managers, in order to chase new work. I, in turn, am sent several CV’s every week. In the last year I have only received two CV’s that were good enough to make me want to invite the engineer in to meet. If you want to get work, make yourself look employable!
Yes I want to know that you have studied sound, but I also want to hear that you can engineer! Send me a link to some mixes! I can hear potential talent in a mix, whether it be a band recorded in a classroom, a gig in a pub or a home studio project in Cubase. I know about sound, I can tell when an engineer has promise.
I also want to see that you can hold down a job! List those part time and summer jobs! Holding down a part time job for a year takes commitment, even if it is stacking shelves! Unfortunately I rarely get a chance to offer inexperienced engineers work, but I do remember people and this week have hopefully got one lad working an album project. So get a good CV together, investigate where you are sending it to, make it interesting and put a link to something you have recorded!!!!