Improve your reel. Network more. Attend events. Ask for feedback. Build your online presence. Keep creating. Stay positive. But what happens when you do all of that… and you still can’t get hired? This episode of the ACCESS: VFX Podcast began with a message from junior compositor and roto/paint artist Antony Buckman. Antony had sought mentoring, improved his reel, personalised his applications, listened to the advice and kept putting himself out there. Yet despite doing everything he’d been told to do, the opportunities still weren’t coming. And eventually the question becomes much more personal: If I’ve followed all the advice, why am I still not hired? For this episode, Simon and Nene bring together artists currently navigating that reality alongside recruiters who understand what is happening on the other side of the hiring process. Joining Antony are Ashley Obote, CG Generalist; Marie Boisnard, CG Generalist / Environment Artist; and Ilmi Perez Stubbs, 3D Character Animator. Offering the recruitment perspective are Jonny Adamson, Senior Talent Manager at BRAHMA AI (DNEG Group), and Tiffany Feeney, Founder of Talent Outpost and recruiter across feature film, television, commercials, animation, VFX, media and entertainment. Together, they unpack the emotional reality of repeated rejection, burnout while unemployed, recruitment 'ghosting', the overwhelming amount of conflicting career advice and the dangerous moment when 'my work isn't good enough' starts becoming 'maybe I'm not good enough.' The conversation also challenges some familiar industry wisdom. Is endlessly improving your reel actually helping? Is applying for hundreds of jobs really a strategy? How much of getting hired comes down to talent, and how much comes down to timing, project needs, positioning and plain old luck? Tiffany explains why a great portfolio can still be the wrong portfolio for a particular studio or sector, and why understanding exactly where your skills fit may be more valuable than simply sending more applications. Jonny takes us behind the scenes of recruitment: shifting projects, internal resourcing, hundreds of candidate conversations and the uncomfortable reality of the 'no-update update'. And our artists share what it actually feels like to live through the process, including something we don't talk about enough: you can burn out looking for work before you've even got the job. But ultimately, this is an episode about more than getting hired. It's about strategy. Community. Timing. Knowing when to step away. Finding your people. Separating your value from your work. And recognising that your career is unlikely to follow the neat, linear path you may have imagined when you started. Perhaps most importantly, it's about retiring one particularly unhelpful piece of advice: 'Just keep going.' Because persistence matters, but persistence without direction isn't a strategy.
