Finding a job in the creator industry can be elusive. Unlike large companies, many popular video creators aren’t turning to regular job sites like Indeed or LinkedIn for their hiring. Finding work with big YouTube or TikTok creators can be surprisingly chaotic, as many hire through their own professional and personal networks. Still, there are great resources to try to break into the industry.

Here are three steps to both prepare and find people who are actively hiring.

1. Know what kinds of jobs exist in the video creator industry

Various companies and creators may have their own unique roles, but here are some popular job categories.

Video editor

Editing is often one of the first jobs successful creators hire out. They often want editors who can emulate their specific editing style. Editors may be asked to cut together raw footage, add B-roll, insert graphics, color correct, and add sound effects and music. Creators often want editors who use their preferred editing software, like Descript, Adobe Premiere, or Final Cut Pro. Many employers are also looking for editors who also can do light animation with programs like After Effects.

Scriptwriter

Writing jobs aren’t nearly as numerous as editing jobs and tend to pay less. Aside from putting words to a page, scriptwriters may be asked to research and pitch ideas, as well as source visuals to help editors.

Producer 

Producing is an incredibly vague job title in both traditional and new media. In some places, producers are similar to project managers: they’ll set schedules, hire and manage writers and editors, book filming locations, and schedule interviews. In other settings, they might do all those things, and oversee a project creatively. Sometimes, producers are also scriptwriters or videographers.There’s a litany of producer-related titles like booking producer, coordinating producer, creative producer, and technical producer that might give you a better sense of the workload.

Videographer

Many creators film themselves in their home studios. However, creators who shoot in different locations are often in need of someone to actually operate a camera. Doing camera work in the creator space is usually much leaner than traditional media. Where a film set may have dedicated workers to run lighting and sound, videographers in the creator space usually do it all. Videography can be expensive to break into—you often need to own equipment like lights, cameras, and microphones, or have the credit to rent those items.

Thumbnail designer (YouTube)

Creators are learning that their thumbnails can make or break a video’s performance, and are hiring out to experts accordingly. Thumbnail designers may make several variations for a single video for that creator to test out. Experienced thumbnail designers will keep up with thumbnail trends to maximize their client’s click-through rate.

2. Prepare your portfolio

Creators are busy. They’re often struggling to get their own creative work done while delegating work to a small number of editors, animators, or writers. Unlike large corporations, they often lack the infrastructure or time to thoroughly train new hires. Most of the creators I speak to are looking for people who need minimal guidance in getting up to speed.

One way to stand out, then, is to have a portfolio that clearly demonstrates to creators that you can produce something similar to what they’re already making.

Whether you’re a writer, podcaster, producer, graphic designer, video editor, or animator, your best asset is a good body of work to show off. If you don’t have any professional experience, work on small passion projects that establish your skills. These don’t have to be big, expensive productions. In fact, many creators will appreciate the ability to make good content without a huge budget.

Having portfolio pieces in specific genres or styles can also help you stand out to creators in similar genres or who employ similar styles. Make explainer content if you’re looking to work with education creators. If you’re looking to break into TikTok, having an account with good content is a great portfolio piece.

Making a separate portfolio might even be helpful for established creatives. Working on a 90-minute documentary that was screened in theaters is a vastly different workflow than popular social video formats.

3. Know where to find jobs

LinkedIn, Indeed, and other job sites can feature good creator industry jobs, and I’d certainly recommend anyone set up alerts for a job title with the word “YouTube” or “TikTok” in it. But in my own experience finding work, sites targeted to creators are far more fruitful.

YTJobs.co

One of my favorite job sites is fairly new. YTJobs.co has a ton of job posts for video editors and thumbnail designers. Scriptwriting and producer work isn’t as frequent, however.

A great feature of YTJobs is its profile feature. Once you’re set up with a profile, you can highlight videos you’ve worked on and get your work verified by the channels you worked with.. Employers can search out profiles based on experience and keywords, and I’ve received a fair share of messages just from this.

One downside is there are a lot of extremely low-paying jobs. 

Roster

Roster brands itself as a job site with better talent and better creators. It pitches itself to employers as a place where they can find talent from their favorite channels and creators. The work is usually higher paying than YTJobs, but the number of jobs is much lower. 

Vouch 

Like Roster, Vouch has a limited number of postings. One of the things that makes it unique is the ability to pitch yourself to big creators, though YTJobs has recently implemented a similar feature.

Entertainment Careers

While Entertainment Careers includes jobs across the film and TV industry, it has dedicated sections for YouTube, content creators, and social media. 

Creator Economy Jobs

Creator Economy Jobs is a job board that pulls creator jobs from a variety of sources. There’s also a helpful LinkedIn page. 

One con: I wouldn’t exactly consider many of these “creator” jobs, but that might just be semantics. There’s tons of engineering and marketing jobs at companies like Figma and Pinterest, if that interests you. You can also filter by creative jobs, which drowns out a lot of the noise.

Social media 

Many creators go straight to their followers when hiring. This is one of the most inefficient ways to hear about jobs, but following creators on LinkedIn (if they have a business page) can sometimes reduce your digital clutter.

Career pages

Some creators are regularly hiring freelancers and have dedicated job pages on their website, like Complexly does. I recommend researching your favorite companies, saving links to any job pages they might have, and putting them in a spreadsheet that you can easily check on a weekly basis.

Cold emailing

I would be extremely skeptical of this tactic except that it’s landed me two jobs with companies I otherwise had no relationship to. If you can, find an email address for your favorite creator and pitch your skills. Keep your message brief, and try to set yourself apart in just a few sentences.

Newsletters

Creator-focused newsletters are not just a great way to keep up with the industry—many include curated jobs. Passionfruit, The Publish Press, and Creator Economy are all worth a subscription.