# Week 6 — Friday, October 2 ## Full Class: **Be read** > *How does a stranger decide, in fifteen seconds of text, that I'm worth a click?* **Everyone attends the full block this week.** --- ## What happens **Block A — What a resume is for (30 min).** The premise: your resume doesn't get you the job, your portfolio does. Its only job is to survive the first cut and produce a click. Plus what applicant tracking systems actually do in 2026, and the two myths you've probably been told. **Block B — The design paradox (20 min).** Why the best-looking resume in the room is usually the one that loses. Quiet competence, and the specific things that read as junior. **Block C — The link block (15 min).** The artist-specific move most student resumes fumble. **Block D — Bullet architecture (60 min, workshop).** The heart of the day. `verb + object + tool + constraint + outcome`, drilled on your own material. Plus how to handle a resume with no industry experience, honestly. **Block E — The companion pieces + tomorrow (60 min).** The 120-word outreach note, the LinkedIn headline and About, the platform bio — drafted in class, peer-swapped, cut. Then the **20-second introduction**, drilled in pairs, because a lot of you are walking into Industry Giants in the morning. **Block F — Draft-to-revision protocol (10 min).** How the Week 7 draft grade and the Week 11 final grade differ, so the revision is an actual revision. --- ## Bring - A laptop - Your existing resume, if you have one — however bad - The three job postings for your target title - Your list of projects with real numbers attached: team sizes, shot counts, triangle budgets, sprint lengths, download counts, deadlines met > **Do this before class:** for your three best projects, write down every number you can remember. Team size, how many assets, what the constraint was, how long you had, what happened when it shipped. Numbers are the raw material of Block D and you cannot invent them in the room. --- ## The single idea to take away **Constraint is the credibility signal.** Juniors describe activity. Hires describe constraints met. > "Created 3D models for a student game project." > vs. > "Modeled and textured 14 hero props for a 6-person UE5 student title under a 4,000-triangle budget; shipped on itch.io with 1,200 downloads." --- ## ⭐ Tomorrow: Industry Giants 2026 **Saturday, October 3 · 9 a.m.–6 p.m. · Edith O'Donnell Arts & Technology Building, UT Dallas, Richardson** The 20th annual conference and the only one of its kind in Texas — 400+ artists from dozens of studios and every major North Texas school, five main speakers, three figure-drawing instructors, **portfolio reviews**, artist alley, after party. Produced by A Bunch of Short Guys, the Dallas non-profit animation guild. You will have spent today learning how to introduce yourself, what to ask a stranger, and how to write the follow-up. Tomorrow there are four hundred strangers in one building. That gap is eighteen hours and it will not happen again this semester. **Bring:** - An **offline copy** of your best work on a phone or laptop — do not rely on the wifi - Something to write on - **One specific question** for the portfolio reviews. "Where does this fall short of the bar for a junior on your team?" is a question. "What do you think?" is not. - Your 20-second introduction, rehearsed **Afterward, within 24 hours:** write down every name you got, and send at least one follow-up naming one thing you're changing because of what they said. Log all of it. Your Networking Log formally opens in Week 10, but **entries from tomorrow count** — and it's much easier to write them down Saturday night than to reconstruct them in December. **A portfolio review is a read of your work by someone with taste. It is not a job interview.** Go to collect notes, not approval. Counts toward Community Involvement extra credit. --- ## Due next | | When | |---|---| | **Resume — first draft** (printed *and* in Canvas) | Week 7 — Fri Oct 9 | | **Professional Identity Kit** + Target List of 10 | Week 8 — Fri Oct 16 | Your Week 7 conference is a **line edit**. I mark up the printed copy bullet by bullet. Bring a pen.