What I Look For When I'm Hiring
or, the one simple selfish question I ask myself during the interview process
Tomorrow afternoon I jump into a new gig I’m terribly excited about, showrunning the second season of one of my favorite TV shows. It hasn’t been announced in the trades or anything, so I’m not gonna name drop it here yet. Not super sure why. Maybe superstition. But it’s a great show with a great lead and a great throwback premise. The first season was a big success both creatively and commercially, with terrific writing and performances from start to finish. I’m very grateful and eager and only slightly daunted about it all.
Career-wise, I toggle back and forth between features and TV. Also between production and writing-for-hire/development. The slightly eclectic nature of my career means I don’t have a set way of doing things. Neither do I have an entourage of “my people” who come with me from project to project. For this new job starting tomorrow, for instance, I’m only bringing in one person I’ve worked with before.
And generally speaking, unless I’m showrunning, I also don’t have an assistant. (I didn’t have an assistant while directing Americana.) Although I’m somewhat absent-minded, I’m also fairly self-sufficient and (I think? hope?) low-maintenance. I usually don’t really need or want someone to get me coffee or drive me to set or manage my schedule. I can handle it. Usually.
But I do need support staff while running a TV show. And I also, obviously, need a room full of great writers. And a roster of great directors. And a great cast and crew and etc etc.
Right now, since I’m emerging from the interviewing and hiring process on the support staff and writer front, I thought I’d share one bit of insight from my side of these conversations.
Whenever I’m talking to a potential candidate for any of the above positions, the question I’m silently always asking myself is this:
Will this person make my job easier?
That’s just about always the deciding factor for me when it comes to hiring decisions. Because inevitably, I end up meeting with more qualified and appealing candidates than I can hire. I also tend to personally like most of the people I meet. So, I have to come up with some kind of rubric.
And because showrunning is such a demanding, challenging, time-consuming job, I have to be super selfish and pretty picky in deciding on who I’m taking on that journey with me. So the deciding factor is always the same thing.
In the big picture, which person will most make my amazingly rewarding but rather difficult job a little bit easier?
Support Staff — a few roles
It takes a lot of guts and energy and backbone and resilience to be an assistant or support staff of any kind in the entertainment industry. It’s a high pressure job with long hours and lots of strong personalities. It almost never offers a commensurate amount of status or pay. But it’s also a fairly tried-and-true way of getting a foothold in the industry and learning how the various machines run.
The support staff jobs can vary from project to project. But some roles are pretty consistent. For a TV room, there’s usually always a writers assistant who is always there, transcribing the various discussions going on during the day and then collating these notes afterwards into an accessible, readable, searchable document.
This proves invaluable, especially when writers go off to outline and write an episode. These daily notes documents need to be organized and accessible enough to be legible, but also need to be detailed and inclusive enough to still be usable as content. (All key creative discussions need to be noted.) Weeks after a conversation first takes place, these room notes will still be used as a reference for the different ideas that popped up in the room, from plot twists and character ideas to themes and lines of dialogue.
Another key support role is the script coordinator. Among their duties, they proofread scripts, make sure they are formatted consistently, and seek out possible problem spots in terms of clearances. Once prep and production start up, they distribute scripts to the various departments: production design, costume design, props, transpo, etc. And when script revisions inevitably occur, they distribute new pages while tracking the changes involved.
Every show I’ve been involved with has also featured a showrunner’s assistant. This is a person whose work is most explicitly geared at making the showrunner’s job easier. Every showrunner is different, so this role can vary wildly.
In my experience, this person is most important in terms of fielding incoming calls and emails and coordinating communication across various spheres (writers room, producers, physical production, post-production, studio, network, agencies, etc). They also manage the showrunner’s calendar. And once prep and production start up, this person will also often sit in during meetings — either to document creative conversations, or to represent the showrunner’s perspective on key matters if the showrunner is elsewhere.
For me, the person in this role also serves as a sounding board on creative and interpersonal matters involving the show. Hey, what do you really think of this outline? Has X seemed particularly angsty this week to you? We need to cut three minutes from this episode — any ideas? What’s going on with props right now? Etc.
When I was running Damnation, I also ended up playing a shit ton of ping pong with my assistant Ryan, especially once post-production hit. It was a great stress reliever, even if I did end up slightly tearing my rotator cuff from playing a bit too vigorously. Having an even-keeled temperament and being an easy hang are especially good traits on this front for me.
A couple of shows I’ve been on have also had a personal assistant for the writer’s room. Since the writers assistant (taking notes), script coordinator (coordinating script-based logistics), and showrunners assistant (fielding communication) all tend to be pretty stationary because of their duties, the office PA will handle remaining errands and tasks. These can include organizing lunch orders and picking them up, or going on a coffee run, or making sure the room is stocked with whatever supplies or snacks it needs to function.
