Creative Career Job Search Strategies

Learn how to pursue jobs, gigs, internships,
apprenticeships, and other professional
opportunities efficiently and effectively. Develop
fluency with platforms and search strategies to
maximize your time management and results. Build a
toolkit to arrange your priorities, contacts, and
content in order to find, apply for, and secure
career opportunities in a streamlined, thoughtful,
sustainable way. Develop your profiles,
portfolios, and presence for employer and
collaborator audiences as well as a suite of
documents and templates from which to customize
future application submissions. Determine your
priorities pertaining to future work environments,
companies, teams, pathways, and goals. Learn how
to find opportunities (even if they are unlisted!)
no matter how well or poorly they are being
described and how to expand your search to reflect
your holistic identity as a working artist.
Consider and determine how you define career
success for yourself as well as what kind of
career rhythm you seek. Think about possible
pivots; prior planning prevents poor performance
when you expect the unexpected. Examine ways to
broaden your network by connecting directly with
peers, recruiting professionals, and others with
whom you have a shared area of interest. Depending
on your area(s) of career interest, you may be
tasked with developing resumes, cover letters, CVs
(curriculum vitaes), and other documents as well
as digital content for specific professional
networking platforms, apps, and websites.
The creative economy is complex, demanding, and
ever-changing. Boost your confidence as a future
job-seeker taking this class as a 'test-drive' to
immerse yourself in what it will be like to apply
for career opportunities. Pivot out of 'the
struggle is real' into 'the juggle is real' as a
creative professional in pursuit of great
opportunities to make art, make a living, make
community, make a difference, and make life and
work plans and priorities tailored to your
individual artistic practice and goals.