NACE Journal / Fall 2024

Years ago, as a career counselor at a four-year college where basketball reigns supreme, I was tasked by an NCAA program to meet with players to encourage them to consider other career paths, should basketball not work out. (On average, only about 1.2% to 2% of NCAA Division I men’s basketball players are drafted into the NBA each year.¹)

After inviting the 6-foot, 7-inch gifted star sophomore to sit down (that was the only way I could make eye contact from my 5-foot stance), I learned that he was majoring in math and liked working with kids. After a long NBA career involving coaching and having his own kids, he is currently finding his mathematical interest satisfied as a developer of and investor in a sports-related app.

As it happened, and not surprisingly, no other players chose to visit that college’s career center. I tell this story because there are three things to consider, which parallel the artist career narrative:

• No other players saw a reason to engage in a career planning conversation.
• Counselors/advisers were ill-prepared to guide athletes in their pursuit of their actual sports career.
• While sports are recognized in our society for teaching such skills as teamwork, discipline, strategic thinking, and more, career counselors seldom talk about sports in terms of transferable skills for potential success in post-play life.

Not incidentally, our country’s expanding gig economy is impacting all workers across the board. Even in New York City, arts workers are estimated to be 13% of the community.

As a career counselor with the Entertainment Community Fund (formerly The Actors Fund) for 25 years, I met with hundreds of performing artists and entertainment industry professionals who, like athletes, formed their professional identities during their high school and college years. For dancers, the commitment starts much earlier. Rarely do artists in training turn to their school career centers for guidance. It’s only a decade or two later that arts professionals seek help at the Fund and share a range of frustrations in moving forward in their careers. They often feel stuck and overwhelmed because their focus has been on honing skills and landing jobs without a broader understanding of the changing workplace. For the most part, during their developmental years they were neither open to nor encouraged to consider long-range career planning, which could build on their interests and creative skills and provide greater financial agility and sustainability.

At the Fund, I designed and facilitated 90- to 120-minute in-person and remote school-to-career workshops for performing arts students in college, university, and conservatory settings, covering a range of topics, including defining career/the portfolio career with multiple income streams, managing time and money, networking strategies, building a professional profile, and setting goals for each college year for experiential learning and skill building.

These workshops have been well-received by students and faculty in theater, dance, stage management, music, and other arts disciplines.

Challenges to Supporting Student Artists

Supporting arts students isn’t easy. The students often display black-and-white thinking about identity and career, and many career services professionals have limited knowledge of arts-specific career planning and the labor market for arts students. In addition, at many institutions, career center outreach and programming rarely focus on arts careers and pathways, leaving students to rely on their skill-focused instructors for guidance and mentorship.

The Student Mindset

The good news career development-wise is that artists know what it is to be passionate about work. Unfortunately, when this love strikes at a young age, early identity foreclosure often happens, manifesting as an exclusive commitment to a career identity that prevents any interest in exploring any other meaningful work options. So, when a caring authority figure recommends a backup “Plan B,” what the artist hears is, “What will you do when you can’t be you?” For the student, it’s an existential threat.

What work looks like to the creative

Arts students face a number of challenges in the world of work:

• While the U.S. arts and culture sector is robust, the individual artist is not necessarily benefitting in a consistent, predictable way.²
• Investment of time and resources is required, with no correlation to potential earnings.
• Artistic success rarely connotes financial security.
• Work is periodic or episodic; freelance performers, who may work with multiple productions, have no predictability as to how many jobs will employ them over any given year.
• Even when getting paid for a production/job, creatives must focus on getting the next job.
• Injury, illness, family crises, and other life events have the potential to detour career plans.
• Performers are working more often than not on a 1099, meaning that benefits and financial security are a struggle.
• The unemployment system is challenging for freelancers, who are always looking for work but not in the ways the system understands.
• Taking a steady “day job” often means limiting time and energy to invest in future artistic work.

How Career Services Can Help

It is important to start conversations with creatives by validating that arts careers are real work, and that the U.S. arts and cultural sector comprises a significant arts workforce. Career counselors can help students find industry-related information and identify mentors to learn how successful artists are building their careers.

Arts professionals are generally not aware of the analytical, technical, and communications skills their crafts have given them. Career services professionals can highlight the transferable skills from one world of work to another, thereby empowering students to expand their view of themselves as problem solvers and envision new ways of contributing to the world around them.

There are a number of highly valued skills the arts teach and that students can learn to articulate as they explore where they might add value beyond their main discipline. Counselors can engage with students about which of these skills they value and how and where they are showing up already in their work and lives, including:

• Adaptability and flexibility;
• Real-time problem-solving (quick corrections/solutions when things go wrong in a performance and improv skills);
• Teamwork (collaborating as part of an ensemble);
• Teachability/learning skills (ability to take direction, analyze, synthesize, and embody new information);
• Perseverance (ability to take positive action in responding to criticism and other barriers/challenges);
• Detail awareness and time management (required at every aspect of career management, including nutrition, training, personal finances, travel, juggling sideline/independent work/projects; an ingrained habit of punctuality);
• Creativity and motivational/critical thinking;
• Design/visual perception (spatial, color, lighting, visual design, costume, three-dimensional and environmental awareness);
• Respect for the preparation process (willingness to put in the time and effort before the performance; attending to process, disciplining hope);
• individual responsibility/discipline (commitment to managing all aspects of preparation and performance; discipline of daily practice, classes, self-care);
• Work ethic/showing up/follow through, including commitment to professional standards;
• Entrepreneurship/innovation (ability to create original ideas/approaches as a leader/collaborator/facilitator);
• Data literacy, leadership/project management (especially for artists with their own companies and projects);
• Event planning (ability to plan, integrate and cohesively realize events as a leader and team member);
• Leadership and emotional Intelligence;
• Communication skills (especially teachers, choreographers, directors who adapt instruction to the learning styles and ages of students; awareness of mind/body connections); and
• Self-reflection and discernment (When is struggle a core part of creative rigor and when is it undue suffering?).