But these roles aren’t necessarily set in stone. I was on one show where all four roles were basically split between two extremely capable, extremely overworked young women. For Damnation, we didn’t have a room PA. On another show, we had all four roles, plus a researcher. It depends on the needs and resources of the show.
In hiring for this new show, I brought in one support person from a previous project. And a person from S1 of the show is coming back for S2. That left just two positions open.
Everyone I interviewed for these positions has ambitions beyond a support staff role. Usually ambitions in terms of writing, but also directing and performing. I quite liked everyone I interviewed. Everyone had some degree of experience.
So, how did I make my hiring decisions? I had to decide who I thought — four or seven or eleven months from now — would still be showing up every single day with a positive outlook, with a high-level of capability, and with a high-level of reliability. Because those are the traits that will make my job a bit easier during those times when I’ll most need it.
It’s possible — or even likely — that all of the people I interviewed would be capable of being such a person. But I ended up hiring the candidates who most effectively communicated and demonstrated how and why they would be that kind of person. And by doing so, they more or less made the decision for me.
Sometimes I think ambitious young people err in thinking that if they communicate how much the job will help their own personal ambitions, that this’ll somehow help them get hired.
The trouble is — and I’m only speaking for myself here — I’m not going to make a hiring decision for one of these jobs based on who that job is going to help out the most. I mean, I’d like to help as many people as I can. But ultimately, I’m going to make a hiring decision based on my impression of who is ultimately going to make my job a little easier.
Why? Because I’m selfish. And eight months from now, when weather has shut down production for two days, and a hidden scheduling conflict means we’ve lost a key director at the last minute, and a key crew member has just been fired and must be replaced, I need to be able to look across the office at whoever is helping me handle this inevitable shitstorm and think to myself, with all sincerity, “well, thank God ______ is here.”
Hiring writers for TV (like hiring directors for TV) is a bit of a different bag. Although I like to try to find ways to make sure support staff are also creative contributors to a show, that’s not that their primary job.
For writers, it is. But I still have that same selfish question — “Who is going to make my job easier?” — when reading and interviewing and considering writers. But here, the creative component plays a much bigger role.
In a nutshell, my attitude while looking for writers: I’m trying to create a collective storytelling organism that’s uniquely suited to tell this particular TV show’s story.
This organism will need to have a creative, engaging, hard-working temparement, so the meshing of individual personalities will play a part. This organism should also have a rich and varied trove of experiences — both personal and professional — to draw upon while breaking and discussing episodes. Also, this organism should collectively have a skillset that’s custom-made for this particular show’s particular mode of storytelling.
So the answer as to who is going to make my job easier in this sphere has a lot more variables. Unless I just don’t connect with someone or respond to their writing, it’s all dependent on what I think the storytelling organism needs.
The show I’m now running has a pretty stable formal component — the show has essentially the same template from week to week. So one thing the show’s collective organism needs is for super original, idiosyncratic thinkers and writers who’ll help us find unexpected wrinkles within this fairly stable template.
But I also need the collective storytelling organism to reliably craft an emotional narrative journey over sixty pages, episode after episode. And to come up with interesting new characters and worlds every week. And to find surprising moments of emotional resonance and tonal surprise. And to be reliably funny. And to intuitively understand and capture the kind of hipster retro vibe of the show.
Then, when it’s time to actually write scripts, I need the individual writers who make up this collective organism to be able to go write scripts that are as close to the mark as possible in terms of the show’s vibes and pleasures and strengths. (I’m not the creator of this show, but I think its vibes and pleasures are pretty in synch with my own tendencies — which is probably a big part of why I got the gig.)
All of this is to say, it’s pretty much impossible for me to say ahead of time what kind of writer I will most want to hire. It all depends on the current needs of the collective organism that I’m trying to build and lead.
But I can say this: when hiring for TV, I do get hyper-fixated on writers who — starting on page one — write interesting individual scenes, and who create interesting characters, and who find interesting moments of humor, emotion, and nuance right away. Because I think those are the skills that transfer most readily to writing episodes for someone else’s show.
Telling a long cumulative story based on personal life experiences — where most of the power of the narrative lands at the end, or derives from a private trauma — is less likely to jump out at me than crafting immediately engaging scenes from the get-go. Especially for a show like the one I’m doing now, where you need to grab a viewer’s attention and curiostiy in the opening minutes and wrap things up in sixty minutes.
There are two reasons why I’m writing this post. Well, three. One: I like to pontificate. Two: I want to demystify the process, especially for those currently outside the industry but who want to find a way into it. And three: because it actually took me a little while to realize what my job really was back when I was starting off.
I began my screenwriting career on the show Longmire as a freelance writer. I wrote two episodes in season one. Then I was hired back to freelance on season two and I wrote four episodes. For season three, I moved to LA and was made a full-time writer and worked my way up to writer-producer.
