Replica Studios is an AI voice start-up company based in Brisbane, Australia. I first met the Replica team in 2018 when I was working on a video game coincidentally titled Speaking Simulator.

Just for fun, I recorded a voice dataset for Replica to use; one of my own fun character voices, and didn’t have much to do with the company until early January 2021, where a random Youtube comment I left on their channel landed me a job with the company in the space of 3 days.

I hit the ground running as Replica’s first dedicated ‘Talent Coordinator’ and familiarised myself with their existing workflows. This involved writing character briefs and emailing voice actors online wherever I could find them, and asking them to audition. Within a few weeks I gained the confidence to go beyond the assigned routine and started reaching out to more voice actors to invite them to learn more about us through introductory Zoom calls, in what I would call a ‘voice-first’ approach, instead of the ‘brief-first’ method I had inherited.

Having worked closely with voice actors on other projects, and as a voice actor and creative person myself, I was able to build strong relationships with the voice talent quickly, and worked constantly to make the on-boarding process more efficient, while on-boarding more interesting character voices than ever before. After about 3 months I was promoted to ‘Talent Manager’ and I greatly enjoyed the autonomy and responsibility of developing the pipeline for recruiting voice talent in a brand new industry.

In the interests of making the process scalable, and so that we might build out voice library even faster, I automated several parts of the talent-scouting process using online forms and a series of explainer videos. These videos covered the public-facing invitation, through to detailed ‘how to audition’ videos, and a ‘recording process’ series. These improvements enabled myself, and the expanding voice team, to screen exponentially more voice actors and explain the process to them, while freeing up time for detailed live-directed sessions and other exclusive custom voice requests for enterprise customers.

I greatly enjoyed my time with Replica Studios, and value the strong connections I’ve made with the voice-acting community around the world.

Role summary & skills:

• • • Autonomous role, with significant team aspects as well
    • Problem solving (emerging industry)
    • Process development (tutorials, instructional documents and detailed explainer videos)
    • Relationship building (strong engagement with voice acting community)
    • Writing training materials for both internal and external use
    • Training new team members & streamlining internal processes
    • Created the Replica Voice Community Newsletter, complete with talent interviews
    • Lead generation through relevant community forum posts & pipeline development
    • Script writing, audio editing, community engagement & content creation