Want To Be A YG Entertainment Trainee? Sometimes All It Takes Is An Instagram DM And Avoiding One Thing That The Casting Leader Hates
If you’ve ever wanted to be a YG Entertainment trainee, there are some things you should look out for.
Suk Eun Jae, the leader of the YG Audition & Casting team, recently sat down for an interview with WINNER‘s Hoony (also known as Lee Seung Hoon) where she detailed the ins and outs of the trainee life in the company.
One of the important pieces of information that she imparted was the place where she finds potential recruits. The team looks for young talents both physically and online. They do their best to find kids with potential who will eventually make it to the end of the three rounds of auditions.
[There’s a] first round of screening, second round of auditions, and a final audition.
— Suk Eun Jae
The places where they often find trainees have expanded from solely offline areas to online ones as well such as “monthly zoom auditions, Kakao auditions, and Instagram DM auditions.”
The last one took HOONY off-guard, with him commenting, “You take auditions through DMs? Wow. The new Gen Z.”
Suk Eun Jae confirmed that the Audition & Casting team does, in fact, look through their private messages for randomly sent videos for the first phase of auditions. They have their own Instagram account, ygaudition, as well as KakaoTalk page, for matters related to this. Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, they’ve been moving their search to their official pages more seriously.
Yes, yes. During the pandemic, there was a long period of remote interactions. We created a process where we could select people remotely and conveniently at home, and we still try to do that.
— Suk Eun Jae
If you do decide to message YG Entertainment on Instagram or KakaoTalk in the hopes of becoming a trainee, just make sure to avoid one thing. Suk Eun Jae admitted that the messages her team ignores are the ones that are just selfies and nothing else.
If you randomly send a photo, we’ll just skip over that applicant.
— Suk Eun Jae
Thus, make sure to send something that shows more of yourself and your skills. The casting leader confirmed that their rules are not too strict either—they can audition with a song of an artist at another company, they do not need prior training, and their appearances are not a top priority. What matters in the end is their potential.
Check out the full video below to learn more about the YG training life!
