This guide has everything you need to create a Pluralsight audition. Your audition accomplishes two things. It highlights your teaching skills and simulates our course production experience through the use of Pluralsight resources, processes, quality criteria, and review/revision loops. 

The following six steps will help you make the most of our audition kit. But before you get started, here are three important things to remember:

Submit original video auditions related to your technical expertise. You may repurpose previously created content as long as you’re the original author.

• Deliver videos between 4 – 8 minutes in length; 10 minutes is the maximum.
• We value original content and authorial integrity. Plagiarism isn’t tolerated and could result in termination of any and all partnerships with Pluralsight.

Why an audition?

Technical instructors empower and enlighten learners through purposeful explanation. Completing the audition will:

• Help your Author Community Manager understand your teaching skills
• Let your Author Community Manager see how well you incorporate our branding and quality guidelines
• Give you the opportunity to see how long it takes to create a Pluralsight video

Remember to create a compelling reason for someone to want to learn what you’re about to teach. How will this make their life better? We call this the “what’s in it for me?” or WIIFM for the learner.

Tips for creating an impressive audition script

Give us some personality in your narration. Try writing your script to showcase how you teach. Our most successful authors do more than read through slides. They tell a story and do so with excitement and purpose.

Audio Tips

You’ve probably heard it already, but we’ll say it again: You really should get in the habit of recording independent tracks for video and narration. Trying to narrate live while demoing usually means background noise and stumbles or pauses in narration and makes it needlessly difficult to edit down the road. Trust us.

Remember, the learner can’t see you or read your body language. Engaging visuals that relate to the narration are a must to enhance the learner’s understanding. Use callouts and annotations and avoid guiding the viewer with your mouse. It’s distracting for the learner and hard to follow.

See the attached audition outline. When creating your course, you’re required to outline it in its entirety. This step helps you learn how course planning works as you prepare for your audition. Make a copy of the audition outline provided below and upload to the Dropbox folder your Author Community Manager shared with you.

Filling out the Audition Outline

Slide Deck:

Use slides from the PowerPoint Template and icons found under resources. Keep your story and message in mind as you choose imagery. Diagrams, pictures, images, colors, and other visual assets should complement and reinforce your narrative to keep learners engaged. Visual variety is meant to support you and your narration, not the other way around.

Scripting:

Preparing your script prior to recording makes recording smoother and helps you feel more confident as you teach. It helps to plan slides, demos, emphasis, and delivery ahead of time so you can focus on your presentation. Scripting also helps bridge any language barriers.

Slide deck:

Advanced experience with video production isn’t required, but a few basics are necessary for the audition. They include:

• Pluralsight Branded Slide Deck (PowerPoint/Keynote)
• Screen capture/editing and production software
• Microphone

Editing software

You’ll find several editing tools out there, including TechSmith’s Camtasia, DaVinci Resolve, and OBS. These programs have all the editing capabilities you'll need as a Pluralsight Author. Bonus: Free trials (length varies) are usually available. Any one of these tools should be sufficient for you to complete your audition. Refer to the resources for videos on best practices, recording/editing in Camtasia, and more.

Slide recording

In most cases, it’s not necessary to adjust default hardware resolution when recording your slides. Here are some quick tips for PowerPoint:

Screen capture

• Set your local machine resolution (with screen capture) to 1920 x 1080p or record a virtual machine set to this resolution. Don’t record a higher resolution and scale down during editing.
• Ensure you’ve hidden all unnecessary clutter, such as task bars, app icons, notifications, and the system clock
• Set your desktop background to a neutral solid color

Demo & callouts

• Capture only as much of the screen as necessary
• Minimize visual distractions, such as a code editor’s pop-up suggestion box
• Use a readable font (typically 16 – 18 font size)

Recording audio

• Record the demo and audio separately to avoid typing sounds (check out this video for best practices)
• Monitor software input volume for a consistent level between -6 to -12 db 
• Make sure audio is loud, clear, and free of clipping, distortion, and distracting background noise 
• Edit or re-record if background noises are noticeable enough to be distracting (e.g., dogs barking, traffic, etc.)
• Avoid silent pauses over five seconds, overly frequent crutch words, such as “um” or “aw,” and frequent unscripted material

Editing

Professional-quality video means clean edits, transitions, and callouts. Leave about one second of silence when the screen transitions from slides to demo video. This delay gives the viewer’s eyes time to adjust to the change. Here are a few other editing tips:

• Use box callouts with discrete borders to highlight explicit pieces of information while leaving everything else visible 
• Try arrow and line callouts to draw attention to a general area 
• Keep a first-time learner’s experience in mind 
• Never use the cursor to circle or highlight as a callout and never zoom

If you’d like a visual guide to callouts, please refer to ’Getting Started with Camtasia’ video under resources. (Alex talks about callouts at 9:11.)

• Listen to your voice track and watch the video from the perspective of a learner expecting professional instruction and edit as necessary
• Keep an eye out for any editing abnormalities and adjust accordingly
• Consider asking a peer or someone you trust to give honest, constructive feedback to watch your audition 
• Make edits and improvements before submitting

Export

• Render and output at 1920 x 1080p resolution using 30 frames per second (FPS) 
• Export to MP4 format

Share

• After you’ve reviewed your audition and feel comfortable about its quality, upload your video to your Expert Portal Profile or to the Dropbox folder your Author Community Manager shared and let them know it’s ready to review. Once your Author Community Manager finishes their review, they’ll provide you with feedback and let you know if the audition was approved, denied, or needs additional work.

Get feedback

• To prepare you for Pluralsight’s standards, your Author Community Manager will send you feedback on your audition. Implementing this feedback might be required for audition approval—a few revisions of an audition is normal. Once your audition is approved, you'll be ready to become a Pluralsight Author. Let the celebration begin!

Audition timeline