If you were recruting for a DJ, what skills (essential and desirable skils) do you feel that a DJ should have?

My own thoughts:-

A Good Communicator
Good at Problem Solving and Workarounds
Good Driver and Navigator (Getting There on time and in one piece)
Polite and Smart in Appearance


What else?

A sence of Responsibility and Reliability.

Customer orientated thinking - especially in terms of music. eg: "What would the audience like to hear next?", NOT, "what would I like to hear next?". This way of thinking also, goes hand-in-hand with "What would the audience think of what I'm about to do next?".

Business orientated thinker too - OK, so Mr and Mrs Smith have just paid us their weeks wage for a disco (thanks!) but keeping up the professional image until the last van door is locked is a good idea - you never know exactly when the venue staff stop assessing you and your trainees - answering a call of nature behind the fire exit door might not get you future bookings.

Music knowledge - (!) Not the sort of trivia about how the drummer of that band is now the half-sister of the lead guitarists second cousin of the guy that used to play the bongo's for the guy with the beard in Genesis... but at least enough to know that they need to quickly ask "which artist?" when someone comes up and asks for something like - "The power of love"...

Sense of humour! and not mic-shy - not for "Tony Blackburn" style announcements between each track, but someone who wont stand there all night claiming "I'd rather let the music speak for itself" when you ask them to dedicate a song, or thinking that the mic and its lead, are mearly plugged in to keep the dust out of that XLR socket. I visited a disco about 4 weeks ago and the DJ said "Hi yer everyone", "Last orders", "g'night" and that, was about the total sum of his vocal enticements...

A Think-on-their-feet person.... if "Item X" stops working and the theres no workable spare - theres got to be a way of getting "item W" to work with "item Y" (safely) to keep the show going.

A sense of humour and an ability to carry on smiling when its all gone Pete Tong !!!!

Rich
Good looking
and Blonde















And female

the right attitude

Experience

Hi

If you're recruiting a trainee, they're not likely to have much experience are they? lol

Here's my small list

1. Enthusiasm.
2. Willingness to work hard
3. Professional approach and reliability.
4. Pleasant personality and smart appearance.
5. Tactful, ie.e not telling the guest that their requests won't get plaid cause they're rubbish.
6. Female, sexy and good pillow talk would also help tremendously.

Darren

We looked for most of the above when we last took on trainees. We also did something which scared a lot of our applicants but made for some interesting reading...

We gave the prospective DJ a sheet of paper with 4 columns the first & third blank with the headings Before & After, the second column had song title & artist in it & the last had what type of function & age group. We asked them what track they would play before & after the one we had selected.

The purpose of this was to gague how well they could keep the flow of the party going & to an extent their musical knowleage. Obviously it didn't take into account reading the audience, but it did provide some good pointers on who to take on.

2 things most of you are missing when looking for a trainee is
1) strong arms !! to carry the gear
2) enough change in his pocket to buy the kebab's on the way home !!

For starters,

1) Honesty
2) Reliabilty
3) No Addictions


The rest can come later or be taught.

further to my post, we also specified large music collection