Like Getting a Job in CG: Real Advice from Reel People, there are lots of books available that have good tips.

I know that I personally affected the hiring decisions of quite a few students and colleagues that I was impressed with or heard good things about. Personally speaking, I have gotten every single job I have maintained over the past nine years through the referrals or recommendations of my peers. But the flip side of that double-edged sword is as every bit sharp when you fail to impress, or worse, disappoint.

This is an incredibly tight-knit community; word gets around about your reputation faster than you would believe, especially when it’s bad. In one amazing case, I heard about an incident involving a job applicant’s serious misstep through the grapevine before my good friend had the chance to tell me about it that night on the phone. And while memories fade over time, you never want a bad rep to follow you anywhere for any amount of time.

I also find that a lot of my students tend to want to jump straight into the glory jobs right away; almost everyone wants to character animate for example, or lead composite on huge movies. This simply isn’t a possibility in most cases, and I frankly find it suspect that a fairly inexperienced student may be able to “get in on the ground floor” of a studio as a lead, only to find out how difficult it is to keep the quality of work high and stay on track and within what must be a miniscule budget, not to mention the quality of the project and its little to no impact on furthering a solid demo reel. This is a very serious thing to watch out for, and being able to gauge your own level of experience and expertise and being honest about it is important, especially if you are looking for upward movement. This, as we will explore later, only comes with experience and dumb luck.

But capitalizing on an upward hiring trend means being able to get into a position, no matter how low, with a studio that is working on extremely good content. That means taking the offer to be a roto guy on a serious film like Spider-Man 3 over a composite lead position on a straight to video piece that would not look as good on your reel. These jobs will always be out there, and you will inevitably find yourself in one at some point in your career (believe me on this!), but being able to get on to top shelf content when the hiring is open at any level is key to building a reputation and reel that will get more noticed no matter how low the hiring market gets. “True CG generalists who are capable of delivering phenomenal work on all levels will always be able to find work,” affirms Carvey. Getting that level of work on your reel is the hard part, and when the industry gets as busy as it is now, that is the prime time to get that experience.

And what of those looking for upward movement? This is truly a hard question to grapple with since this is a really strange industry. As I mentioned before, moving up involves having the experience that will make a producer or supervisor confident that you will not screw up their shots. So getting good at what you do will definitely help you move up. But, and here’s the kicker Yossarian would be proud of: If you’re good at what you do, why should a studio want you to do anything else?

Brian Begun has ridden the industry pendulum for years, collecting credits when times were good, which helped him keep afloat when times were bad.

A lot of upward movement in this industry involves moving laterally as well. In most cases, I’d say, you need to move out to move up, a diagonal shift, if you will. Making the jump from a CG artist to a lead may not be too difficult in one place that has the work in-house, but getting yourself on set as a supervisor or manager is when you need to think about relocation. And this again points straight back to your reel and experience. And as Begun suggests, finding the next higher position “[is] a little bit timing, a little bit luck and who you know (although I believe that we are capable of making most of our own luck).” My own diagonal movements have come from as much luck as they have my work to date. People need to know who you are before they can trust you with the responsibility of putting together and leading a team, unless you already have a proven track record for it. Without that under your belt, it’s up to the folks you already know if you’re up to the rather hefty challenge of supe work, and that is no small step for any hiring manager to take.

But if you take anything away from this, remember these words: “Who you know.” You have to be able to impress the ones you work for and with to stand a chance of being able to move up and around. The best hiring market is your circle of colleagues and the news on the street. It’s the people who are first starting out that have the most difficult time because they have little to no connections.

Eric Keller, a CG artist who recently relocated to L.A. from back east, admits that having “an in” as well as experience is really important: “A good demo was all you needed a few years a go, but now every company has stacks and stacks of unwatched demos on their desks. Plus the reality of work is very different from the experience in school; therefore, experience tends to make a huge difference… I just relocated to Hollywood so I still have a lot of people to meet.” Keller has been finding short-term freelance work starting with a few referrals from the couple of folks he’s known out here, and is slowly but surely building his credibility.

So if you don’t have a tight network to draw from, where can you find other hiring markets? What happened to the troves of recruiters and booths at SIGGRAPH looking to pluck talent out of the masses? It’s been a declining roll for SIGGRAPH the past few years, especially as a venue for finding jobs (although Disney Feature Animation just proclaimed that it would be actively recruiting CG talent at this year’s SIGGRAPH). So it still holds promise; it’s just in a different flavor now. “At SIGGRAPH, companies are inundated with reels,” Thompson suggests. “Savvy applicants send their work to companies several months before SIGGRAPH so they will have an opportunity to review it… When professionals wait to submit their reel during SIGGRAPH, they are doing themselves a big disservice as thousands of reels are being submitted at that time. But SIGGRAPH can be a good place to make connections and meet people.” There just doesn’t seem to be a traditional way to find out about jobs aside from online postings, so that is the best place to look, if you do not already have a network of people to hear about jobs through.

Dariush Derakhshani has written a slew of articles littered throughout the Web, wrote the book Introducing Maya: 3D for Beginners and contributed to Maya: Secrets of the Pros, Maya 5 Savvy and Getting a Job in CG: Real Advice from Reel People.