As an artist team we were having a beer to relax from doing some overtime on the job and we got to talking about how each individual was able to land the job at this studio. Some of the guys had worked for the studio for a while in the past and it sounded like they had kept in touch with the contracting/staffing agency that had employed them at one time at a different studio. It seems that when new studios are seeking for employees they will go directly to those agencies since they know they have a roster of employable candidates who have already had a track record of being employed and with an agency that the new studio can use (this usually means that the agency is located in the same city as the studio that is looking for new employees). One of the colleagues was employed at the time but was fearful for company's future because it was a smaller start-up studio, and the other had been laid off and looking for work. They were both living in two different states that were far away from Kirkland, Washington where WB Games is located. One of them was contacted by email from the same staffing secretary that he had worked with before when he was living in the Seattle/Kirkland area. It seems that if you have a history with an employer and you move to another studio, or even if they lay you off themselves, then they will still be more ready to hire you than a stranger. Note that this only works if you kept a peaceful reputation with the powers that be while you were working there in the past. This is an example of why I make such an emphasis in my book to not burn bridges in your career, because you never know when someone you may not have liked much may be a keystone in a future opportunity and prevent you from having access to a job that you would have easily filled otherwise.
The other colleague had a more interesting story. He had put his resume and job preferences into a website called indeed.com. They are a popular online job board and I've used them before to research salaries, but I never thought to input my resume there as I usually stick to promoting my own website and actively pursuing new opportunities by leveraging my network. This is a lot of work though and I still may end up with nothing after multiple and time consuming attempts. Now that the colleague's information was recorded on the site he said that he received an email somewhat shortly after from a recruiter on the website saying that they will keep in touch. He said the recruiter sounded really excited and that he, the colleague, figured that nothing would come of it. I know that I personally have been contacted by recruiters directly from specific studios, not general job boards, and I still had not heard anything back about a job opportunity even though the original email encounter sounded promising.
A few months had passed and the colleague got an email from the same recruiter asking if he was interest with the position at WB Games. He said yes and I believe that from there he had an interview with the hiring team of the studio; I don't think he was hired on the spot from the recruiter, but it definitely got him in the door for an unadvertised position that he would not have known about or thought to research.
The moral of the story is that it is better to have multiple fish hooks in different areas of a lake rather than one huge fish hook that you've polished and sharpened to death (aka your personal portfolio website). You will have more chance of catching opportunity if your information is everywhere. I used to despise websites like monster.com because I felt that they weren't specialized enough to deal with a niche industry like game development and thought that most of the "opportunities" you would receive would be spam or low-paying, part-time positions. So I advise everyone to keep open minded and spend the extra time to create profiles on the major online job board websites. It worked for real people in a recent situation and it seemed to be the preferred search method for this particular studio. I would like to point out that unfortunately this strategy seems to work more in favor of experienced employees who have some years of experience and are used to working in the professional development environment, as recruiters know they can trust their work ethic. Maybe one day you you too will be receiving an email with a new opportunity when you least expect it!
-Ken
P.S. This really is as "inside" as inside information gets, hot off the press, and I will be using this same tactic myself!
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