A brand with a shoot to commission opens the creator directory. They're not browsing. They're filtering, then scanning, then shortlisting. The whole thing takes a few minutes.
Your profile has to survive all three stages, and each one is looking at something different. Most creators optimise only for the third.
Stage one: the filter
Before anyone looks at your work, they narrow the list. That filtering runs on your tags, so tags decide whether you're in the conversation at all.
Three sets, with caps:
- Disciplines: up to 3. What you fundamentally are.
- Specialities: up to 6. What kind of work.
- Industries: up to 6. Whose work.
The caps exist for a reason and you should treat them as a budget rather than a target.
Fewer tags, ranked higher, is the strategy.
Stage two: the scan
The brand now has a filtered list and is scanning it. At this point they see very little: your name, your handle, your tagline, your avatar, and your score.
The tagline is doing almost all the work. It's the one free-text field visible before anyone clicks, and most creators waste it.
Wasted: "Passionate visual storyteller bringing brands to life."
Working: "Product and process films for manufacturers. Workshops, factories, small crews, natural light."
The second is specific enough to be rejected, which is exactly why it converts. A brand shooting in a factory will click it; a brand shooting a fashion campaign won't, and you didn't want that call.
Have a real avatar. A face or a mark, not a default. Empty avatars read as abandoned profiles.
Your score will be modest early on, and that's expected. It's a Bayesian mean built only from paid, delivered, rated bookings, so a new creator's number is honest rather than flattering. At this stage your tagline and work are carrying you.
Stage three: the profile
They've clicked. Now the rules from a portfolio that gets you booked apply: relevance over impressiveness, three pieces rather than thirty, a line of context on each.
Two things specific to this surface:
Your reel and your selected work do different jobs. The reel answers "can this person shoot". A complete piece answers "can this person make a thing", which is the actual question, because a montage hides whether you can structure something.
Order matters more than contents. Whatever is first is what you're advertising. If you want brand work, brand work goes first, even if the music video is better.
Theme and accent
Your profile carries a visual theme and an accent colour. It's a small thing that isn't nothing: it makes the page yours rather than a form someone filled in, and it flows through to your pitch documents and your OG cards, so a shared link unfurls as something designed.
Pick one and keep it. Consistency across your profile, your pitches and your referral cards reads as a practice rather than a person with an account.
What the profile can't do
Be straight about this: a profile doesn't win work. It gets you onto a shortlist.
The work is won by the pitch, the document that proves you understood this brief. The profile's entire job is to be good enough, specific enough and credible enough that you're in the room when the brief goes out.
Which means the highest-leverage thing on it is the tagline and the tags, not the tenth portfolio piece.
Your public page
Your profile is live at /c/your-handle: a real public URL you can put anywhere, including in a signature or on a site you already run. It works as your portfolio even for clients who've never heard of Acumin.
Referral cards make one earned rating portable in the same way: a shareable credential tied to a real booking, which is a different category of proof from a testimonial you chose to display.
The checklist
Ten minutes, once:
- Handle: short, yours, the one you'll keep
- Display name: the name you want to be booked under
- Tagline: specific enough to be rejected
- Avatar: a real one
- Disciplines: 1 to 2, not 3
- Specialities: 2 to 3, not 6
- Industries: the ones you actually want more of
- Reel: 60 to 90 seconds, best moments, no slow build
- Selected work: three pieces, most relevant first, one line each
- Theme and accent: set once, reuse everywhere
How to use this tomorrow
Cut your specialities down to three.
It will feel like closing doors. What it actually does is make you findable for the work you want and put you on track to clear the three-rating threshold that gets you ranked on a scoped score.
Related: Understanding your Acumin Score explains why concentrating specialities compounds. Finding briefs worth pitching on is what happens once the profile is doing its job.