During season one and at the start of season two, I thought my job was to be an artist and to make the best TV that I could possibly make, per my own tastes and inclinations. It took me until sometime in season two to realize what my job really was. My job was actually to make my showrunner’s job easier.
Sometimes that did mean being an artist and trying to make the best TV that I could possibly make, per my own tastes and inclinations. But sometimes it instead meant swallowing my instincts and finding a way to embrace my showrunner’s instincts so I could best execute her intentions. When was it better to do one instead of the other? Sometimes it was unclear. But it was my job to figure it out. Or else they’d (rightfully) find someone else who could.
I wasn’t hired to have a rewarding creative experience. (Though I had one.) I wasn’t hired to write my idea of great TV. (Though I think I wrote some great episodes.)
I was actually hired to make Greer Shephard’s job easier. And what that meant varied from day to day, season to season, hour to hour. Sometimes that meant calling Greer up from set because something was going haywire and I thought she should know. But sometimes it meant not calling Greer from set when something went wrong because I knew she was behind on scripts and it would help her more for me to make the best judgment call I could and not give her an additional distraction.
Starting season two, my mantra to myself was “high performance, low maintenance.” It served me pretty well and I’ve tried to maintain it as much as I can, a decade or so later. Once these things clicked for me — realizing what my job actually was, and what my personal motto should be — I really began to thrive on the show. And I started getting more and more responsibilities and opportunities and creative leeway.
I actually remember the moment on Longmire where I felt like I fully became a professional TV writer. I like to think this moment also made myself the staff writer version of “thank God ______ is here.”
Anyway, we were pretty deep into season two. The season’s opening episode had been a doozy. Early in the season, we were already behind the eight ball in terms of schedule and budget. Halfway into the season, one of the fulltime writers was let go (this is how I ended up writing four episodes as a freelancer). By this point, scripts were pretty well behind schedule.
In the middle of all of this, I came down to New Mexico (where we filmed) to break episode twelve (of thirteen). Because of the whole situation, our breaking process on the episode was shortened and rushed. On most episodes, we’d spend two full weeks breaking a mystery, spending a full day each day, grinding out every scene. I think we broke this episode over seven or eight days, with most of those being just a few hours here and there. We never figured out in the room exactly how our sheriff solved the crime or captured the perp. It all felt dangerously unformed.
A bit disoriented by it all, I went off to write the script. (As I recall, I didn’t have time to even do an outline.) My family was also in the middle of moving across the country from Ann Arbor to Los Angeles. My sons were both under five. It was a bit stressful on that front, too.
At this juncture of season two, our beloved show was probably as close to the breaking point as it would ever be — as far as I knew — during its six season run. There were worries that production would be temporarily shut down — a huge cost and hassle, especially for a show that was always on the verge of cancellation — if we got anymore behind on delivering scripts.
Basically, I just buckled down and wrote — as far as I recall — a pretty close to production-ready first draft of the episode. I think it took me a little over a week. As self-serving memory serves, I’m pretty sure I solved all of that episode’s mystery plot holes on my own while delivering some scenes/moments that became fan favorites, including a confrontation between our sheriff and a rival that was focused around Homer’s Iliad and a little bit of cowboy poetry that I’m still rather proud of:
Basically, what happend was that — in a moment when my showrunner most needed it — I actually came through and made my showrunner’s and head writers’ jobs easier. Which was my actual job all along. It just took me until then to fully realize it.
I’ll share one more little tidbit. In my weird dips in and out of the world of making TV, I’ve seen a fair number of young writers — all talented, all likable — come through the doors of various shows. Sometimes they get to go to set during production.
I’ve seen younger writers show up on set for an episode and be kind of bemused by the process, cracking wry jokes at video village and staying a bit aloof from it all.
I’ve seen younger writers show up for an episode and be very earnestly, sincerely I’m-just-so-happy-to-be-here while eagerly watching the process play out like they were a kid given a front row ticket to a Lakers game.
I’ve also seen young writers show up on set, dive in right away, and get actively involved in the prep process while developing a close working relationship with the episode director. Then I’ve seen them bust their ass for a couple of weeks doing whatever it takes to make sure their episode delivers creatively while staying on schedule and on budget.
Just about all of the writers from this last camp have had their careers take off, to some degree. It’s one thing to be talented, or likable. It’s another thing altogether to reliably and consistently make your showrunner’s job easier. It’s the best path I know to making yourself indispensible. And for a lot of future working writers, their first interviews for support staff positions — as well as their eventual performance in those roles — will be their first opportunity at carving out such an eminently rehirable identity for themselves.
You seem like an odd choice for Poker Face but that's obviously it.
Where can I send my resume?!