But rather than wringing their hands in dismay, many of Hollywood’s early-career professionals are eager to get back on their feet.
One powerful resource that’s helping them identify their next opportunity is Young Entertainment Professionals, a community of more than 10,000 members — some, aspiring Hollywood workers, while others are already employed at studios, production companies, agencies, and management firms — across LinkedIn, Facebook, and other platforms. People from all corners of the entertainment industry are actively using the group every day to share resources and advice, find writing partners, discuss job opportunities, and attend special forums organized by YEP which feature recruiters from top media organizations.
Trevor Romero, a 26-year-old former assistant at United Talent Agency who is pursuing a career as a filmmaker and editor, founded YEP in 2020 after stints both at UTA (where he started in the firm’s mailroom program) and the production company Blumhouse, noted for its horror film franchises. Since YEP isn’t monetized, neither he nor the five volunteers he’s recruited to run the group make money from it. For now, it’s an unpaid labor of love.
“This group has given people a little bit of hope in some cases, and a community to fall back on,” Romero told Business Insider. At YEP events, Romero added, “there’s always people that come up to me who are like, ‘When I moved to LA, I didn’t know anybody.’ And because of these events, they’ve met some friends. They have people now that they can hang out with. They have people that they can call when they’re having a tough day at work, or a tough day looking for work.”
Romero is part of a growing constituency of Hollywood professionals banding together to overcome mounting barriers encumbering their professional advancement.
In 2023, a Netflix creative assistant founded the monthly newsletter The Hollywood Assistant, telling BI that newcomers have “no blueprint” for how to chart a course to steady employment and success. In 2018, a former WME assistant launched the Instagram page Assistants vs. Agents, which has drawn more than 100,000 followers for its humorous memes about industry culture and life. Other workers have set up secretive Discord groups that have quietly amassed thousands of members, concealed from their bosses’ watchful eyes.
These resources are providing outlets for early-career insiders like assistants — who generally earn notoriously little — to congregate, commiserate, and support one another after manifold setbacks that began a few years ago with the coronavirus pandemic. At the time, many young people’s dreams of breaking into Hollywood were left in tatters.
“The industry is so in flux that it’s hard to know who to look to and who to get advice from, because the advice from five years ago is maybe not relevant anymore,” Romero said, adding later: “Now that the strikes are over, the mood is very optimistic. People want to get back to work.”
A forum to help young people navigate the winds of change together
Kai Dorsey — who previously worked for comedy video platform Funny or Die, was a showrunner’s assistant, and has completed a professional TV writing fellowship — has been part of the YEP community almost since its inception.
The 25-year-old aspiring sitcom writer volunteers as a page administrator for the group, helping approve members’ posts on YEP’s LinkedIn account. She also spoke at a roundtable event the organization hosted last year which brought together dozens of Hollywood assistants.
“People have just seen job opportunities and other opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise heard of, and then have had success because of that,” she told BI of YEP’s impact.
Romero has organized 10 large-scale, in-person YEP events in New York and Los Angeles. During the pandemic, the group put up more than 15 virtual events, too. To pull it off, he’s enlisted more than 100 volunteers to pitch in.
Some events are designed to foster networking, while others put attendees in direct contact with recruiters from companies like Blumhouse, Paramount, the Gersh Agency, and Entertainment Partners. Some of the contacts Romero has made went from interns during the early days of the pandemic to full-fledged creative assistants in just a handful of years.
“Those connections that you make when you’re at the bottom are so important,” he said. “It is just kind of like patience, waiting, for 10, 15 years, until some of these people are studio executives or the head of the studios.”
YEP regularly surveys its members about the benefits the group provides. According to survey results reviewed by BI, almost all respondents in several polls conducted by the group said that being a part of the organization helped them make friends and discover new job opportunities. Smaller numbers of respondents agreed that YEP had been useful through their interviewing and hiring process, or in getting acquainted with future employers.
Ultimately, Romero said, the group’s greatest strength is cultivating a sense of professional and personal community and camaraderie for those occupying the entertainment business’ more junior rungs.
“They can help through the hard times that we have been having in the industry,” Romero concluded. “That helps people to keep going, keep persisting, and wanting to work in the industry by supporting and holding each other up.”