So here we are on the crux of a new year. People start toying with the idea of changing their lives and perhaps their careers.
What would you tell someone who wanted to enter your career about your job?
Yes, in many disciplines supply outstrips demand and there may not be a lot of respect for artists so the first thing many people would say is either have a high tolerance for disappointment and poverty or find some other line.
At the same time, one of the reasons why there isn’t a lot of respect for artists is that people don’t understand what the job requires. People in the arts industry aren’t particularly adept at talking about their career path. The general public really only perceives instant successes when someone emerges on the scene and not the 10 years of mistakes and experimentation.
That said, when you think about the answers to the following, think of it in terms of minimum qualifications for anyone, not the qualifications you hold.
What educational background is required/expected?
Where are good places to get that education?
What kind of experience is required/expected?
Where are good places to get that experience?
Where are the jobs? Who does the hiring?
Will there be jobs in this field in 5 years? 15 years?
Should I be pursuing skills in those areas instead or concurrently with skills for today’s jobs?
What are the “big names” in the field?
Who are the people I should be using as role models if they aren’t the same people or are not suited to my goals.
What personal characteristics are needed for success in this field?
Include mental, emotional and spiritual if necessary. Does one need to work well in a team
or tolerate long periods of working alone in a studio under their own motivation?
What physical characteristics are needed for success in this field?
Are there are any people who have achieved success without those characteristics? (dancer’s body, pianist’s fingers, etc)
What are common misconceptions about this job/field and what it takes to be successful?
Any other questions you would suggest? Any answers you want to offer that may run counter to common expectations?
The thing I try to keep in mind is the temptation for survivorship bias. Here is an excerpt from an excellent essay:
“After any process that leaves behind survivors, the non-survivors are often destroyed or muted or removed from your view. If failures becomes invisible, then naturally you will pay more attention to successes. Not only do you fail to recognize that what is missing might have held important information, you fail to recognize that there is missing information at all.
You must remind yourself that when you start to pick apart winners and losers, successes and failures, the living and dead, that by paying attention to one side of that equation you are always neglecting the other. If you are thinking about opening a restaurant because there are so many successful restaurants in your hometown, you are ignoring the fact that only successful restaurants survive to become examples. Maybe on average 90 percent of restaurants in your city fail in the first year. You can’t see all those failures because when they fail they also disappear from view. As Nassim Taleb writes in his book The Black Swan, “The cemetery of failed restaurants is very silent.” Of course the few that don’t fail in that deadly of an environment are wildly successful because only the very best and the very lucky can survive. All you are left with are super successes, and looking at them day after day you might think it’s a great business to get into when you are actually seeing evidence that you should avoid it.”
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2013/05/23/survivorship-bias/
So true. I was partially thinking along those lines with the question about who the big names in the discipline were. Just because someone is a big name and has celebrity, doesn’t necessarily mean they are the best person to emulate either in general or for the specific person you are talking to.