Dealing with Staffing Agencies (aka Contract Work)

The current trend of the video game industry is to be hired on a contractual basis. These are usually shorter contracts, ranging from six months to one year, although I have seen laughable contracts for only three months. My first advice to you, is that you are offered a short-term contract like this, and you already have a little bit of experience, then ask if it can be extended and wait. Sometimes, waiting silently is your best negotiation tactic. Many times studios may not contact you back anyway, so it's better to at least ask for the possibility of a lengthened contract than to quickly accept whatever they throw at you.

It seems that all staffing agencies are in the business of low-balling potential employees, and employees are expected to negotiate up from there. Just like when HR at a company would give you a fairly low figure just to see if you'll take it, but they are fully willing to increase that amount at least by $5,000. I had a three month contract pitched at me, unexpectedly, by a highly positioned recruiter for EA. I asked if it could be extended, and didn't think anymore of it. I thought that the person would be turned off or not want to contact me again, and I wasn't serious enough to go for a three month contract anyway. About a week or two later they got back to me, saying that it could be extended for one year. I didn't end up taking th
e job after goring through the interview, but it was comforting seeing that with such little work such a huge benefit can be had in the realm of your career, financial planning, and future lifestyle. Most people may be to prideful or shy to ask for such a thing, but this is what they are counting on to extort you for more money that should have been yours. A large amount of effort must be made on your part to change gears to a new job, especially if it requires relocation. This is why most recruiters don't bother pitching these short term contracts to candidates who are not already local.

This brings up another good point: it is probably wasting your time to talk to an agency recruiter if you are not local. They will be much more serious if you are local and will be scouting for positions specifically in that area, because they are local themselves. There is not a type of agency who can just hire someone from different cities and pass them new opportunities that way, although a big company such as EA can hire in places like Los Angeles and San Francisco, but probably are not willing to search for jobs as far as Seattle or Austin, even-though they have the capacity to do so. They would rather pass you to another recruiter, who is actually local to that city, at that point.

When recruiting agencies send you a comp, or quote, of your salary and contract length, this is not set in stone. I recently signed a contract with Microsoft, and the contract terms and title of the position literally changed three times in a matter of a couple of weeks. Don't think you can't negotiate or walk out on the contract because the agency will definitely make it feel like everything is official and that you are employed, before you even get a green light from the actual parent company that they are soliciting you for. This is also good to keep in mind so that you do not get your hopes up when you keep talking to a recruiter and they sound positive about the outcome, because what they think or feel doesn't really matter until the actual game studio wants you. I would still keep in touch and call them around once per week, just in case they are not diligent about checking in with the parent studio. This will also show interest on your part and be communicated through the recruiters check-up attempts with the studio.

A colleague of mine, who is familiar with the contract lifestyle and has been on one year contracts for the last five years, for the same studio, informed me that when he gets hired each time he positions competing staffing agencies against each other. He does this by getting a figure from one and then letting the other know about the offer, and seeing if they will match it. Some agencies value benefits more and other prioritize salary more. The benefits will be harder to compare and is a little more obscure, so he chooses the agency that will offer the higher salary figure. This is a good strategy and shows that even if you are dealing with one agency, primarily, it's never to late to shop around. Since I was local to Microsoft, I was getting inquires from different staffing agencies throughout the process of talking with one main one, because they must have automated search features and aggressively search for local talent when a position first goes live.

Contract work seems like it is here to stay, and is the new level of intern for people who are actually experienced. Once you successfully endure the test of the contract, you may have a chance for full time employment, but the most usually reward for good work seems to be an invitation back to the same studio with a new contract. I hope that everyone is contacting staffing agents or at least realizing that this is the process you will have to deal with, that way you won't be annoyed with how convoluted it is...because it is convoluted.

Happy contracting,
Ken

A Must Read Blog About the Hiring Procol in Game Development

It seems hard to find information about what video game studios are looking for, on the internet. The industry is fairly hush-hush and it seems that every single one has their own opinion on what they are looking for or who is the perfect candidate. There are a few people who have twitter accounts and may share occasional helpful advice, but it is not concentrated into one webpage with updates that are relevant to truly getting you hired. Well, it seems that from all the studios, Insomniac seems to be the most vocal with this information.

If you would like to see what I'm talking about, visit http://www.insomniacgames.com/category/bakers-dozen/. It has a ton of helpful posts from the HR manager at one of the industries biggest and respected studios. Her name is Angela Baker and she has been with the company for nearly eight years. What she says has a lot of merit to it. One issue I have found is that she is a bit opinionated and some of the advice she tells you may not apply to smaller or more casual studios, but nonetheless it is important to get a view of how professional HR managers really think. HR is supposed to be the most non-biased department and serve as a neutral party in selecting candidates based on their personality and how it aligns with those of the others who already work at the studio. They also want someone who is going to be cooperative, even borderline submissive, to know that the teams there can count on the individual to get the maximum amount of work done and create harmony among their coworkers.

