A Simple Truth About HR Managers

I was talking to a colleague this morning, and I had discovered that his wife is an HR manager. I made the joke saying "well, you must know all the tricks then! You probably don't have any problems finding a job!" He agreed that his wife had helped him out with his job search, and that when they were first dating that she had revealed to him all of the information that he would need to know to be successful in his job search. What he said next blew my mind.

He revealed only one trick to use during the interview process, but it is very important and is probably one of the easiest and most important things you can do to establish your personal well being. He said that when you are asked to reveal your previous salary, that you should never tell the HR manager how much you actually made but inflate it by $10,000, because they are not going to go and research that anyway. This is especially true if you are having to relocate to somewhere more expensive, and may not be effective or even realistic to inflate this amount if you are staying local. Personally, I used to have a moral disagreement with this tactic, and have even mentioned, in my book, that an old friend used this strategy. Recently, though, I have read articles on glassdoor where very high-ranking individuals consider this when they are looking to change jobs and inflate their previous salary, in hopes of getting that from their new employer. After hearing this from the colleague today at work, then I have now come to realize that this is an essential method to negotiation, instead of just being a liar. Through all of my fairly-recent job interviews, I have noticed HR managers getting upset when you try to ask for more money than you are currently making, and they try to argue that if you move to a more expensive area then it will cost you the same as any other area, regardless of how inexpensive your recent area had cost. I feel this must be because they are anticipating job applicants to lie about how much they previously made and do not want to give them one more cent than that amount, since it is an inflated "raise" anyway.

Remember, this is intimate advice straight from an HR manager's mouth. No matter how much you may read on hiring websites about being honest in your interview or that if you lie about your salary then you may get caught, don't believe it. Most companies don't even want employees sharing with each other their own salaries. This is because it creates more problems for the company when those same employees get upset, smart, and start asking for more fair pay. At the end of the day, a salary is extremely arbitrary and subjective anyway. The company rarely pays the most talented employee the most based solely on their talent.

I recently worked for Microsoft and the most talented employee on the team, who was writing tutorials for other employees and taking on the most high-profile work, was actually getting paid the least of any of the other team members. He drove in a modest and junky car and had a defeatist attitude and felt that "that's just the way the world works and it sucks." A more junior member on the team was making almost $20,000 more than him, just because he had the courage to ask for more during his interview and was stubborn and was not going to settle for less, and he bench-marked his estimate with someone else who worked locally.

The trick is, you have to be completely nice and politely while rejecting HR's initial salary offer and also stand firm to how much you are willing to be paid. If you start getting defensive and try to argue a point, they will think you are too aggressive and instantly not give you an opportunity. This is why lie/inflating your salary is so important: because you will still come across as seeming nice and not have to worry about fighting too hard for an actual salary that you deserve and they will think that they are able to low-ball you without you taking their wallet from them.

I hope these anecdotes really open your eyes and motivate you to not just accept the first offer that is dropped into your lap by HR. They are professionals and making you feel like they are really paying you the most they possibly can and that it is actually painful to them, but don't believe it. Think of them as used car sells people. If HR is telling someone they care about to "inflate", then they should not get defensive when everyone else does it also. It is the way to make the most of your career and will allow you to have a more enjoyable lifestyle.

-Ken

How to Get a Precise Salary Estimate for Your New Job - Pt. 2

Following up with my last article on negotiating your salary once you have been given an offer, I will discuss further the best method for estimating your target salary.

First of all, factoring in cost of living differences and moving to a different state drastically changes the salary figures for your job title. Essentially, you will want to become an expert with each of the major hub states for the game industry, and understand why they pay what they do and what type of living conditions you can expect. For example, you may get paid more in California, but you will not have a good chance to own a home and will have to pay state tax out of your income. The pay here is actually lower than what you should be making, but it is the standard, since there is more competition in this area and all of the big publishers want to live here because it is one of the most desirable states to live in. On the other hand, you will have a decent opportunity to own a home and not have to worry about state tax in Texas, but you may not like the hotter weather or the lack of activities when compared to coastal cities.

Secondly, you must understand that each website calculates it's cost of living comparison differently. Perhaps the worst one to use is the "quick and dirty" tool that is provided by CNN money: http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/. This tool is great if you quickly want to get a very rough estimate of the differences of housing prices between many cities, and you can click a quick drop-down menu to switch between them. The reason this tool is bad, is because it is mainly basing salary on housing cost. There are a lot of factors that skew housing prices exponentially, such as multiple people living in a house, or stretching their budgets, or foreign home investors with lots of personal capital that drive up the prices. You will want to use a technique that is more custom-tailored and in-depth, and I will show you what to do.

The first step in calculating your perfect salary is to go to glassdoor.com. This site is fairly new and there are always new salaries added and for every game studio imaginable. You can get a good average by checking the studios in the city you are planning on relocating to. Understand, though, that some studios do pay a premium since they attract some of the hottest talent and have the biggest budgets because of their successful games. Naughty Dog and Valve are perfect examples. They don't hire huge teams, and are known to take their time with games, and every game they release is a huge hit. Small and more unknown studios are known to pay less because they are not established and know that they would not be able to hold someone with very high talent for very long. This will probably be your first break into the industry, so you can expect to be paid on the lower end of the average pay of studios in a given area. Glassdoor does not easily point out someone's experience level, so you should also base the salary range on their to be targeted to someone more mid-level, as this is the experience level that a majority of develops will have.

