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Alabama Radio Jobs Advice Question

G

guyinmgm

I'm a newbie to posting here so if the moderators need to move my question, please feel free to do so.

I am interested in a part time job (about 10 to 12 hours a week) in radio in Alabama working as a disk jockey or news person with experience from the past in both college and the real world.

My question today is to gather opinions of the board on how to approach a potential station asking about a job.

Should I email the station owner directly introducing myself and provide a background and express an interest in a radio station job.

Or should I use the snail mail and send a copy of a letter, resume, and CD rom with an air check enclosed for review unsolicited?

I'd want to chose the best method to showing myself to applicants that would allow the station owner or program director an opportunity to review my skills and make a decision to proceed further in an interview or job offer.

Most Alabama radio station sites do not have open listings for "on-air" work and I'm sure this is because of either radio automation doing the job now or a large influx of potential candidates the station has already readily available to hire from.

So my question for those (as well as feedback) is whether it is more proper to email a letter to someone in station management or ownership or send an actual letter and air check CD to the owner.

Which one or both offers the greatest exposure without alienating yourself to a potential employer?
 
From personal experience: Going and meeting with the manager/employer face-to-face always beats email and snail mail. Sending out email or snail mail takes 0 effort.
 
First, My Son, you must ask yourself this very important question.....

How much money do you want to make? Because brother, it's not the business you want to be in if you expect to earn lotsa cash!!! ;D (snicker)

Seriously, though, in my travels it has been blind luck in some cases and in others the Grace of the Good Lord that I got a job. I have found that the thing that gets results is persistence and a good deal of follow up. If you send out a resume and a demo of your work....make damn sure it is the best you have. PDs will take 5 seconds to determine if your voice is right for their station. If they don't like what they hear, zip, right in the trash, regardless of your paper resume. I have seen it happen. Heartless? Yes. But that is the way some stations work.

Send a resume....I sent out 25-30 resumes to every station in this area....Then send a followup email or letter......then continue to call back every other day, even if it is to leave a message. Sell yourself. Make them dig back into the trash to find your cd.

Remember you are in a race with 10-20-50-100 people who want that job.
Make your self stand out.
Make a resume demo no more than 2:00 minutes long (if not that) of your BEST stuff.

Always the VERY BEST at the BEGINNING of the demo.....That is the part that will make them want to hear more...The longer they listen the better chance you have to getting the job.

Sorry for rambling on, but best of luck Dood!
 
some good advice above. But always remember, you must work as hard as you can so you can get into the hot bed market in Alabama...
DOTHAN!
 
This could be an interesting topic. keem brought it up so lets give the guyinmgm some of the employment history of Dothan for the last 5 years. From April of 2004 to April of 2009, on air persons only, how many people have left and joined each station/group? I bet we will have trouble getting the number correct for all the stations. For an individual that is in a cluster and does a shift on more than one station in the cluster they only count once. Putting the turnover in plain sight will give insight to the self proclaimed "newbie". You guys do the numbers and see if my thinking is correct, I'll guess that the largest turnover is for KMX followed closely by TVY with the lowest being WOOF-AM followed closely by the FM. Am I close? List 'em boys and girls and let us see.
 
KEEM -some good advice above. But always remember, you must work as hard as you can so you can get into the hot bed market in Alabama...
DOTHAN!"

I know you are being sarcastic, Keem, ::) but to be honest, to me, Dothan was and is a "hot bed". Dothan was a huge step up from where I was before in Ohio. I was working for 3 different stations, in 3 different towns doing 3 different airshifts.....and making minimum wage at each station......I did a morning show, 5am-10am in Logan, Production Director from 3pm-7pm (or longer if I was on the board for Cleveland Indian games) in Lancaster, and a weekend night shift 6-12AM and Sunday afternoons in Columbus.
After finding All-Access on the net, I got the job here making 3x what I made there. Granted, there other better paying jobs out there (and having a wife that is a bit adverse to moving out and away from friends and family makes it difficult sometimes).
With that being said, I am thankful for every day I am on air and for all the listeners that tune in to me each day, making it possible for me to continue to keep my job.
 
No one has mentioned PERSISTENCE. It often takes weeks, months, or more to get the attention of a PD or GM .. even when a job is open, and they are asking for people on All Access and other places, sometimes there is talent nearby that management has not yet considered.

When I entered the business the first time around 15 years ago, I had a friend who worked overnights at a station .. he let me come in and spin a few records just for fun, and I actually did some on-air announcing backselling the tunes. Long story short, my buddy airchecked me and gave it to the program director, and after some "DJ classes" with the same PD, I was hired for nights on that station. I stayed there for quite a while and eventually did other things for them, like news and sports, so YES it can happen.

Perseverance can't be discounted -- unless your daddy owns the radio station (or is a very important advertising client), your chances of getting hired will be zero if you don't attempt to make personal contact with the management figures.
 
keem said:
some good advice above. But always remember, you must work as hard as you can so you can get into the hot bed market in Alabama...
DOTHAN!
Click to expand...

Funny that on my way to 'Dega yesterday for a wild race I had the chance to listen to Montgomery and Birmingham radio
and didn't hear anything that out-shined Dothan. Maybe because it was Sunday and a VT day. But for the size
market I think Dothan does radio well. And we are definitely Crabbier than you when it comes to R-I posts.
 
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