What casting taught me about hiring

I started Tone Talent Agency because casting in this market kept hitting the same wall. What I did not expect was that running it would change how I hire for everything else.

A production company hires a few people a year. An agency puts people in rooms constantly. You see the same decision made hundreds of times, and you get feedback on it within weeks rather than years. That volume teaches you things a normal hiring cadence never will.

The reel is the least predictive thing

Everyone leads with their best work. Their best work tells you what they are capable of on their best day with the most preparation and the most help. It tells you almost nothing about a Wednesday.

What predicts a Wednesday is much duller. Do they confirm? Do they arrive with the thing they said they would bring? When something changes at short notice, is the first message a solution or a complaint?

Talent is common and reliability is not

This sounds cynical and it is the opposite. In a market this size there is an enormous amount of ability, far more than there is paid work. Ability is not the scarce resource. The scarce resource is someone with real ability who also answers the phone.

So I hire for the floor rather than the ceiling. Not what is the best this person has ever done, but what is the worst they are likely to do on a bad day, and can we survive it.

The one exception is when someone is early. If they have no body of work yet, the floor is unknowable, and you are betting on how quickly they learn. In that case I look at one thing: how they responded the last time they got told they were wrong.