Even if you are not specifically interested in working at Insomniac, it is important to note that they have been voted the best video game company to work for a couple of times and they have an ongoing reputation for fun and good work culture among industry professionals. I have never heard anyone with anything bad to stay about the studio, and that's hard to find for any studio. Go ahead and give this blog a read and hopefully you will be more empowered by the information and also know some more subtle strategies that can help you to ace your interviewing game.

-Ken

Want to Have Recruiters Approaching You With Job Openings? Optimize Your Resume!

I have been doing a few small tweaks here and there to my resume, and eventually came across a link for a website that turned out to do what far too many services cannot: it delivered on it's promise. And, it's free! Want to know what the website was? Hold on just a second...I will tell you a little bit about what it can do for you and how to use it, first.

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:

http://www.jobscan.co/

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

Perception is Everything in Your Portfolio

Since interviewers are increasingly becoming non-social, they want to read who you are upfront and basically stalk you before they even give you a chance to talk to them in person for an interview. What this means is that they are going to read what you show online with your portfolio and resume to figure out an idea of who they think you are, even if it is incorrect. This is why you can't give them any wiggle room and must align what you show with exactly what type of project you want to be working on.

Most applications will be to big AAA studios, who's motto for employees is "specialization, specialization, specialization." They don't care how well-rounded you are, as long as you are the best in a given department or niche skill that they need at their studio. Therefore, if you show off some other work that you really worked hard on and is part of your previous work history and it's impressive work: if it is not what they do at their studio, it will actually hurt you more than help you. For example, if you have worked on stylized games or casual games in the past but have always been more interested in realism and First Person Shooters, and do nothing but realistic work in your spare time, if your prospective employer sees this they will think that you like more stylized work and that you won't be able to keep up in the more realistic environment of their workplace. It is like fighting an uphill battle to argue otherwise. Especially since the person reviewing your website is judging you based solely on what they see online, after all.

What to do about this? You don't want to erase that hard earned work in case someone at a small startup wants to see it, or you happen to need a job so you take a stylized position for the time being. What you can do is setup two separate websites: one for one particular style and another for the other style. This is a lot of work, but at the end of the day this may be one of the smallest and last steps that is preventing you from getting the job of your dreams. So, even if you don't want to setup two separate websites--using the same template of course and just replacing the content--you should at least remove the type of genre that you would least prefer working on, and focus on targeting studios who work on the genre that you'd most enjoy working on. The old adage "less is more" works in your favor, here. I've seen rockstar professionals such as those working for 343 Industries on Halo with only about five unique pieces in their portfolio. Check out this website for an example: http://www.timdiaz3d.com/. Some job listings may say they want 10-15 pieces, but if someone like that can get away with it, anyone can. In reality, 4-6 really good pieces is more than enough.

So if you have worked on it all in the past, just make sure to not highlight that in your portfolio. An interviewer will judge you based on your last work and also whatever the first piece is on your portfolio. Don't give them a reason to doubt your interest in their studio or your compatibility with the job. There are more important things to worry about!

-Ken

Make Sure Not to Make this Simple Mistake when Accepting a Job Offer

Recently I applied to a new job and everything went really smoothly--which is often not common in an interview and hiring process. I sent in my application to a start-up studio, had a Skype interview with, what seemed to be, the whole art team, and they got back to me a few days later with a job offer. Unfortunately, the offer was lower than I expected for the area (the job was in Los Angeles). I used the tactic that I teach: negotiating the salary after the offer had already be granted. As a side note: it seems that most negotiations and offers are given through email these days, whereas in the past I spoke directly with an HR manager about the job details. I interpret this as a tactic to make the offer seem more set in stone and that there is no room for interpretation: like when a car dealership brings you a print-out of the comp of the final price of a car you are looking at. Here's a secret: that is not the final price! The car salesperson can make another print out and the HR manager can edit the pdf document that your offer is neatly sent in. Also, the deadline of the offer was about one week. I have not yet witnessed a formal deadline for an offer letter.

