Networking – Shie Rozow – Composer, Music Editor

In-Person Networking Strategies

Some people are naturally good at striking up conversation and are at ease when meeting new people. They seem to glide into a room and take charge effortlessly. I am not one of those people.

Early on, I would go to networking events and either find a relatively quiet corner of the room where I could just people-watch, or find a colleague or friend I know and chat with them. What I didn’t do, was network. And when I was introduced to new people I would often clam up.

I had to learn how to network, and have come up with a few strategies to help.

1. Practice
Every interaction you have with a new person is an opportunity to practice networking. Strike up conversation with the store check-out clerk as they scan your items, with the bank teller, with your mail carrier, your waiter, the nurse at the doctor’s waiting room… Whenever you have one-on-one face time with a new person you have an opportunity to have a brief chat, which will make you more and more comfortable striking up conversations with new people.

If you’re at a casual party, or some event with friends, use that opportunity to practice in a crowded situation. Chatting up one person that’s in front of you is one thing; striking up conversation with multiple people hanging out at a party is another. But casual non-work related events are great low-pressure opportunities to practice.

2. Set a networking goal
When heading into a new event, it’s helpful to set a goal. For example: meet and exchange contact information with 1 person (or 5, whatever you’re comfortable with), or find the keynote speaker at an event and get a photo with him or her, or hand out 10 business cards. Whatever it may be, set a goal beforehand. By setting a realistic goal, you’ll feel more at ease and less pressure as soon as you achieve it. At first, don’t set your sights too high; start with modest goals that are easy to achieve, and work your way up as you become more practiced.

3. Work the room
Walk around casually and try to identify people you want to meet. When you identify your target(s), try to make eye contact. If your eyes meet, you’ve made a connection. Smile, walk over and introduce yourself. If the person is avoiding making eye contact, move on. They’re likely nervous or uncomfortable, too. You’ll likely see them again later. Hopefully they’ll loosen up a bit, and become more comfortable creating an opening for an introduction. Sometimes all you can manage is a smile and a nod. But then when you make eye-contact a second or 3rd time, it somehow becomes easier to approach them. There’s a familiarity that makes it less intimidating as you recognize them and they recognize you.

4. Be compassionate
When meeting new people, be compassionate. Assume they’re just as nervous as you are. Do your best to put them at ease. Mentally, it’ll put you on equal footing with everyone else in the room, and make them more relatable. Focusing on making them comfortable with you rather than the other way around will also help distract you from your own nervousness.

5. Be mindful of your presentation
Dress appropriately, comb your hair, look nice. Don’t dress like a slob. Casual is fine at a casual event, there’s nothing wrong with jeans and t-shirt, but if your jeans sag down half way down your butt and there’s a mustard stain on your t-shirt you won’t be taken seriously. A nice pair of jeans, and a t-shirt with a nice print, or perhaps an over-shirt are still casual, but not sloppy. Keep in mind If you’re at a casual event and you’re the only one wearing a suit & tie, you may be perceived as aloof or pretentious. So dress appropriately, be mindful of how you look, and the impression that look gives. First impressions matter.

6. Be nice
This may seem obvious, but if you’re unpleasant you won’t get far. If you’re nice, you’re more likely to get a positive response. Don’t be loud or obnoxious. Be polite, be courteous and don’t forget to smile. If you look grumpy or sad or intense, that’s a turn-off to new people, so smile. It’s infectious and disarming, it puts people at ease and makes them more likely to want to talk to you. There is also the old adage “be nice to people on your way up because you’ll meet them on your way down.” You never know when your paths will cross again, so don’t burn any bridges.

7. Be generous
Generally speaking, people like to talk about themselves. Rather than focusing on yourself, be generous with your time and let them tell you about themselves. You can lead them on with questions about who they are, what they do and so on. Often once you get them going, they’ll just keep going. If they ask you questions, or want advice, give it freely. If you can offer referrals, do it – though only if you truly believe the person you’re referring is worthwhile. A bad referral reflects badly on you. Focusing on them and sharing your insights and expertise when appropriate will come back to you in spades.

8. Don’t rush
If you offer your business card immediately you may come off as pushy, or worse, desperate. Don’t be in a hurry to give people your card. Engage in conversation, and when it’s run its course hopefully they’ll ask you for your contact info. If they don’t you can say something like “I’d love to continue this conversation another time, do you have a card?” If they say yes and give you their cards, simply offer yours in exchange. If they say they don’t have a card with them, offer to add their info to your phone right away, or if they or you are in a rush, offer your card and say something like “please shoot me an email with your info so we can stay in touch.”

9. Follow-up
Whenever someone exchanges information with you, make sure to follow-up. Send a short email along the lines of “It was great meeting you last night. I enjoyed our conversation and look forward to seeing you again.” If you discussed something specific, include that in the email. If you discussed meeting up again, say something like “I’m available to meet most of next week, when would be a good time for you?” Keep it short, concise & to the point.

10. Build relationships
The goal of networking is to build relationships. Relationships lead to jobs & job-related opportunities.

Say you had a great chat at an event, and sent a follow-up email, that’s not enough. You must nurture the relationship. Check in on occasion. If you know their birthday, make sure to wish them happy birthday. Holidays are a great excuse to send out an email wishing them happy holidays. Just finished a cool project? Send an email letting them know about it.

Always end your emails generously. For example, “if there’s anything I can do for you, don’t hesitate to ask” is better than “I’m currently available and looking for work.” Both statements let them know you’re available and interested, but the former makes it about them and you’re there for them, the latter makes it about you and you’re now asking something of them.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me, or add a comment.

