Ask a Recruiter: Interviewing (with Paul Tranchese)
A new column highlighting top-level industry recruiters' best advice for landing the job
This month: with Paul Tranchese,
Most Recently Director, Learning and Organizational Development at WME
Interviewing
DO: Your Homework
If you say you wanna work in MP lit or scripted or digital blah blah blah, I'm expecting you to talk about clients in those departments. And not just like the high end clients because we all know who CAA reps, who UTA reps, and who WME reps. By you telling me about different clients, it shows me you know what you're talking about. You've done your homework, which are 2 things we look for. So that's another thing for sure.
Also, do your homework not just on the company you're interviewing for, but on the person you're interviewing with. Even if they're just a recruiter and you're gonna go down the line and meet with other people and they're not the person you're gonna be working for, do your homework on that person. Maybe you know where they went to school. Maybe you have a friend that went there or a cousin or a family member.
Maybe you went there and you can, like, talk about that and that can change the interview to just a conversation really, really quickly. So do your homework on the company, but also do the homework on the person that you're interviewing with no matter what their role is.
DON'T: Be Nervous
In an interview, you can't be nervous. Like I think for me, that's one of the first things I look at. If you break it down, an interview is a conversation between 2 people. And the topic of that conversation is something you know a lot about which is yourself because you're the topic of that conversation. If you view it as just a conversation about yourself with another person, I think your mindset could be a little bit more at ease.
You're gonna be put in positions much more difficult than just the interview when you get said job. And we, I, whoever you're interviewing with, if you're nervous interviewing for that first gig, it's gonna be hard for us to trust you putting in putting you in a position of dealing with clients, dealing with high level executives, dealing with multimillion, maybe $1,000,000,000 deals that you're gonna be a part of. So you can't be nervous.
DO: Be Confident, but DON'T: Be Overconfident
You gotta be confident, but you can't be overconfident. Sometimes when I would interview people at an agency, I would ask them, do you think you could be an agent tomorrow?
Some people would say yes. And I would ask, why do you think that? Well, they’d say - “I know who the second lead is in this and I know about this, this, this, and that, and I know who that writer is that wrote that script 5 years ago.” But there's just so much more to it. There's deal making, and there's deal terms, and there's different vocabulary.
Stay tuned for more from Paul and other recruiters in future issues!
About Paul
Paul Tranchese (Director, Learning and Organizational Development) hails from Long Island, New York. At 19, he began his career working for Lehman Brothers in their mortgage banking sector, and shortly thereafter switched careers to play poker for a living. He was working in the Poker Room at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas where he met and became friends with a touring agent and learned about the entertainment industry. After this Paul applied for a job in the Agent Trainee program/Mailroom at UTA and joined their mailroom in 2008. Paul is proud to have built a career jumping from the Talent Department to Unscripted and then finding his home in Corporate Services/HR where he helps train the future generations of the entertainment industry. Paul is heavily involved in the Training and Development of young professionals just starting their careers, active and current assistants as well as current Agents. He most recently worked with the WME Learning and Development Team training employees as well as sourcing and interviewing potential candidates. In his free time he’s a huge sports fan and enjoys all that living in California has to offer.