I told the HR manager that the salary was low for my original range that I quoted. As those of you that have been applying for jobs and speaking with HR managers know, one of the first questions they ask you during their very first contact with you is what salary range you are looking to make. You should definitely give a range and definitely research on glassdoor.com beforehand. HR practically expects you to know what others in your field are making, even though once you are at the job they try everything they can to restrict employees from comparing salaries with each other. Thus, it's a double standard and I would fret talking to others about salary, just do it smartly as not to cause animosity between you and them. The best method is to get close to that person, first, as a friend, and don't pop the question until you feel they are ready. This is almost like asking about marriage (for some people it is really serious). Alas, I have deviated, though. The point is that HR tried to low-ball me by not even respecting my original salary range that I quoted them.

They responded with a counter offer that was $5,000 more than the original. Not bad. I would have been comfortable with that offer, but I wanted to see if I could get even more from them. So I let them know that I had been making more than that current figure at my current job, which is in a less-expensive area than Los Angeles. She got back to me with a final offer for the same figure that I was making.

The overall problem with this transaction was that I was out of the country at the time and was not checking email as frequently as I would have, as I didn't want to spend the out of country charge for my phone provider's data plan. I ended up accepting the offer the day of the deadline. I thought I had been in the clear as I didn't know that the deadline had a time that was early in the afternoon. It turns out that I was a couple of hours past the expiration. I couldn't believe it, obviously HR was turned off by me taking time to respond to their emails from being out of the country, and felt that responding too late in the last email was the last straw. I tried reasoning with her and letting her know I had been out of the country, but with no luck.

I have completed numerous art tests before and had been late with my submissions, and everything had been fine, but this is the first time I've experienced being late with a deadline that actually had consequences. The moral of the story is to try and be on time during the application process, for all aspects (especially when accepting the offer). If you expect being late, at least send the HR manager an email update to let them know you will be a bit late. I have done this recently for an art test with another studio, where I knew that they absolutely wanted the test on-time, and have had luck with it. HR is super-sensitive as to personal behavior and demeanor for each of the many job candidates they are juggling on a daily basis. So, make sure to be on your "Sunday best" and don't give them a reason to be upset with you. I wanted to share this story with everyone so that you don't end up making the same mistake.

-Ken

Unwritten Code for Keeping Your Name in the Credits of a Game

"Shipping a title" could be construed as actually having played a part in any part of the development for a game that gets released publicly. So, for instance, if you had started the project in it's beginning and concept phases, were working full time for most of the project, and left near the end, you should be granted your name in the credits, right? Not exactly.

In fact, there are a lot of politics that dictate who's names get put into the credits and where. So, like the above example, you would more likely be put into a "Special Thanks" section near the end of the credits, rather than with the members of the team who served until the end of the project.

A professor in school used to frequently remind students that if you leave a studio before a project is finished, then it is considered a "kiss of death." This may not be as relevant today as in the past, as there are many more contract and short-term positions on a team and studios know that their employees may leave to other, more secure opportunities. It may still not be the best etiquette, so instead of having your name blacklisted you may just not get credited as highly on a project as you would have liked.

At the end of the day it's just a title and doesn't mean much to anyway as it does to your own personal satisfaction. There was an intern that I worked with at the beginning of my career who's name was removed altogether from the credits of a game because the team did not like him and he didn't speak up for himself because he was shy. He found out about it by buying his own personal copy of the game to finish at home and did not see his name anywhere. He was so infuriated that he sent his ex-lead a nasty email about how it was unfair and how wrong the lead was, etc. This may have ended up being a career-threatening move, although the said person has since been able to find work albeit probably not as easily as he might otherwise encountered. Therefore, it's not as big of a deal as people make it out to be. The reputation you leave imprinted on your colleagues' memories is far more important than where your name is positioned in the credits.

If you did happen to want your name in a good spot in the credits, the best strategy is to stay on until the credits assignments are being decided, which is usually a few months until the completion of production. If you are hired to help finish a project--at the end--then you should be a shoe-in. You should advertise yourself by the games you've shipped, which basically means games you've worked on that were publicly released. So, if you were only on a project for a 9 month contract and didn't end up staying until the exact end of the game, then you are fine counting this as a shipped title on your resume.

-Ken

Monumental Book Price Drop!

I've got great news! I know that April fools day just happened but I'm not fooling about this update: How to get a Job in Video Games has just had a massive price drop. The book was $20.85 and now has dropped to $14.50 on Amazon. That is a savings of 30%.

The book has been selling much better than expected and the publisher has decided to celebrate by offering the book to a larger audience and keep the momentum going! Don't mess around and there is no reason to not start taking your career progression seriously. If you like the information on my blog then you will be blown away by the increased breadth of knowledge that is packed into each powerful page.

Go forth and conquer your dreams.

How to Get a Job in Video Games - Buy on Amazon