Open Submissions

If we’re not advertising any specific roles which are right for you, but you’d still like to get involved at Radium, you can reach out to us via our Open Submissions route. Read on below for info about how to get in touch!

1. VERY IMPORTANT: Add the email address “jobs@radium-audio.com” to your address book/contacts list/white list, so you’ll be sure to receive the autoresponder telling you we got your message

2. Create an email addressed to “jobs@radium-audio.com”. Any enquiries about freelance or inhouse work, internships or placements should always be sent direct to this email address

3. In the subject line, put “Open Submission – [Your Best Skillset] – [Your Name] – [Your Cellphone No]”, formatted like these examples:
“Open Submission – Composer – Jo Bloggs – 07665 125 978”
“Open Submission – Sound Designer – Jane Doe – 07965 332 687”
“Open Submission – EDM Producer – Mo Akhtar – 07231 655 428”
“Open Submission – Audio Engineer – Diedrich Weber – 07322 896 447”

4. Attach to the email your current CV as a pdf. Be sure this CV includes at minimum the following information.

• Your current physical address
• DAW competencies and skill levels
• Audio qualifications/training, and the dates you achieved these
• Link to your website (if you have one, this is optional)

• Maximum 5 streamable links to single showreels/projects/works which best represent you.
• In bullet points, your strongest audio skillsets to a maximum of 5 (it’s ok to have less)
• Brief introduction to you, and what you’re doing right now.
• The type of role you’re seeking with us
• Your Availability date, eg straight away, or specify time needed for notice period/relocation to Bristol if necessary.

NB: It’s really well worth taking a few minutes to read through the FAQ below. You’ll find some great insights about what we’re looking for, and how best to grab our attention when we review your submission.

Q1. Why do I need to add your email address to my contacts/whitelist?
A. To be sure you’ll get our autoresponder confirming we’ve received your email. That way, you don’t have to wonder if we got your message, or phone us or email again to find out.

Q2. I’d rather not follow the format you’ve set out above. I have my own way of doing things. Is that ok?
A. We work often with complex written briefs, so we’re interested to see how you get on with independently interpreting and following a set of written instructions. A good way to start showing us right away you can do this, is by following the guidance we’ve set out.

Q3. So I’m going to really exaggerate my experience and skillsets in my CV because that’s what everyone does, right?
A. You’re right, people often do this and you can frequently get away with it at initial application stage. However, if we progress to phone interview and demo stages with you, the exaggeration becomes quickly apparent, then things get awkward, and everyone’s time has been wasted. So be honest. Don’t tell us you have “vast experience” with Pro Tools when actually you’ve only used it in 2 or 3 projects and you’re still feeling your way with it. We don’t expect you to be an expert in everything. But it’s important to be as accurate as possible in your self assessment.

Q4. I just want to enquire about an internship or a work placement, or shadowing you for a few days. Can’t I just send a letter and CV? Do I still have to send you my creative work?
We have a highly creative and explorative team culture, so for that reason we think it’s important to get a feel for your approach to creativity too. So yes, definitely do submit your work in the format we’ve requested above.

Q5.What types of skillsets do you want?

Music and Sound
We’ve found everyone brings an individual combination of experience and skills to the team. Our music and sound creatives tend to be one or a combination of the following:

• Composer/Producer (hybrid electronic/orchestral, multi-instrumentalist)
• Creative Audio Editor/Producer (Pro Tools editing/remix/extension/mashup)
• Producer/Engineer (Pro Tools/Analogue Console)
• Sound Designer (creator/manipulator of micro detailed sound, synths, modulars, field & live recordings)
• Sound Design Programmer (DSP, Kyma, Kontakt, Max MSP, Reaktor, PD)
• Sound Recordist (Field and In Studio)
• Sound Editor/Librarian (cleanup, metadata, server organisation)
• Studio Maintenance ( inventory management, studio maintenance & handiwork, studio cabling, acoustics)
• Creative Technologist (electronics, instrument build)

Visual Design
We have ongoing project work for visual designers. This can take the form of a medium term inhouse freelance contract, or in some cases freelance remote work. Feel free also to get in touch about this, using the format above.

