Career Placement: Connecting Students & Studios
What’s the best thing you can hear as a soon-to-be graduate? “The deadline has been extended.” “Free pizza in the student lounge.” Well, yes, those are both wonderful phrases to any college student’s ears, but our vote may go to “There’s an open position you’d be perfect for at (fill in the blank studio)!”
Making the decision to commit to a college program doesn’t come without concerns and wondering if you’ll get a job at the end is usually among them. Here at Gnomon, we strive to place graduates into their dream jobs right out of school, and in order to do that our Career Placement office supports our rising graduates and alumni with a wide variety of services beyond simply posting job listings.
“Our daily task is connecting students with the studios,” Den Johnson, Director of Placement and Alumni Engagement, said. "We try and do everything we can to make sure our students are considered for the available jobs out there.”
And Gnomon graduates are getting those jobs. In fact, in the 2022 reporting year for our national accreditor, ACCSC, we had a 98% placement rate* which means that our students gained a job in the field in which they were trained for at Gnomon. The consistency of our high placement rates year-to-year are a reflection of the tremendous talent of our students and the reputation we’ve built among industry artists since our founding.
Working alongside Den is Stephen Herring, Gnomon’s Associate Director of Placement and Alumni Engagement. Together, they cultivate relationships with the many, many studios in Los Angeles as well as ones across the country and even worldwide. The team is in constant contact with industry recruiters, providing hiring managers lists of available graduates on an ongoing basis.
“It’s an amazing time to be an artist” Johnson shared. “There are studios and jobs for everybody, and we make sure that graduates understand the full range of what they can do with their education.”
Students can schedule one-on-one appointments with the Placement office or join a Marketing and Demo Reel Promotion meeting where they’ll receive coaching on what shots work best in their demo reels, interview and salary negotiating tips, and participate in mock interviews.
“Remote work is very common now, so a large majority of interviews are done over Zoom,” Johnson said. “We’ll coach soon-to-be graduates via video call so they can practice interviewing and become more comfortable interacting with a recruiter remotely.”
In response to the new remote paradigm, the Placement office hosts Career ZoomCasts every two weeks where studio representatives speak with graduates about job opportunities and share insight into what can make them more marketable as an artist.
Staying in communication with graduates is another important part of the process, which allows our Placement office to keep a fresh list of “New Graduates and Available Alumni” that is sent to studios every term. No matter how long they’ve been working in the industry, graduates have access to our Placement services to find job opportunities and network with studios.
We understand that our students have made a significant investment in their futures and are focused on the next step. The Career Placement team is always available to get them closer to doing the thing that brought them to Gnomon in the first place!
*Percentage reflects the placement rate for Gnomon’s Certificate in Digital Production program for the 2022 Annual Report in accordance with the national accreditation standards of the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges (ACCSC).