How To Hire A Voice Talent

How to hire a voice actor – let’s start with the “how to find a voice actor” part and then we’ll go into the “what to do once you’ve hired a voice actor” part!

1. Search for your key terms. What are you looking for? Terms like American male voice talent, sassy female voice actor, rugged voice over, classic announcer VoiceOver, will all find you the voice actors who have managed to dominate the search engine optimization game.

PRO: You will find voice talent who’ve spent the time and money to rank high on Google. That’s a good indicator of an established voice talent.
CON: That may be enough to find who you’re looking for, but if you need to cast a wider net, you may not find it easily this way.

2. If your budget is larger, use a casting director or a talent agency. The biggest productions (think national brand commercials) go through casting directors (CDs), who then send an audition out to numerous talent agencies, and then the CD vets the auditions, sharing the best ones with the client. Two of the power-hitting CDs in VO are Sound and Fury and the VoiceCaster, but there are many more. With a slightly smaller budget, many companies go directly through a smaller, regional talent agency. There are agencies just for VO, and some that have a VO division among their on-camera and modeling divisions. Simply search for “VoiceOver talent agency” and, if you’re in a large city and want to work with a local agency, add the name of the city: “Voiceover talent agency Kansas City”. You can have the talent agent select a few for you, or you can listen to all auditions.

PRO: The CD or agent will help you.
CON: It will cost you – they don’t work for free! Agents tend to get 10-20% on top of your VO budget. CDs cost more on top of that.

3.Go through a pay-to-play website. There are several notable websites for this, but you’ll find the net is not as wide as you’d like on these sites. Many pro voice talent aren’t on these sites, or are on them sporadically. You may get 50 auditions for your project, but only 2 or 3 are professional, and you’re stuck with a limited selection. Additionally, these sites tend to treat the voice talent poorly. For example, I’m a pro voice actor, and I might do 1 or 2 auditions per day on Voice123 .com, even if there are 25 available. Auditioning in large indiscriminate numbers hurts your ranking on the site, so talent are encouraged to choose auditions judiciously.

PRO: It’s DIY, and you can find some cheap talent.
CON: You’ve got to sift through a lot of cheap talent.

4.THE BEST, CHEAPEST, AND EASIEST WAY: Hire your favorite voice actor directly! Email the voice actor and tell him what you want. Any pro voice talent has invoicing already set up, and will be able to bill you easily, so you can pay by almost any means possible. As a bonus, your favorite voice actor will often gladly help you find OTHER voice talent – we all know that we can’t voice EVERYTHING! For example, I’m not a great Santa Claus, but I know who is. I can’t do ladies’ voices, but I know who can! I speak Spanish, but if you want native Spanish with an Ecuadorian accent, I can find that! For a small casting fee, most voice talent will be happy to help you search! Many companies that frequently use voiceover maintain their own small stable of voice talent, sometimes as small as 4 or 5 voices, and sometimes as large as hundreds, where they conduct their own auditions.

PRO: You save time and money by skipping the middle man, and you build relationships with a working actor. When you’re hustling to make a deadline, there’s something to be said for being able to text your voice talent at 7PM: “Do you have time to record a quick tagline?”
CON: Sometimes your voice actor isn’t a do-it-all kind of guy. You need James Earl Jones, and he’s more of a Ryan Reynolds, or vice versa.

5. Go through a production house. Many ad agencies, and many post-production studios, maintain rosters of voice talent, and they will just include the cost of the VO in their overall price.

PRO: It’s easy, especially if you’re already using the organization to produce your stuff.
CON: Talent pools are often limited, and it’s more hands-off for you, the end client.

6. Places you should AVOID: Twitter, Reddit, chat rooms, Casting Call Club, Voice Acting Club. These places are huge gatherings of low-quality voice talent that will work for pennies. Because everyone has a pair of vocal cords and cheap microphones are readily available, the internet is rife with hobbyists who are excited to accept any amount of money for any amount of VO work. Just like you wouldn’t drive a $50 car, you’ll find that cheap voice talent is not worth the headache. As expected when doing business with a hobbyist, you’ll deal with poor technical quality, poor acting, poor availability, and unprofessional business practices, and often end up spending extra time and money replacing your initial VO.

But let’s say you hired the voice actor yourself. You emailed me, Andy Field, and said “Hey Andy, we really like you for the announcer VO in our upcoming commercial”.

OK, now that you’ve found your voice talent, what do you do?

Send them an email that says this:

Hey ___, we really like you for the role of ______ in our upcoming _____.

Then include:
1. The type of production and usage: Commercial, 13 weeks, or video game on PS5 and Steam, or e-learning course for use on Boeing’s website.
2. The length of the script in seconds, minutes, or words. For e-learning, always give the length in words. Video games sometimes give the length in lines, but it’s difficult to guess how long lines will be.
3. The script itself, if available, or at least a draft.
4. Do you want to have a live session with the talent? If so, when? Give a window of dates/ times if possible, or ask the talent when they’re available on certain dates. Also, how will you connect? Zoom is pretty common, as is Microsoft Teams.
5. If you don’t want a live session, when is the recording due? What format would you like it in? .wav is most common for finished products, but .mp3 is a popular choice as well. Do you want the file named a certain way, to help you organize? For example would you like the file named “Commercial VO – Andy Field – todays date”? Or does it matter?
6. Many will include a link to a video or an attached sample of the sort of vibe they’d like to hear, or perhaps even a rough track of the actual product, with the client voicing it (usually terribly – that’s OK!) so the voice talent can feel the timing of the piece.
7. Pronunciation guides, especially if you have an unusual product name, or a location that isn’t intuitively pronounced.

That’s it!

The voice talent will deliver you the file, and send you an invoice. You pay it by check, credit card, PayPal, or whatever. Congrats! You now have a professional voice over!