• Graphic Design
• Animation
• Illustration
• Photography
• Filmmaking
• Video Editing

Q6. I have a lot of material, all different styles and genres. How do I pick just 5 to best represent me?
A. The above info about skillsets, and previous job ads in the Careers section, should be helpful in focusing on what will be of most interest to us. Imaginatively arranged, emotionally impactful, slickly produced music with dramatic flair, punch and dynamic range, appropriate for our world of film trailers and advertising, gets us excited. Original, finely detailed sound design and sound effects with a strong sense of heightened reality, which you’ve created and manipulated yourself, are always super interesting for us. Maybe you’re less of a pure creative, but you’re a Pro Tools genius who can pull disparate music and sound elements together into amazing augmented creative mixes and edits to picture, or an engineer who loves to add some supersonic flavour and a little remix magic while you’re defining and refining. Maybe you’re the person behind the microphone sitting up in a tree in the middle of Wales at 4am in the morning to capture that one take only perfect recording of the rare spotted woodpecker because one of the sound designers HAS to have it asap for their latest project. Take some time to really think about what we’ve said, and check out what we do. The clues are all there.

Q7. Why do the links have to be streamable? Can’t I just send you a WeTransfer or attach files to the email, or something like that?
A. We used to accept downloadable material, however we’ve now decided to change our approach. We receive a very high volume of enquiries and submissions, and it’s become too unwieldy for us to manage our server space to accommodate the corresponding data storage load for downloadable submissions. So for initial enquiries, streamable links only please, we no longer accept downloads.

Q8. What type of streamable links will you accept?
A. Vimeo, YouTube, Behance, other publicly available weblinks are fine for video. Soundcloud or similar fine for audio only. Passworded access is ok if you supply us the password. Please ensure each of your 5 links lead to a specific video or track. If it leads to multiple videos or tracks, we’ll only review the first one on the page. Anything requiring us to download an app or subscribe to review won’t be accepted.

Q9. Can’t I just give you a link to my website/bandcamp/soundcloud account for you to explore? Why does each link have to lead to a single specific track or video?
A. We receive a very high volume of submissions ongoing, and we have limited time to allocate to reviewing each one. Sending us 5 direct links to single audio tracks or videos gives you the opportunity to frame your strongest work so we focus on it right away and use that to form our first impression.

Q10. I have a really great CV with fantastic experience and some really big name projects. Shall I just send you that?
A. It’s super important to send examples of your creative work. Previously when we’ve received CVs without examples, we’ve reached out to request these, however that’s now become quite time consuming for us to manage. Going forward, we won’t be reviewing applications which only provide CVs, and no links to creative work.

Q11. I really want to apply with you, but I’m only just out of University. I did really well with my grades, but I don’t have a showreel yet because I’m just getting started. How am I supposed to give you examples of my work?
A. It’s totally ok if you don’t have paid professional showreel projects to share. However, in our experience, creatives who do best in our environment tend to work independently in their own time to develop their craft, and they’ve likely been regularly doing this in addition to any University assignments. If they haven’t had paid projects, then they’ve been privately rescoring and redesigning film trailers and other video assets for their own development, albeit not sharing these publicly for copyright reasons. So passworded links to redesigned/resoundtracked videos are fine to submit. Please be sure these are never made public, and never labelled with Radium’s name.

Q12. I’ve just finished University. So, shall I just send you links to my University assignments?
A. Yes, you could do that. However, if your University assignments are the only creative work you’ve done during your time there, this can create an impression that you’ve been doing just enough to get by, rather than really working to develop yourself independently.

Q13. Do I have to have professional experience to apply with Radium?
A. No you don’t. But you definitely need to have examples available of your creative work. This is the first thing we will look at, and then make a decision about whether we want to proceed to explore the rest of your application afterwards.

Q14. Do I have to live near one of your studios to apply?
A. Not if you’re only seeking ad hoc freelance work. However, if you’re looking for an inhouse creative position, you’ll need to live within commutable distance of Bristol studio. Please only apply for an inhouse position if you have the ongoing unlimited right to live and work in the UK, you are already living or prepared to swiftly relocate within daily travel distance of our studio, and taking employment with us will not breach any conditions of your UK visa.

Q15. Can I submit collaborations with others in my streamable links?
A. We prefer that you don’t, because it’s you as an individual we’re reviewing. If you absolutely must submit a collaboration, then add a note explaining what your part was.

