Here in the office, we bring Chicago models in daily for interviews. Part of this is due to the fact that I like to meet who Im working with and have them know Im a real person, and part of it is because you never know what you (or, more importantly, your client) is going to get!
When Ocean Model Group first opened it’s doors as a new Chicago modeling agency, we had an extremely high level of model traffic day in and day out and the results, we’ll say, were very interesting. Sure we had girls who were inexperienced, or who, because of a state of nervousness, blurted out too much or held in even the most vital information about their lives. All of that was normal,though, who hasn’t spilled the beans on themselves after the adrenaline rush of meeting a potential employer? Ill forgive even the most honest of slip ups.
What has always been hard for me to forgive, however, is the honest lack of interest some girls show both with this industry, and with the person they are speaking to. Sure, we once had a pregnant girl show up to an open call (leading us to end our series of open calls), but it wasn’t the pregnancy that left the worst taste in my mouth. Maybe she was just confused, maybe her hormones were going berserk and left her yearning for some positive attention in the form of promotional modeling. Who knows!
The biggest fault a girl can have, worse than an unfortunate outbreak, or mismatched clothes, is a negative attitude and it shows itself in ways you’d never guess. Aside from the typical “bad attitude” responses, talking badly about a model, talking badly about a promotion… a bad attitude can be shown by the lack of effort you take in your appearance. Its easy to identify someone who has questionable style over someone who has a questionable attitude, and it’s not the fact that you mixed a neon fedora with collared button up. Girls who show up to meet me without a smile, or who lack enthusiasm in their voice, or even give off a sense of entitlement show an obvious disinterest in their careers and, presumably will show the same disinterest in the client’s as well.
Meeting our models before we book them is one of the most important threads which holds Ocean Model Group together. It leaves me wondering how other agencies can run a business in which they do not meet the Chicago models they are sending to a client beforehand. Because to us, our client’s reputation is just as important as our own.
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