How to Start Your Career as a Model Scout, Booker or Agent

A career as a model scout, booker or agent can be a fun and rewarding career. It can offer a lot of travel, attending premiers and many after parties.

However it can be a lot of hard work too and it takes a certain type of person to be good at managing models. What does it take to start one of these careers? Below we have listed tips that will ensure you have a successful career whichever role you choose.

What’s the difference between a model booker or Agent?

Model scouts seek new faces and present them to either the model agency that employs them or to a variety of different modelling agencies. If the scouts doesn’t work for one agency or platform, they have the knowledge to guide the new model to the best choice of agency for their particular skills.
Once the model is placed with an agency or platform, the agent or booker takes over.

Both agent and booker do the same role and which title they would have is dependant on the agency or platform. The agent or booker, will handle the models career and deal with the contracts and logistics of doing a job. They are in charge of a models brand and ensuring they are attracting the right type of jobs.

Passion

  1. To have a career a a scout booker or agent you need to have passion. Passion for fashion and its industry. The highs and lows. It can be difficult sometimes and without the passion you will very quickly burn out. You need to be someone who can’t imagine doing anything else.

Study the Business and History Side of the Industry

  1. Learn about the history of modelling in the UK and how it all works. You need to know all the major agencies, who they were founded by and who currently runs them. You need to know the early super models like Twiggy, Lauren Hutton and others who have led the way and changed the way modelling is portrayed today. Knowing the current stars and up and coming models too will help in showing your potential employers how serious you are about working in this industry.
    It is also important to understand the business side of modelling. How commission works, typically contracts (and the law surrounding them) you would deal with and the chain of commend in areas you want your potential models to work in. You will also need to learn how to negotiate contracts on behalf of your clients

Know the terms

  1. Be sure you understand the meaning of terms using in the modelling industry such as “Tear-sheet,” “buyouts,” and “TFP.”
    The agencies or platforms will not teach you everyday terms as they would just expect you to know them.

Get experience as an Intern or Assistant

  1. Get experience as an Intern or Assistant
    The best way to know how the industry works is working from the ground up. By willing to work at the bottom you can immerse yourself in the industry and you’ll gain solid knowledge and understand of how a model agency or platform works. You can also gain contacts who will help you later in your career. From scouting to booking it’s a very
    important step to gain that experience.

Become Specialised in One Type of Modelling

  1. Become Specialised in One Type of Modelling
    At the beginning of your career, it is best to specialise in one category of modelling and become an expert in that area. By becoming a expert, you’ll become the go to person for that type of modelling. It should be a area that interests you for example male models, glamour or plus size models.

Attend Networking Events

  1. If you want to work outside of the UK, it is important you attend conventions and networking events to meet agents and scouts from agencies you would like to sign your models too. It is also a way of gaining new knowledge that can help your clients succeed.
    There are regular networking vents throughout the UK during the year and if you can’t attend there is ModelScout.com. This is a online resource of agents and scouts who often mentor new scouts in return for new models they can pitch to agencies or platforms.

Take Risks

  1. You must be willing to take risks to become a successful agent or scout. Most scouts and agents do not have a salary but work on commission based on what their models earns. It is up to you to grow your model base to eat more. That might mean, approaching strangers in various location who you think has potential to model. It could mean making
    deals with local photographers for TFP’s to improve your models portfolio. The harder you the greater the pay off.

Be Professional

  1. Being a professional model scout or agent means you have to behave professional too. That mean having good time keeping, never bad mouthing other agents or models and to stay calm in high pressured situation. It also means paying your models, and other people
    on your payroll on time and correctly. As an agent, scout or booker you need to be all business at the end of the day.
    Being professional also means not making inappropriate or sexual comments or actions to models or your staff in a way that would make them feel uncomfortable. A lot of young model will be nervous and would have read the bad stories involving agents and it is your
    job to make them feel relaxed and safe at the beginning and throughout their career.

Follow Your Gut

  1. Becoming successful means you sometimes have to make hard decisions. Always follow your instincts and go with your gut feeling. If you find a new model that you believe will be
    successful but no one in the agencies does, it is up to you to convince them. A great example of using that gut feeling is Saska Ingham. She was spotted eating a waffle on a school trip in Oxford Circus by a scout who pushed for her to be signed to IMG Model and now she is one of the most successful models in the UK.
booker or agent