Q16. Can I add explanation notes underneath the streamable links?
A. Yes, a couple of lines for each one is fine

Q17. Do my strongest audio skillset section bulletpoints need to relate directly to the streamable links section above?
A. No they don’t. Some audio skillsets can’t be properly expressed just by reviewing audio and/or video files. For example, you might be amazing at studio maintenance and cabling, an electronics and creative technology wizz, fantastic at metadata for internal sound libraries, or have some other really useful skill that can’t be properly expressed in a video or audio file. So in addition to your particularly strong creative skills, you can also include those other competencies here.

Q18. How will I know if/when you’ve reviewed my submission? Should I follow up my initial email with another email or phonecall?
A. So long as you’ve followed our requested format above, we will definitely review your submission just as soon as we can. We prefer that you don’t mail or call to follow up, as these further enquiries do become very timeconsuming for us to deal with. We will definitely reach out to you, if we want to see more examples, or have a conversation about moving things forward.

Q19. Can I get some feedback about my submission?
A. We receive frequent requests for this. In an ideal world we’d love to be able to feed back on all submissions. However, due to volume received and time constraints that isn’t possible. So to be fair to everyone, we will only be entering into discussion on submissions where we’ve earmarked these for further progression. If we want to follow up further on your submission, we will get in touch with you.

Q20. Where has the link to Project OpenLab gone? I wanted to apply for your freelance sound design team?
A. We have an enormous backlog of Project OpenLab submissions to get through. So we’ve taken public access offline until the OpenLab Team can get caught up on that. We’ll look at opening it up again in future. Meanwhile, Project OpenLab will now be operating on an invitation only basis. So make your initial contact as we’ve described above.

Q21. How long should I keep my streamable links live?
A. As long as you can. It can often take a while for us to get to your email, as we receive many of these. It also may be that we don’t reach out to you straight away because we don’t have a requirement for your skillset, but later on we come back to your submission because an opportunity on the team has opened up, so it’s important we can still review your work quickly at that later stage.

Q22. I want to apply for a specific role, and make an Open Submission too, to cover all my bases. Can I just put both in one email?
A. It’s best to make a separate application in each instance. We tend to receive a lot of applications, so we often allocate initial review of different types of roles to different people on the team. To be sure your application gets to the right place via our email system, always follow subject line formatting instructions, and make application for each individual route separately. Otherwise we can’t guarantee your application will make it past a single review for only the first of multiple lines of enquiry you may be making.

Q23. I want to apply, but I’m still on a course of study/otherwise occupied for some while yet? Will you hold a position open for me until I’m finished what I’m doing?
A. When we advertise a specific role, it’s because we want to find someone to join the team as soon as possible. Similarly, with the alternative Open Submissions route, if we make a decision to make a job offer, it will be based on factors existing in the present timeframe. If the role you’re applying for is part time or freelance, then it’s often possible to work that around other commitments. However for full time roles, if you’re not available to get started within a month or so (maximum), then it’s best to wait and apply at a later time when you don’t have existing commitments.

Q24. Does my CV attachment format matter? You’ve asked for a pdf. I’d rather send it as a word/pages/text/something else file?
A. Pdfs only, thanks!

Q25. How long will it take you to review my submission?
A. It depends how busy we are. If we’re already advertising specific roles on the team, reviewing applications for those will always be given first priority which can result in delays of some weeks and even months to get to the Open Submissions. If we aren’t advertising specific roles, or catching up on a backlog immediately after recruiting for these, we should get to your submission within a week or so of receiving it.

Q26. According to the tracking stats on my soundcloud/vimeo/behance/youtube/other you haven’t reviewed my work yet. It’s been a really long time since I got in touch with you. Should I get in touch to follow up?
A. We do hear this sometimes, yet when we double check, it almost always turns out we definitely did already review the work. So we don’t really know why the stats are showing as unplayed – we don’t have an answer for this, sorry!

Q27. Can I reapply a second time?
A. Yes that’s fine. If a few months have passed, you’ve got updated work and you want to reach out to us again then go ahead. However, please be sure to follow the submission format and instructions as above, so that each submission you make is complete in itself and doesn’t require us to refer to a previous one.