
How to Explain Gaps in Employment (Resume & Cover Letter)
An employment gap is a period of time (months of years) when a job seeker didn't have a job. While out of work, employees use their time to have children, travel or go to school full time.
You need to prove you can herd cats and call down the furies while keeping audiences and backers smiling (and the money flowing). Break a leg with this sample stage manager resume.
Got a bit of stage fright while applying for your dream job?
As a stage manager, you know how to organize everything in and around the stage. The lights, the props, the sounds, the curtains, they all must fall into the right place.
The same goes for information on your stage manager resume. All of the elements must work together to ensure the show goes on. After all, you don't want the hiring manager to feel that they're watching a comedy of errors while reading your application.
This guide will show you:
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Sample resume made with our builder—See more resume examples here.
Why limit yourself to a resume for stage manager positions? Expand your repertoire with our other guides:
Stephanie Seay, Stage Manager
stephanie.q.seay@gmail.com
330-807-5025
Effective Stage Manager with 5+ years of experience. Skilled at managing stage crews and running rehearsals. Seeking to deliver production excellence at The Cleveland Playhouse. At the Grove City Theater, led expansion drive from small productions with attendance of 100 to sold-out shows with audiences of 1,100. Managed 22 shows with budgets of $30,000+.
Stage Manager
Grove City Theater
March 2015–May 2019
Assistant Stage Manager
Findlay Theater
April 2014–May 2015
2010–2014 Ohio State University
BA and Theatre Major
Here’s how to write a Stage Manager resume that gets jobs:
Stage Managers coordinate with stage crews, assisting and leading set designers, crafts workers and lighting and sound technicians. They attend rehearsals and keep pace with changes. A stage manager resume should prove you can serve as the de facto director when the curtain rises.
Nobody will hire a scattered stage manager.
So don’t write a scattered stage manager resume.
Use the best of the resume formats available—the chronological resume template. It puts your latest hits front and center.
Pro Tip: What are the right fonts for resumes for stage manager jobs? Use Arial or Cambria to make it easy for the director to read (and hire you)!
Here’s your curtain-up moment.
You know you need to make a strong entrance.
Do that with a resume summary if you’ve got 2+ years of stage manager experience.
That’s an opening paragraph below your header. It summarizes your stage manager resume.
Not as seasoned? Write a career objective. They talk up your skills a bit more.
In either kind of professional profile, list:
Pro Tip: Since this is a summary for your theatre stage manager resume, you need to write the rest of your resume first. That way you’ve got plenty to summarize.
Why don’t you get callbacks?
The hiring team wants you to fit the job perfectly.
Here’s how to write experience in a resume:
Pro Tip: Use key resume phrases in your stage manager resume to keep directors and producers nodding with enthusiasm.
Want the job?
There’s a special way to show education on a resume.
Add school name, degree, and dates. But—
List stage manager achievements.
If you excelled in stage management coursework or built sets, list those in your education section.
In a first job resume, you can lay out education like a series of jobs. (Stage managing a production of Our Town would be a single “job.”)
Pro Tip: You don’t need to show GPA unless it was impressive or extremely recent. You’re better off using the space for big accomplishments in a stage manager resume.
Here’s a list of skills to put on a resume for stage manager jobs:
Hard Skills:
Soft Skills:
But—
Stick to the stage manager skills from the posting, plus a few.
Pro Tip: Make sure to give a good mix of technical skills and soft skills in your theatre stage manager resume. The director and producer want to hire well-rounded people.
When making a resume in our builder, drag & drop bullet points, skills, and auto-fill the boring stuff. Spell check? Check. Start building a professional resume template here for free.
When you’re done, Zety’s resume builder will score your resume and tell you exactly how to make it better.
Prove you’re not a dud.
How?
Add bonus sections to your stage manager resume.
Choose from:
Should you list foreign languages on a resume for a stage manager jobs? If they’ll help this job, yes. List them as skills or put them in a special “Languages” section.
Pro Tip: Here’s how to put volunteer work on a resume: if it proves key stage manager skills, give it a full section. If not, add it to an “Activities” section of your stage manager resume.
How important is a cover letter for stage manager positions?
Very.
A stage manager cover letter can put them on the edge of their seats.
But cover letters should not be ordinary.
Send them a follow up email after a job application. Schedule them for a few days, a week, and two weeks. Each one is another shot at glory.
Plus, a great cover letter that matches your resume will give you an advantage over other candidates. You can write it in our cover letter builder here. Here's what it may look like:
See more cover letter templates and start writing.
That’s it!
That’s how to write a stage manager resume.
Do you hate your resume for stage manager jobs? Does your theatre stage manager resume make you cringe? Give us a shout in the comments. We’d love to talk!
An employment gap is a period of time (months of years) when a job seeker didn't have a job. While out of work, employees use their time to have children, travel or go to school full time.
Want to send a cover letter along with your resume? You've got two options: email your cover letter as an attachment, or write an email cover letter. We'll show you how to do both.
Check out the best blank resume templates. Pick a resume form, fill in the blanks. Have your resume ready in 5 minutes. Download your resume as PDF.