[hociman]

Originally Posted by Thomas W. Bethe

I was recently in our local GC. The salesmen was trying to sell a young gentlemen some software and hardware so he could start doing his own mastering and not have to "pay someone else to do it" He sold the gentlemen a dbx 1/3 octave equalizer, a Behinger compressor, and Sound Forge. I was standing next to the salesman and his prey and the salesman was telling the intended victim how in a couple of days "you can be better than Bob Ludwig" The salesman got some commission and the young person got a lot of stuff that is not suited to doing what he wants to do and will take it home, never crack the manual, and attempt to do the impossible but....it is his money and he will hopefully learn his lesson.

I bought something from GC once. It was an iLok. You should have seen the look of disdain on the clerk's face when I told him I needed an iLok. He kept giving me that look until I walked out. I'm sorry if you only made $0.40 on a $40 item, but I know what I'm doing, and you don't. It's as if the only training they have ever had is to identify suckers and, well, sucker them into buying equipment.

The other problem right now is that there are sooooooooooo many "recording schools" turning out thousands of graduates for non existent jobs.

I see their ads in the subway. Sigh.

My email in box is full of resumes from hopeful candidates for jobs that do not exist here. I read them all and find it interesting that the only real jobs a lot of these people have had is working in a restaurant or retail sales yet when you talk to them they want to know about their benefit package, how many weeks of vacation they get and how much over $40,000 a year they will be making being an audio engineer. When you try and enlighten them they get upset. "Well in school they told us that there were lots of good jobs that they were preparing us for and I could have my pick and that I should wait for someone to offer me a really good job before I agree to work for them".

I started below that, and eventually surpassed it.

And your experience is ??????

I maintained all the Pro Tools systems at the school.

and you have worked for ??????

I interned at two (2) studios.

doing ?????

Whatever they asked, whenever they asked.

for how many years??????

The equivalent of a year.

I try and level with them an tell them that mixing your senior project is very nice and I am glad you got the opportunity to do it. Unfortunately it is not a real world project and that you were hung over the day you did it makes me doubt your professionalism.

I wasn't hung over.

How it sounds is very important. What you can do for me is also important and how you handle not only a LARGE audio console but how you relate to clients is also important to me. Telling me that you want to do feature films is GREAT to hear, telling me that you think you can do this in a year makes me wonder what you smoked before the interview.

I didn't tell them that, and I didn't smoke anything either.

We are a mastering and post production studio and we don't have an SSL or NEVE console and we don't do multitrack recordings with Pro Tools.

I knew that coming in.

I want to hear your thoughts on what you did and why you did it but telling me that the mixer cost over a half million dollars or that you used a rack full of equipment that was worth over 100K is really not all that informative and we don't have that level of equipment here and most studios you are applying to will not have that level of equipment.

This is where my education was really good. We had what most studios had, meaning we did not have an SSL, or a Neve, or a rack with $100k of processing.

I just had a job opening for a Creative Director/Videographer. I had a lot of applicants but they were very short on demo reels and very long on "well my professor said my senior project in black and white with a Cinéma vérité approach to telling the story of a young man in love was very well done" OK so show me the beef. "Well I had a copy of it and something happened to it and now it won't play and there are no other copies" (safeties backups????)

I presume the interview ended at that moment?

or the one person who took a look at our equipment and said "gee I have never seen any of this equipment before, what does it all do?" at the same time asking me about our benefit package.

Another interview stopping moment?

These must be the people that answer the ads on Craigslist looking for someone to do a video shoot for $25.00 or editing a feature length video docu drama for $200.

Could be.

When you start telling the young person that they may have to work some overtime and the job involves weekend work they start sweating and say "well I just assumed that I would be working "normal hours" and that my nights and weekends would be free"

I just worked 11 hours yesterday.

As you can read, I can sympathize.