Written by Choosing the best business actors
Why use professional business actors at work?
Professional business actors can often be hired to assist organisations with role playing and fictional scenarios during their training programmes, recruitment days or formal presentations. The main advantage of using trained business actors or professional corporate role-players over company employees is that a professional actor will reproduce realistic reactions during any exercises, allowing you to observe the natural behaviour of your current or potential employee. On top of this, any familiarity between colleagues won’t affect the conduct of those being assessed, as could be the case if they completed an exercise together.
Use specialist business trained actors – save yourself a lot of time
For professional actors to have a significant impact on the effectiveness of your role playing exercise, whether it is for recruitment or training, you’ll need to choose the right people for the job. Specialist business training advisers will often maintain their own repertoire of go-to actors, who have the necessary training and experience of role playing in the business environment to produce realistic scenarios and ensure your outcomes or assessments are completed. It is important to choose a reputable business training company, preferably with extended experience with their actors, and National Training Awards to hand.
While this assistance can be invaluable to business owners, there are certain criteria which you can consider beforehand, to ensure you find the actors or actresses most appropriate to your needs.
Identify the specifics
You’ll first want to identify the gender and approximate age of your actor. It may be worth considering the demographics of your target audience, or any gender- or age-related requirements of your fictional scenarios. Are there accent or ethnicity requirements? What type of roles do you want them to play? On top of this, you may also want to consider the amount of corporate drama experience which your proposed actor or actress has under their belt. Business acting is an entirely different skill set to stage or film acting.
Experienced business role play actors are invaluable
Actors with more experience are able to provide suggestions or recommendations for the ways in which to best fulfil your training or recruitment outcomes. They can assume the role of actor/director, making suggestions for dialogue or fictional scenarios which will best teach your current employees new procedures, or effectively test the suitability of potential members of staff. Will you require this assistance, or do you have prior experience in staging corporate drama? If you could benefit from assistance, then you’ll need to make sure that your professional actor fully understands the procedures and expected outcomes of your role playing.
Script or improvisation?
You may also need to consider whether your actor will read from a script or improvise. During business role playing, a strict script could affect the realism of an exercise, or simply be disregarded as a result of the natural flow of dialogue. As such, you may wish to hire professional actors who are particularly esteemed for their quick thinking and improvisatory skills. The actor hire company or business training advisors will be able to provide extensive information on the backgrounds of their actors, helping you to make the decision.
Make your decision easier with expert help
Whether you’re planning on training your staff for new scenarios or products, or observing potential employees for potential recruitment, you’ll save both time and effort with the assistance of a professional actor. The decision can be difficult, often with many equally suitable actors available for hire. However, with the correct planning and the assistance of a business training company who specialise in corporate drama, you’ll make the right choice. Training companies specialising in the hire of professional actors will be able to match your requirements with the right actors. They will also advise on the scenarios that you are planning to use and help you get the best outcomes for your delegates.
Further articles by Nelson Training on this subject that might be useful if you are considering using business actors, corporate role-players or using drama in training are Tips For Hiring Business Actors and Uses of drama based training in business training