What is a Casting Alert? How do I make it work?

The Back Stage Casting/Job Alert tool is a convenient and automated "search agent" that searches the BackStage.com casting/jobs database for you, finding new notices that match your personalized Saved Search criteria.

You can create one or multiple Casting/Job Alerts, with each alert being set up to search for notices that match you interests. Back Stage's Casting Alerts can save you a lot of time, since your Alerts will conduct your searches for you and then send you timely results.

Each of your Alert agents will email you your newest Casting Notice search results on a regularly scheduled basis. Within the email, you'll see a list of casting/job headlines and summaries, with links bringing you back to the specific notices on BackStage.com so you can quickly submit to the projects.

To get started, visit your Career Center/Actor's Toolbox and click on any of the Saved Search or Casting Alert options.

Or, simply fill in the "Saved Search Name" field located at the bottom of the basic or advanced Casting/Jobs Search page, check the "Create a casting alert" box, and then click the "Save Search Criteria" button.

10 KEY CASTING/JOB ALERT TIPS:

1) Your Casting Alerts are automated search agents that look through the BackStage.com casting and jobs database for you, using your personalized Saved Searches to find you great results that are customized to fit your needs. If you've signed up for a Casting/Job Alert but you're not receiving any emails, then please click here.

2) Recommended: First create a few Saved Searches (Saved Searches are customizable one-click searches that you can run manually at any time), and run the searches to see which ones deliver results you're happy with. Then create a couple of Casting/Job Alerts, associating each of your Alerts with your favorite Saved Searches — the Alert agents will then run your favorite Saved Searches for you automatically, emailing you the newest results.

3) Avoid the use of keywords when creating a Saved Search and Alert, since keyword searches are usually only good for very specific one-time searches (such as a search for a particular project title); instead, leave the keywords field blank and then choose from among the other search filters to set up a good Saved Search and Alert that will deliver you strong results on an ongoing basis.

4) You can create multiple Casting Alerts and Saved Searches from within your Back Stage account, and have each Alert search for different types of notices. Your alerts can search a very broad range of criteria (e.g., lots of categories and countries) or you can make the searches very specific (e.g., by using Advanced Search filters to limit the search to specific states, job categories, pay ranges, age ranges, etc.) — it's up to you. Customize the alerts' search criteria to fit your needs. You can also run your Saved Searches on BackStage.com at any time, without having to wait for a new Casting Alert Email to be sent to you.

5) Whenever new or recently updated notices are found that match your Casting Alert's Saved Search criteria, you'll be sent a new Casting Alert email containing links to all of the notices. Each Alert will email you at a frequency of your choosing (daily, weekly, or monthly). However, if no appropriate notices are found, then no email will be sent (but you'll get an email Alert the next time new notices are posted that match your search criteria).

6) If you're not satisfied with the number or type of notices you're seeing, then try editing the Saved Search criteria associated with your Alert. Or try creating some additional Casting Alerts, using new Saved Search criteria. Recommended: Start with very broad search criteria (LOTS of categories, states, age-ranges, pay-ranges, etc.) to make sure you don't miss out on any cool casting notices; you can always go back and refine your search criteria more later.

7) You can update, edit, expire, renew, or delete each of your Casting Alerts at any time. Just visit the your Casting Alerts page, Saved Searches page, or Actor's Toolbox/Career Center page to get started.

8) If your Saved Casting Notices Inbox fills up with over 1,000 items, then you may stop receiving Casting Alert Emails. Please clean out your Saved Casting Notices Inbox on a regular basis if you chose the "Save to Inbox" option when creating your Casting Alert. (You can set your Casting Alert agents to automatically save copies of all the casting notices it finds to your Saved Notices Inbox on BackStage.com. However, this is not recommended in most cases, since, depending on your search criteria, the Casting Alert agents could fill up your Saved Notices Inbox with hundreds of notices very quickly, making your BackStage.com Inbox cluttered and hard to use. So most of the time you'll just want to use the default Casting Alert option to have casting notice links emailed to you directly via regular email, and skip the extra "Save to Inbox" option.)

9) If you do not wish to receive a particular Casting Alert anymore, log in to BackStage.com and choose "Manage Casting Alerts" from your Saved Searches page, and then delete, expire, update, or renew the Alerts of your choice.

10) For more Casting/Job Alert help, click here.

 

— Luke Crowe, National Casting Editor, Back Stage

                   

Comments

[Joanna]

But where do I enter my email information for me to get these casting alerts??? I've been signed up to Backstage and haven't received one alert.

[Luke Crowe]

The email address that's associated with your BackStage.com subscription will AUTOMATICALLY be used as the email address for your personalized Casting Alert e-newsletters and as the contact address on your Multimedia Resume on BackStage.com.

To update your email address, simply log in to your subscription account on the BackStage.com homepage and then click on the "Manage Account" link that will appear at the top-right of the page. After you update your email address within your subscription account manager, navigate to the casting part of BackStage.com and your new/updated email address will be automatically carried over to your casting alerts and resumes.

If you're not receiving any Casting Alert emails, then please read the "SEVEN KEY CASTING/JOB ALERT TIPS" in the above post for tips on how to expand your search (e.g., selecting more categories will result in more casting notices being sent to you), how to avoid having your Casting Alert emails end up in your spam/junk email folder, and how to create multiple Saved Searches and Alerts.

-- Luke
National Casting Editor
BACK STAGE