If you have ever submitted your resume online, you must know that for studio after studio, you are required to enter your work history and skills and basically input your resume each time. But, if your resume is not what they are looking for each time, you may be doing a senseless amount of work for nothing.
Are you tired of posting your resume on job boards like monster.com, indeed.com, glassdoor.com, and gamaustra.com? Did you know that when HR managers and recruiters are searching these sites, they are not actually hand-selecting you? Just like everything else in this world, "there is an app for that." They actually have technology now that allows them to scan specific keywords in all online resumes and sort out candidates that are the most congruent with the job that they are seeking to fill. Does a recruiter know what a an RPG Quest Designer does? Do they care? Most of the time, the answer is "no." They are seeking to fill tons of open positions that are all different and require highly specialized skill sets that are always changing. They may be representing 3 to a handful of clients that are providing them with new jobs (clients meaning individual game studios that are all different and require different skills for the jobs of the same title). The recruiter may know about some basic buzzwords for skills here and there, and to be able to spot basic talent in a portfolio. Their major crutch is using keywords in a resume, though. So, what should you do? Cater your resume to exactly what they are looking for!
Say that you have three job listings for a Junior Programmer at three AAA that you crave to work for. You can have your own software scan the job listings, individually, and pinpoint the keywords that are used the most. These are the ones that you want to absolutely have in your resume. Once you have scanned three job postings, you will begin to notice a trend forming and can target the phrases you use to cater to the broadest range of job listings by focusing on key words that are shared between all of the listings. From there, you can pick and choose more obscure descriptive words that you would like to have in your resume, even if not all of your dream employers share them. So, let's say that for a Junior programmer the top keywords for job listings are: "Problem-solving, C++, Team-player, Object oriented programming." You should add these to your resume somewhere: either under a description of a previous work experience, or to a skills and accomplishments section. Make sure that if the phrase has a hyphen, then your keyword has a hyphen, rather than separating the phrase into two separate words (you should use "problem-solving" instead of "problem" solving"). Now, when your resume is searched, it will propel to the top of recruiters' list and you will most likely be getting a LinkedIn connection request with some details about a job they have for your department of expertise (as this seems to be the usual method of communication for recruiters).
If you don't believe how important keywords are to your resume, just take my recent experience as proof: When I updated my resume I was contacted by a new recruiter about a position with 343 Studios in Kirkland, WA, a day later! Additionally, when you are interviewing for a job over the phone or in person, it's good to memorize the key words of the job listing, as interviewers love hearing the exact words they are looking for communicated back to them. They won't know that you studied their job listing, as they are subconsciously going through a checklist in their mind to make sure you are a good fit for the position, and all of those keywords match the position exactly. Chances are that the job listing was written by someone else on the team or that the interviewer has not seen the exact text in a while, so won't realize that you sound too perfect, anyway. And, who doesn't love "too perfect?"
Here is the website that can help you to start getting contacted by recruiters:
Now, I know that a lot of you are thinking: "I never get any help from recruiters and they are usually useless to my job search, so why would I want to attract them?" That is a good question. Most of these advances from recruiters will be futile and you will end up as jobless as before. But, when you edit your "copy" in such a way that it can sell to anyone, recruiters will take notice. Being contacted by recruiters is a sign that your resume is good and that it will pass the stress test of sending to HR departments and will be rock-solid during interviews. Try the site out and see if it helps you. It is never bad to keep improving your marketability and broadening your reputation. This one trick may be the difference between you being invited to interview and being ignored.
-Ken
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