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Aaron Marcus, an actor with 30+ years and 1,200+ credits, says never lie on your resume—casting directors will find out. His second tip: add your headshot to the back in the upper-right corner so people remember your face while they read.
Aaron Marcus, an actor with 30+ years and 1,200+ credits, says never lie on your resume—casting directors will find out. His second tip: add your headshot to the back in the upper-right corner so people remember your face while they read.
Hey, I'm Aaron Marcus, and actually I'm getting ready to go to a request go-see in New York, so I've got to do this kind of quickly. By the way, a request go-see, that means people have seen my photos, they are requesting to see me for— this is a large ad campaign. So if you're not familiar with my work, I've been a full-time actor for over 30 years. I've booked over 1,200 jobs so far. I've been very fortunate, had a recurring role on House of Cards. What a great show. What a great experience that was. I worked on Rectify, Mr. Robot, Gotham, Halt and Catch Fire, The Wire, West Wing. Done feature films, independent films, hundreds and hundreds of TV commercials, commercial modeling ads, radio spots, narrations. And I want to share with you a quick tip. I do have a quick tip channel on YouTube. I'll share the link with you later. But I want to talk to you about resumes. Very quickly here. So resumes are important, but they're not as important as you might think. A lot of times people are really concerned. You're just getting started. You don't have a very impressive resume, and that's okay. People understand you've got to get started somewhere. So here are the 2 tips for creating a really helpful resume. And on a quick side note, if you do read my book, How to Become a Successful Actor and Model, and you can just pick it up on Amazon, you can download it there or order it. I'll teach you step by step how to create a resume that is expected in the industry even with little to no experience. But here are 2 things you need to know about. Number one, never lie on your resume. And I know that sounds a little silly. Why would someone— well, people do. They do that all the time. They think, well, I haven't really done that much. I'll put down a play. Who's going to really know if I was in the play? Don't do that. I mean, number one, it's not a smart way. It's not a good way to run your business by lying. And number two, it's not necessary. And if you happen to be caught, and I know people who have been caught, casting directors will stop seeing you. Agents will drop you because you're untrustworthy. So don't lie on your resume. Here's the thing. The other thing that you really want to do. Very few people do it. I think it's a great idea, and I've been doing this for years. Add your headshot to the back of your resume. Put it in the upper right-hand corner. Even with your name. So that way people will see your headshot on the front, they flip it over, and they can see your face again. Whether it's the exact same photo or if you have a different look, a different kind of headshot that you want to add there, place it in there. And that way it's a marketing strategy, and that way you are touching somebody's brain a second time with your face. And it's really helpful as they're skimming your resume, they can still see you. Now here's the trick, because if you're using Microsoft Word, which is what I do, It's— it can be really tricky unless you know what to do, and now it's going to be simple. You're going to insert a photo onto your resume page and then hit Shift and just resize the photo proportionally just to make it smaller. Right mouse click and do text wrapping, and then you're going to scroll down and you will see you can do insert in front of photo. And you click that, and that will allow you to move the photo around without messing up the text. Otherwise, you can try it without doing that, and the text is going to go all over the place. So just make sure you follow those simple steps of right mouse clicking, uh, uh, text wrapping, and then do in front of. And that way you can place that photo exactly where you want, and all of your text remains the same. If you want to get more quick tips from me, you can use the link below and you can watch my YouTube channel. I've got tons of great quick tips. If you do have any follow-up questions or if there are topics that you want me to discuss, feel free to reach out to me at howtoactandmodel.com/home. I'm Aaron Marcus and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya. See ya.
