New week, new recruiter quick tip.  This one comes to you from Erica Haack, the HR Specialist & Recruiter at Deep Silver Volition.  She’s been working in the game industry since 2007, and is heavily involved in recruiting all candidates for Volition.  I’ve actually been recruited by Erica before, so I can personally attest to her skills as a recruiter!  On to the tip…

“If you’re going to include a cover letter, it should have relevant information about you and how you are great for the job you are applying for, not just bullet points of your skills.  Too many applicants use a template from Word or the first template they find on a Google search and cut-and-paste directly from the resume—not a good idea.  I want to know why you want to work for us and specific experiences you have relating to the position.  Try to keep this to 2 paragraphs.  Following up if you haven’t heard back is a good idea too, but wait at least a week.”

Deep Silver Volition is hiring – check out all of their openings.  Thanks to Erica for the tip, and have a good weekend, everyone!

The next Recruiter Quick Tip comes from none other than, well, me.  ”But….you’re not a game industry recruiter!”  I can hear you say.  And you’re right – but, I’m writing the post, damn it! I’ve reviewed my fair share of resumes over the years, and I hope this tip is helpful. This is aimed at job hunters who might be looking for their first professional job, and it is something I’ve run into frequently.

Be very selective about what you include from your high school and college jobs. Putting something like, “maintained lettuce-to-tomato ratio on tacos to meet customer expectations” might sound fancy, but it’s not doing you any favors when applying for a job in games. There’s no shame in having worked at Taco Shack, and it’s nice to see you have work experience, but you probably don’t need to go into great detail. Instead, look to include relevant achievements or skills that might start a conversation in an interview. You’ll get a lot more mileage out of something like, “Motivated learner:  watched over 80 hours of online tutorials in an effort to improve my skills in 3ds Max.”

Have a good weekend, everyone!

The next Recruiter Quick Tip comes to us from Patrick Lamont, the Talent Acquisition Specialist at EA’s Baton Rouge QA facility.  Patrick has worked in the game industry for over 10 years, and has placed literally thousands of candidates during that span.

Here is his tip:

“Your resume will have a much greater chance of catching a Recruiter’s eye if you list specific accomplishments rather than just industry buzzwords. I pay very little attention to  people describing themselves as “dynamic”, “results-oriented” or “value-adds”. That doesn’t tell me anything I haven’t heard a million times. But if you tell me about how you inherited a process or system, tweaked it and improved the end results? Then you’ll really have my attention.”

Very true – you can’t go wrong highlighting substance over style.  Check out EA’s current openings, and Patrick is always looking to hire testers in Baton Rouge.

Finding a job in the game industry can be tough. It can be even harder if you’re slipping up at some point in the process without realizing it. A recruiter might have dozens of other resumes for the same position you applied for, and there’s only so many hours in the day. They’re looking for quick ways to whittle that pile down, and a couple of errors can land your resume in the reject stack.

We wanted to start this new blog series to get advice directly from the source – game industry recruiters. We’ll look at posting a quick tip on a regular basis that can help you avoid common mistakes that these recruiters are seeing.

Our first tip comes from Juliette Dupré (LinkedIn/Twitter), Recruiter at Gameloft New Orleans:

“Recruiters can deal with hundreds of candidates at a time. But even with exceptional skills they may not be able to respond to and schedule every candidate immediately. Don’t send repeat emails within a 24-hour period, or even 72-hour period, unless it’s a true emergency. You will appear clued-out as to how business works, and sometimes even rude.”

Good advice – it can be frustrating to play the waiting game, but patience is a requirement in the job hunting process.

Check the open positions at Gameloft’s New Orleans studio, and stay tuned for more quick tips!