The Importance of Networking

Networking

I’m often asked how one gets work. Based on my own experience and from hearing stories from many of my colleagues and friends, I think I can unequivocally say there is a simple answer to this question: Network!

The reality is that the likelihood someone is going to see your name in the credits of a film or TV show, look you up and hire you is almost no-existent. The chance someone is going to stumble upon your website, fall in love with your music and have you score their movie is about as good as winning the lottery. This is doubly true if you’re an orchestrator or music editor or music supervisor. Before you start sighting examples of something like that happening – yes, on extremely rare occasions it has happened. But hoping someone will find you is not a strategy to building a career. If you want to build a career, you must actively build it.

People hire people they know and like. If they need to fill a position and they don’t know anyone, they ask their friends and colleagues for recommendations. Sometimes they reach out to an agent, and good agents or managers will actively seek out work on their clients’ behalf. But you may not have an agent, and even if you do, you shouldn’t rely on your agent to make things happen. You need to control your own career, and make sure people know you exist.

So how do you do that? Network! Meet as many people as you can. Meet other composers, music editors, music supervisors, directors, producers, music executives, picture editors, post-production supervisors… Develop relationships with them, stay in touch with them, check in with them occasionally. You never know when one of them will be in a position to hire you or recommend you for a job.

Go to industry events, not just music events, but other industry events, too. Last year I joined Film Independent and attended their annual Forum, which is geared entirely towards producers, directors and writers. I spent two days surrounded by filmmakers and most of the time I was the only composer there. There were hundreds of attendees, and as far as I could tell there were only 3 other composers at the event, and they weren’t there the entire time. I introduced myself to new people at every opportunity. Collected cards, handed out cards and most importantly, followed up by email with each and every person that offered me a card.

One of those meetings led to me scoring Nocturne Boy. I’m in talks to compose 3 other upcoming projects right now, all thanks to meetings at networking events. Whether or not any of these movies will materialize remains to be seen, but I’m now in the running for projects that I wouldn’t even know existed had I not gone out and networked. One of them isn’t even with the person I met, that person recommended me to someone else!

Here’s a good way to look at it. If the odds of landing a job are 1 in 100 and you only know 1 person that can drive work your way, there might be 99 projects before you actually get one. If you know 10 people that can funnel work your way, your odds are now 1 in 10, and if you know 100 people there’s a good chance you’ll find work right away. If you know 1,000 people, you’ll likely be turning down work because you’ll be too busy. Of-course real-life isn’t as clear-cut as theoretical statistics, but the underlying concept holds true. The more people you know that can send work your way, the more likely you are to build and maintain a thriving and busy career.

If you’re like me and you’re not a naturally outgoing kind of person, networking is hard. I’ll write more on that in another post…

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me, or add a comment.

Quick Tip: Remembering Names of People You Meet

Networking, Quick Tips

I have a confession. I’m terrible at remembering names. I suspect if people didn’t call me by it on a daily basis, I would forget my own name. Yet it is important to remember names, not to mention that it impresses people whom you’ve only met once when you know their name when you see them again months later. And in this business we meet people at networking and other events all the time.

Here are a couple of tricks I’ve learned over the years to remember names.

1. When introduced to a new person, repeat their name out loud – “Nice to meet you, John.” That act of saying their name helps commit their name to memory, at least to short term memory. When you part ways do it again – “It was a pleasure speaking with you, John.”

2. If they hand you a business card, take a moment to study the card and identify something unique about it – the color, the font, there’s a photo in the background or on the back, it’s an unusual shape, paper weight, whatever, and think of something about the person you’ve met. Then tell yourself something that connects the two. For example “John’s wearing brown shoes and has a brown business card” or whatever connection you choose to make. Making these little connections helps commit things to memory.

3. As soon as you can, add the person’s contact information to your address book and use the notes field to make a note about them that will help you remember who they are. For example “Met at XYZ, talked about ABC.”

4. Followup with an email within 24 hours of meeting. It can be a short email “Hi John, it was a pleasure meeting you and talking about XYZ lat night.” This email reinforces the above, which helps you remember them.

In my experience, that’s enough to either remember the person’s name, or at the very least remember enough so that when you see them again you can quickly look them up and find them in your contacts even without remembering their name.

Here’s an actual example of these tips from my own experience. I was at a Film Independent members night event, where I met about 20 new people. One was a young director, and after using the above tricks, when I got home a couple of hours later I copied his information from his card to my address book. Here’s the note I made for him “Met at Film Independent members night – recently married, has a film about being engaged.”

I went to his site, and watched his short film. Then I emailed him:

Hi _______,

It was a pleasure meeting you last night. I just wanted to drop you a quick line so you have my info handy. I just watched your short Dinner for Two on your site – such a great concept and well done. I think your idea for doing something exploring being engaged is really smart. Please stay in touch, and hopefully we can work together some time.

And congrats again on your recent marriage!

Best,

Shie

This email triggered a response and we went back and forth a bit, discussing his next film and possibly having me score it. A couple of months later, we were both at another Film Independent members night. When I saw him I couldn’t remember his name, but thanks to all of the above I remembered who he was. I did a quick search on my phone’s address book for “film independent engaged” and his contact came up, allowing me to get his name. A few minutes later I was able to greet him with “Hi ______, how are you?” He recognized me and remembered I was that composer guy he’s been talking to, but didn’t remember my name. He also commented on how impressed he was that I remembered his name.

His next film is currently in pre-production, and we are discussing me scoring it.