Ep134: Leveraging Your Skills to Get Hired (When You Don’t Have the Experience) | with Steve Lang, ACE

<p>If there's one story regular listeners of this show have heard a lot, it's the story of how I got my first television editing the #1 show on cable at the time - <em>Burn Notice</em> (having ZERO television experience at the green age of twenty-nine). I tell this story often because it's a great example of how experience doesn't have to be king when it comes to getting jobs. Many of the students in my <strong><a href="https://optimizeyourself.me/optimizer" target="_blank" rel="noopener">coaching & mentorship program</a></strong> come to me hoping to make a transition in their career where they have the skills already but they don't have the specific experience. I was in that very same position when I landed my dream job editing <em>Burn Notice</em>.</p> <p>Here to lend a unique perspective to my “Burn Notice story” is <strong><a href= "https://pro.imdb.com/name/nm0485919/?ref_=instant_nm_2&q=steven%20lang" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ACE Editor Steve Lang</a></strong>, the catalyst for getting that job. Steve has cut over 120 hours of television in the past 24 years and worked on such shows as <em>The Practice,</em> <em>The Gifted</em>, <em>Preacher</em>,<em> Rectify</em>, and <em>Manifest,</em> to name just a select few. He took an unusual path to becoming an editor having held every role in the post-production department at one point or another. This experience gives him a well-rounded point of view of hiring editors and assistants and best practices for advancing your career...without getting pigeonholed.</p> <p>This interview has been a long time coming, as I've been trying to get Steve on the show for years!!! Our conversation ended up going so deep that we made it a two-part interview. In this first part, you'll hear how I got the job on <em>Burn Notice</em> from Steve's perspective while also hearing the skills vs experience argument from someone on the hiring side. You'll learn how Steve has managed to jump genres and show formats throughout his career, and why he's always trying to help advance othe