The second step in computing your salary, and this one is my favorite, is to use the Cost of Living Wizard from Salary.com: http://swz.salary.com/CostOfLivingWizard/LayoutScripts/Coll_Start.aspx. The reason this tool is so powerful is because it will show you the salary you are required to own a home in a city (like the CNN Money figure), and then it will show you the amount that studios actually pay, which is a lot more accurate. So, if you are moving from Seattle to San Francisco, you will notice that the pay you are required to have the same standard of living (i.e. owning a home or renting an apartment) in San Francisco may be 40% more than Seattle, but the amount that employers are actually paying is only about 20% more. Generally, the more expensive the city you are moving to, the less you will be compensated when related to the actual cost of living. Thus, the first figure is a good reference but essentially useless, and you should be using the second figure. I have used this website a few times and it has turned out to be highly accurate. This technique is more helpful to someone who has already had a job in the industry before, but you can basically use a figure from glassdoor.com as a good starting salary.

Also, always ask around to your friends and industry contacts. Talking about salary is scene as taboo with your current coworkers, but it is something that is important and should be discussed or else companies will start taking advantage of employees. The best time to ask for a coworker's salary is when they are leaving to work somewhere else or their contract has ended. You have to be on a high trust level with this person, which should be obvious, but if you ask when you both are going separate ways there is no chance of feeling resentment or comparison when on the job with them. If you ask too late after you have lost contact with them, it will seem like an awkward conversation topic.

Whenever you have a figure from both websites, you can take the average of the two, and this will be your target number to aim for (remember that you may need to select a salary on the lower-end of the spectrum for glassdoor. If the studio you are applying for is directly listed, with your job title, on glassdoor, then you should definitely run with that figure...especially if it is a studio that is known to not pay well. You should be able to notice this in the complaints about the company, on the same web page.). With this target salary, you should create a negotiating window of $10,000. Thus, if you are expecting to be compensated at $65,000, you should tell your prospective employer that you have done your research and feel that a range of between $60,000 and $70,000 would be fair compensation based on your level of experience and job title.

One last point to mention: If you are receiving exceptionally high compensation at your current job, and you are living in a more affordable city, there is a slim chance that you will actually be converted to the same quality of pay in a more expensive city. Each studio has their limits, and if you are already stretching the limit at your current studio, it will be a hard to expect the same at the new employer. You will be getting a raise in salary but will be taking a pay "cut" at the same time. Alternatively, if you are moving from a more expensive city, it is always easier to argue a case for a highest-tier salary in a less expensive city. You will still be taking a pay cut, but since your salary was way more than anything the new studio can fulfill, they will want to try and impress you and give you the most they are able to afford. This is why, in my opinion, it is beneficial to work in the most expensive city that you can, because you can always fall back on another city and don't have to try as hard when negotiating.

I hope that this has been informative and that you are now confident in your application process and are able to sell yourself as a more serious candidate that has done their homework and knows what to expect in their job.

-Ken

How to Get a Precise Salary Estimate for Your New Job - Pt. 1

Face it: knowing an exact figure of what you should be paid is required before you even submit your first job application. Why? Because one of the first questions you will be asked (usually after "are you a citizen of X country?" and "are you willing to relocate?") is "what are your desired salary requirements for this position?" I have done a multitude of research on this and have my own theories and opinions on whether or not you should answer this question and if a game studio should be asking you this so blatantly and early in the hiring process. There are some strategies you can use to try and circumvent this, but the reason of this article is to explain to you the best method for giving an accurate estimate of what you should be earning and to not get burnt by agreeing to something to low.

You can always use the line "what is the typical salary you offer for this position?" I have actually used this a couple of times, and it works about half of the time. If they want to work with you, or the hiring manager is a bit novice, they will tell you upfront what their figure is. Generally, the party that reveals a number first in negotiations has less power. I successfully got a higher salary by asking this question with WB Games, because I had a certain figure in my head about the salary I was willing to take--I was uninformed as to the area and what they paid, though, as it was a new city I was relocating to--and what they were offering was actually higher than that. So, when time came for them to give me the offer, it was in line with what they told me and I accepted it. I could have made nearly $5,000 less per year, but just because I decided to ask that question and hold my tongue, I was able to win a decent salary for the area. A time when this question didn't work was when I talked to HR at Sledgehammer, and they responded "we don't generally give a specific figure as it is case-by-case and varies based on the individual's experience and skills." This is what most salaries are based on, anyway, but this was a smart way to basically say that they were not going to give me an answer to my question. Thus, you should always have a backup plan but it never hurts to at least try to ask this question before you reveal your cards.

The next step in negotiating is to have your salary figure ready, but to base it on the average market value for the area and by using your current salary and converting for the cost of living difference, if you are indeed moving cities (hint: if you are moving to a less-expensive city, you can basically try to ask for your current salary and they can always match it or tell you they can't pay you that much, and then negotiate more within their means. It seems that it's always easier to make a higher salary in a least expensive city than to transition from a cheaper city to a more expensive one, in my opinion, because they always have excuses as to why the area you are moving to is "really not that much more expensive than where you are living now." Basically, you have to have more arguments than just that, so that's where checking what competing studios pay comes in handy). You do not want to reveal the exact figure that you are expecting to be paid, but rather give a range where that figure falls roughly in-between. I like to give ranges in the form of a $10,000 window, ex: $70,000-$80,000. That way, you can expect them to offer you something near $73,000, but you should negotiate to $75,000. For this, you definitely need to know what the comparable jobs are paying in the area.

I have a solution, that is the most accurate estimate I have recently formulated, to calculating the salary that you should earn while moving cities and while leaving a current job for a new one. Stay alert for part two on this topic: where you will come up will a solid figure that you can benchmark from and form your negotiation game-plan around.

-Ken

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