Southern California Job Market : Challenges / Opportunities : In Show Biz, It’s Who You Know : Getting a job in the entertainment industry is tough. But there are some areas that may be easier to break into.

Despite record spending for movie scripts and recording contracts and the global boom in entertainment vehicles such as videocassettes, compact discs and syndicated television, getting a job in Hollywood is harder than ever.

It isn’t a matter of fewer jobs. It’s tougher competition.

“While film and TV production is near an all-time high, we also have a talent pool that is at an all-time high,” said Mark Locher, national communications director at the Screen Actors Guild. He said the number of guild members in Southern California jumped 75% between 1980 and 1989, and on any given workday, just 10% of the guild’s 35,000 members are working. “That means 90% are unemployed,” Locher noted.

Along with the concentration of acting hopefuls, Hollywood today is being invaded by lawyers, business school graduates and even computer wizards who are offering to design special effects for movies and music videos.

This influx is being spurred, in part, by the continuing evolution of Hollywood from a fraternity of small- and medium-sized enterprises run by a few studio bosses and music entrepreneurs to an industry dominated by huge, multinational corporations that distribute and market entertainment products around the globe.

“It’s much more competitive now; there’s a requirement for a much higher level of management,” said William D. Simon, a managing director of the Los Angeles-based executive recruiting firm Korn/Ferry International.

As the stakes have risen, so have the techniques for getting one’s foot in the door.

One aspiring record producer threw a demonstration music tape into the open Mercedes-Benz convertible of Capitol-EMI Music President Joe Smith while he was riding down the street and thereafter called Smith incessantly for days. (The producer was not given a record contract, Smith said).

Other entertainment industry executives tell of being inundated by resumes from people with graduate and professional degrees willing to work for near the minimum wage in entry-level secretarial or mail-room jobs just to break into the business.

“As much as people like to believe otherwise, being in the right place at the right time is the basis for most everything,” said Lou Maglia, a record executive who recently launched Zoo Records, a Los Angeles-based label.

Perhaps more than in any other field, it helps to be well-connected in the entertainment industry, which ranks as the seventh-largest employer in the Southland, according to the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. Few of the estimated 140,000 people directly employed by the entertainment industry landed their jobs by responding to a recruitment ad.

“You’re never going to pick up a newspaper and find a classified ad for a job in this business,” said Jaleesa Hazzard, director of the record industry’s YES To Jobs program, which offers summer employment for high school students. “It’s definitely a who-you-know-business.”

Hollywood’s penchant for rewarding savvy deal making has given a big boost to the careers of many private attorneys who started out practicing entertainment law and later moved to the inside as studio or record label chiefs.

Peter Paterno, a former music industry lawyer, now heads Hollywood Records. And former CBS Records chief Walter Yetnikoff, who started in the label’s legal department and signed such acts as the Rolling Stones, had been a lawyer in private practice.

Tom Pollock, a lawyer, is chairman of MCA Motion Picture Group. And Columbia Pictures Entertainment Inc. hired its longtime attorney, Alan J. Levine, to be president and chief operating officer of its FilmedEntertainment Group.

Among the various entertainment sectors, television and radio stations offer the most accessible employment process, experts say, in part because broadcasters are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission and must meet affirmative action rules that require them to recruit women and minorities.

Traditionally, TV and radio personalities, technicians and other employees gain experience at stations in small- and medium-sized towns and work their way up to major markets such as Los Angeles and New York.

Studios and record companies don’t have a similar farm system. For the most part, film and music jobs are concentrated in New York and Southern California, and, as a result, it’s more difficult to get a break.

The record industry, in particular, remains extremely difficult to break into, and executives rarely come from outside the music world. Rather, they travel from company to company. Smith, for example, has been president of three big labels: Warner Bros., Elektra/Asylum and his current home, Capitol-EMI.

Executives traditionally start out in the record business either as lawyers in a label’s legal or business affairs division or as a manager in the promotion, sales or talent scout divisions. Those latter units often draw their staff from radio stations and nightclubs or other music-related enterprises.

Film studios fall somewhere between music and broadcasting in terms of opportunities for outsiders. However, some experts say major studios have become more open in response to the charges of nepotism that have long plagued Hollywood.

Disney, a movie studio that had ranked at the bottom of two surveys on employment opportunities for minority writers, this year launched a new writing program for minorities and women.

Disney is paying 27 black, Latino, Asian-American and women writers $30,000 each to develop their writing at the studio for a year. Meanwhile, some other studios have expanded their internship programs for college students and are doing more aggressive recruiting.

But some Hollywood executives say simply getting a foot in the door should not be the only goal. They say it’s better to focus on a specific job and get to know the people in that area.

“Just because you go to a baseball game and sit in the bleachers doesn’t mean you are going to get invited down on the playing field,” said Robert E. Holmes, an executive vice president at Columbia Pictures Entertainment Inc.

“Although there have been some great success stories about someone rising through the ranks from secretary or mail clerk,” he said, there are lots of people still working in mail rooms.

Indeed, some experts say the traditional ladder to success in Hollywood is beginning to change as consolidation produces entertainment conglomerates with job structure more akin to traditional businesses.

Karen Folson, of the Spencer Stuart & Associates entertainment executive search firm, said entertainment sales, marketing and distribution jobs have gained in importance. The positions have gained clout, she said, as the entertainment industry has moved to expand its operations overseas.

Yet not everyone recruited to come to the entertainment industry is an eager convert.

“To a lot of people it’s a mixed bag,” said Simon of Korn/Ferry. “There’s a lot more glitz in entertainment than in other industries. But there are some people who say . . . it’s flaky and unstable with too many difficult people.”