Explaining Hollywood: How to get a job as an agent
LOS ANGELES — A decade ago, Chris Noriega took a leap of faith and followed his dreams to Hollywood.
"The Big Lebowski" fan quit his job at a bank in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he had made six figures right out of college. He got his MBA and then veered in a different direction from his classmates — into a role sorting mail at the Gersh Agency at the age of 31.
"The idea of going into a mailroom and starting at the absolute bottom was kind of a tough pill to swallow," said Noriega, who is now a partner at Verve, an L.A.-based talent and literary agency. "At the same time, if I went through this change and went back to school to do something I was really passionate about, looking at spreadsheets wasn't it."
Although the talent representation business has been challenged during the COVID-19 pandemic, landing a job as an
