We’re creating these lists as pages now instead of posts, so I wanted to let everyone know that the Chicago list is now up: http://gamejobhunter.com/blog/local-video-game-companies-chicago/! Check out the Video Game Cities link in the blog menu for the full list of cities that we’ve done. The links are also on the sidebar of each page now.
We’ll be working on one of the big gaming hubs next, but we need your help to decide which one. All of the cities that are up for the vote need to be completed soon, but we have to start somewhere. We just added or updated lists for Austin, Gainesville and Orlando. What comes next is up to you…
The voting will close at 6pm CST on Friday the 13th (ominous). Work on the post will start that weekend!
Vote here (quick sign-up or Facebook log-in required): https://www.voteit.com/v/0e34bbb
A friend at the show sent me over a few shots of the Career Pavilion this morning. These came in at around 10am PST, so I’m guessing there were a lot of people still trying to motivate themselves to get out of bed. Looks very manageable in these shots, but I’m guessing that it’s already in the process of filling up.
If you’re there, let me know how it’s going! Good luck, everyone!
GDC is almost upon us, and the Career Pavilion will be an essential part of the conference for many attendees. If you haven’t been before, the GDC Career Pavilion houses an impressive collection of game studios who are looking to hire. They’re forking over good money for that fancy booth, and they’re doing it so that they can talk to you (or maybe that guy next to you….).
If you’re going to GDC, what are some things that you can do to increase your chances for success in the Career Pavilion? Here are some suggestions, from someone who has wandered a few such conference job fairs (including GDC’s):
This list is by no means exhaustive – ask around to other people who’ve been to the show. They’ll have lots of great advice to offer. Good luck!
I think this is an issue that causes some confusion for people in the game industry, especially for people without a lot of work experience. First off, it makes sense to point out that there are two main types of recruiters:
With this post, I’m focusing mainly on 3rd party recruiters. Whether or not you should use one depends heavily on your circumstances. It’s key to understand how 3rd party recruiters work. They can either be working on a contingency (they get paid when they place someone) or a retainer (they get paid a set fee to help a studio with the recruiting process). The contingency can often be something like 20%-30% of the employee’s first-year salary. In either case, there should be no cost to you, and they can often assist with resume reviews, interview tips, salary negotiations, etc. They often have deals worked out with certain studios, so they’re going to try and point you towards a studio that will pay them if you get hired. I was contacted by a recruiter during a job search years ago, and told him I was interested in moving to Austin. He kept mentioning a specific studio in the northeast to me, which struck me as odd. It’s clear now that he had a deal with that studio, and was looking to send applicants their way. I was naive about the process, and didn’t know how it worked.
So think about your circumstances – are you a junior artist going up for a position against 200 applicants? A studio might not want to pay that 20%-30% fee if they have a lot of options. Are you a senior programmer or executive? In that case, a studio might be more than happy to pay the fee to get the right candidate. They might also not be publicly advertising the position, and allowing the recruiter to conduct the search quietly. If you’re not using that recruiter, you might not hear about it.
So should you use a recruiter? It’s really up to you – hopefully some of this info helps de-mystify the process a bit.
Whenever you’re working through the interview process with a company, you’re likely going to have several interactions with that studio. It’s important that you take every step of that process seriously, and realize what impression you might be making with each interaction. Here are some of the steps that you might take:
You might have several more steps involved before ultimately receiving a job offer. It’s very important to realize that each of those stages is an opportunity for the studio to weed you out. Don’t underestimate what impact a poor interaction during any of these stages might have.
I have a friend who was responsible for several hiring decisions at a large developer, and he always uses the term “coarse filters”, which I like. If a candidate submitted an application, but didn’t follow an instruction he had in the job description, he’d immediately dismiss them. That was his “failure to follow instructions” filter. It showed that the candidate probably hadn’t spent the time to fully read through the job description. He had similar filters for cover letters with lots of typos, e-mails that didn’t reference the right job, and more. It might sound harsh, but you have to realize that you might be up against 100 (or more) other candidates. The hiring manager just doesn’t have the time to personally get to know each candidate. They have to look to make quick judgments to get that stack of resumes down to a manageable number.
Keep that in mind in every interaction you have with the game company you’re talking to, and you’ll have a much better chance at advancing to the next stage in the interview process!
The blog has been a little neglected lately. A lot neglected, really. I just went through and updated the blog theme – the old one was incredibly dated, and still featured our old logo. That’s been rectified, and I feel like we’ve moved a bit closer to the modern era. We’ve added social links to each post, so please help us out by sharing any stories that you find interesting. I’ll work on writing more regular posts to keep things interesting around here.
We’ve had a lot of interesting posts over the past week – new ads from WB Games, The Art Institute of Fort Worth, Games That Work, Demiurge Studios and more!
As always, good luck in your job search!
Well, it took us much longer than I thought it would, but we finally got our new UI design up last week. I’m very happy with how it turned out – the functionality is very similar, but I think it looks much more polished. The day we updated the site was our biggest traffic day ever, which was very rewarding. Thanks to everyone who checked it out! We’ve already started to plan our next batch of updates, and we’re going to work to make sure that these don’t take nearly as long to implement. 
Are there any features that you’d like to see added to the site? We always love to get feedback, so let us know what you think. Thanks for continuing to support GameJobHunter!
Paul
This isn’t a full-fledged “local game companies” post, because, quite frankly, it would be very short. The GameJobHunter staff is actually entirely in New Orleans now, so we’d love it if there were more of a development scene here. It looks like interesting things are afoot for the city, as Gameloft is very close to opening a new studio here in New Orleans! They’ve asked us, through LED (Louisiana Economic Development), to help them promote their open positions.
They’ve got a site up, and they’re looking for talented, experienced people to apply. Please share with as many people as possible!
It’s a great opportunity to be part of a new studio in an exciting city. I’m actually a recent transplant, and I’m loving it here. If you’ve got any questions, let me know.
I was glancing at several postings on our site today, and I couldn’t help but notice how many different ads we’ve had go up recently from countries other than the US. When we first started the site (over 2 years ago), we were contacting companies directly to see if they’d post their ads with us. We focused almost exclusively on companies within the US, primarily because that seemed like the obvious place for us (US residents) to start. After about a year, we started to notice more and more companies finding us on their own. Again, it seemed like it was mostly US studios. Recently though, it seems like studios from all over the world have been finding us and posting their jobs on our site. Here are some examples:
It’s been really rewarding to watch the site take off over the past few years, and it’s been especially cool to see it start to find a worldwide audience!