In September 2015, I graduated with my MFA in film from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts. Before you congratulate me, let me just say that, due to financial and personal constraints, it took almost ten years to finish my degree and I am now facing more than $200K in student loan debt–roughly the same as a recent MBA or JD grad.
Sometimes I wish someone had described it to me that way when I thought about going to film school. Maybe I would have done something else. But film school seemed to offer a chance to learn a necessary skill that was dominating content platforms around the globe. I also thought it was a good career choice given that I had solid communication skills, worked well in groups, and was a natural decision maker.
Fast forward through spending sleepless nights at NYU/Tisch, recovering crashed hard drives, going broke, and subsisting on hot chocolate and oatmeal from the 9th floor teacher’s lounge, and yes, I do think I’m actually “good” at filmmaking, if such a subjective distinction exists. People seem to like my films and invite me to festivals to share them with audiences, although I am embarking on a career of which John Sayles himself once said, “I’m not sure there’s a living to be made by making indie films anymore.”
But I don’t just make movies. I am also a writer, editor, marketing consultant, and a handful of other hyphens as a result of having to pay my bills while making movies.
Like most artsy creatives, I’ve performed a variety of jobs at a range of nonprofits, startups, and businesses–as a freelancer, part-timer, and salaried employee, sometimes for more than a year at a time. I am fairly business savvy–having run my own personal film company, directed casts and crews, balanced budget sheets–but haven’t completed a significantly long tenure at any one company due to interruptions for grad school, or predominantly project-based, contract, or temporary work.
It poses a hiring conundrum, one that can be difficult to narrate successfully in job interviews–or here on LinkedIn, while attempting to convert connections to business leads.
At first I chalked it up to the market, still rebounding from a recession, flooded with new grads who were sharper and more adaptable than me. But then I started to realize it had a lot more to do with the #arts economy itself and its inability to provide affordable housing, employment, workspaces, healthcare, and tax breaks for artists–particularly in New York, where we’re stuck in a crowded quagmire, competing for limited grants, space, and subsidized housing.
Like many others, I am an un(der)employed artist. I don’t mean I’m starving or broke or unemployed, though at times I have been. Underemployed is defined as: not having enough paid work or not doing work that makes full use of one’s skills and abilities.
With my first degree from Stanford–in biology, no less–I have a useful brain. But fitting myself into the job market can be tricky given its predilection for specialization and the transition of many creative companies to #freelance, permalance, and contract-based workforce, which offer flexibility with few other benefits.
And it has serious implications. A qualitative study of underemployed artists found that:
As a consequence of their occupation, artists experience exclusion and a feeling of societal devaluation, which negatively impacts their health and well-being.
I can offer countless personal anecdotes about how true this is, but the most accurate measure, well beyond the personal, of how devalued creative work is can be found on NYU’s graduate film listserve. No sooner does an ad go up for a 10-hour job paying $75 than another goes up: JOB FILLED. When I see that, I understand how dire the situation is.
Since I earn more as a marketing professional, and the film economy is basically a disaster for recent grads, I seek out the former to pay my bills. When interviewing with potential new clients, I’m sometimes told, given the amount of years and responsibilities I’ve had, that I’m overqualified. Or I’m unqualified for directorial positions at larger companies, given that I haven’t worked 5-7 years continuously within a tiered hierarchy of thousands of employees.
When adequately qualified, the jobs (mostly in the nonprofit and arts sector) might not meet my salary requirements, given my job history. Or when I’m adequately qualified and comfortable with the salary level, the interviewer inevitably leans over and asks, “You seem to like telling stories. Wouldn’t you rather be making movies? Are you sure you’ll be happy here?”
It’s frustrating trying to explain the creative life to a non-creative who has been getting steadily paid for years.
In certain ways, the vision they see is someone living their dream. But the reality is so far from that. At the end of the day, MFA grads have just as much debt as an MBA, but much less earning potential.
Maybe employers are right to think that artists are biding their time at a 9-to-5 waiting for a big deal. But why don’t those employers build equitable companies where creative people want to stay? Pay them adequate wages? Provide health benefits? Flex time? Maternity leave? I have a lot of questions.
So finally the point of this post: how can LinkedIn work better for un(der)employed artists? For those of us with useful brains who aren’t pursuing a more traditional career path, how do we excel in the job market?
Typically, those in the performing arts and entertainment rely on low-wage jobs like waitressing, bartending, and increasingly Uber. But I’m interested in understanding how LinkedIn can offer the career solutions it boasts about. Most of my creative friends hardly use it, have few connections, and take weeks on average to respond to messages. In other words, their LinkedIn pages seem to have zero-to-little impact on their abilities to make creative work, connect with artists, producers, or distributors.
So how is LinkedIn useful to artists? Should we use it at all? How can the business connections that work well for other industries translate to us? Post your comments and let’s discuss!
And for more info, check out these related articles:
- Debating an MFA? The Lowdown on Art School Risks and Returns by Coco Fusco/ARTINFO
- The Underemployed College Graduate by Jeff Selingo
- Underemployment is “New Normal” – Here’s How to Beat It by J.T. O’Donnell
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My name is Iquo B. Essien. I’m a multimedia storyteller and creative consultant. You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. For more info, visit: www.iquomma.com