In my workshops, I raise the issue of the mental health and managing anxiety as common aspects of living a life in the arts. The students laugh when I say, “If you’re not having fun, get help” and open up to a discussion of burnout and time management, as well as the value of individual mental health counseling. I share that in my family, we refer to therapy as “private lessons,”which resonates with artists in training.

Portfolio Career Management

As noted in a piece in the Harvard Business Review, “Whereas a career path tends to be a singular pursuit [climb the ladder in one direction and focus on what is straight ahead], a career portfolio is a never-ending source of discovery and fulfillment. It represents your vast and diverse professional journey.”³

Career services professionals can assist students in envisioning their portfolio components, with an eye toward financial stability, by adding desired skills and adapting to changing opportunities. Group discussions of career values and interests can help students broaden their personal understandings of meaningful work while also practicing networking skills.

What are the jobs/work that your students might add to their portfolios? One client, for example, was an actor who needed to be available and prepared to attend auditions, usually during the day. She loved fixing up her small apartment and interior design. She helped friends with their design challenges. Experiencing her as an outgoing, high-energy extrovert, I suggested she talk to a former client, an actor and teacher working in real estate sales. Through networking to confirm this interest, the client completed the real estate training course and has been selling real estate for more than a decade, during which time she also raised a family and performed in theatre and film productions.

Another client, a dancer, had a friend who was doing bookkeeping for a small company and needed someone to take over. Good at numbers, the dancer learned the basics and took over that work, generating important income while auditioning, rehearsing, and performing in various dance companies. As it turned out, the business owner was a dance enthusiast, valuing the dancer’s career success. Building spreadsheet and basic bookkeeping skills provides a good foundation for assisting in any business setting.

In all conversations with creatives, I encourage thinking of themselves with an entrepreneurial mindset. They are businesses with multiple income streams. When time flexibility is a key desire, the best complementary work is deadline-driven rather than clock-driven, meaning that the service they offer will meet agreed upon deadlines but not require being tied to a daily 9-to-5 or set schedule.

To start the exploration process, in addition to identifying transferable skills, students often need help in clarifying the time demands of their own work as well as how much income they need to meet their expenses, including health insurance, once they graduate. Managing time and money is an ongoing, ever-changing challenge that requires mindfulness and intention and is learned through trial and error. (Tip: In my workshops, I have students read and discuss Astrid Baumgardner’s time management guidelines blog post.)

Then comes the exploration of work that might complement the demands of the creative projects. Like the clients mentioned above, I have worked with musicians whose skill at reading notes on a score translates well into proofreading, coding, and data management. They often gain technical skills for producing and posting their own work, which they can offer to others. Creatives with visual skills can build and generate income with web and other media design. Given that good writers and storytellers are needed in every field, students can create content relating to interests in and outside of their art. Leadership and teaching experience translate well to project management and sales. Students can be encouraged to acquire and practice these skills through college coursework, online learning, and work/internship experiences.

Attracting Arts Students to Career Services

Attracting students to career services is a challenge, but sometimes it is the office that creates barriers. For example, I once learned about an underused career center at a private, well-endowed, arts-focused college where a resume workshop was offered at 8 a.m. I wondered how many students, whose projects and lives tended to go late into the night, even knew about it.

In another instance, a career center at a music conservatory rejected the notion of graduates grappling with the challenges of the freelance life, positing that the school’s only responsibility was to provide musical training and opportunities to perform. The rest was up to the students.

Others, however, have taken steps to address their arts students. After surveying students and faculty, a consultant hired by the school in my first example reported that students were frustrated by the lack and/or randomness of career advice from their instructors. What they really wanted was guidance on how to use their school years as a springboard for launching their arts careers. The consultant recommended a panel discussion of alumni for incoming students and families. Guest speakers were asked about their school years and their subsequent career stories. The parents, many without college or arts backgrounds, learned that fine arts and performing arts degrees steered the speakers to actual employment in diverse sustainable careers. The students heard that they could talk to someone in the career center about their career planning.

Moving Forward

My deep belief is that a healthy society requires a creative workforce, whose contributions are as important as other natural resources like clean air and clean water. As career professionals, we can and should be a source of information and empowerment by providing arts students guidance and frameworks for the diverse ways in which they can thrive and impact our communities and culture at large.

Endnotes

¹ Remland, J. (2024, May 11). What Percentage of College Basketball Players Make It to the NBA? Retrieved from https://nbaqueries.acadlog.com/what-percentage-of-college-basketball-players-make-it-to-the-nba/.

² Heinen, D. (2024, April 3). Arts & Cultural Sector Hits All-Time High in Value Added in U.S. Economy. Mass Cultural Council. Retrieved from https://massculturalcouncil.org/blog/arts-cultural-sector-hit-all-time-high-in-2022-value-added-to-u-s-economy/.

³ Rinne, A. (2021, October 13). Why You Should Build a “Career Portfolio” (Not a Career Path). Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2021/10/why-you-should-build-a-career-portfolio-not-a-career-path.