Recruitment: Looking for the Holy Grail - PocketGamer.biz RoundTable

hey were your life so in that case welcome to everyone not just the attendees a pocket gamer connects digital number two but also to other folk who have joined us through one of our other our channel YouTube or that other site and go into the final afternoon of the event and working our way through our roundtables part of our careers Week activity is it's a couple of roundtables we've had today sharing expert opinion and advice on the matter and here we are in our afternoon panel now your host for the afternoon's panel is Rick Cowley the editor of poppy gamer dot beers we've got some fantastic panelists attendees from around the world or from all the way from Seattle to Helsinki but I tell you what Rick I'm gonna hand over to you now I'm gonna recede into the background and and take it away and folks if you are watching this and you'd like to ask some questions of our experts pop them in the Q&A box at the bottom and then Rick Rick or myself can help you out with those later so Rick thank you very much Dave yes so I try not to reiterate exactly

what Dave said yes thank you for joining us for this roundtable discussion on recruitment and looking for the Holy Grail so this morning we had a discussion about best practices for recruitment this I've sort of did sort of interpreted as more for jobseekers and how they can make themselves stand out and what recruiters are actually looking for when they are looking for people to hire so yeah we've got a bunch of questions all about that coming up but first quick introductions if the panel my name is Rick Carelli I'm the editor of paquimé dot biz and the host is roundtable sessions which we do quite regularly on the site and near you go first okay excellent hello I'm Mia I'm office and talent manager at critical force finished mobile game company and we are mostly known for our mobile FPS critical ops and I'm Tim

Collins president of Seattle Indies were a nonprofit that most events and builds community for independent developers in the Seattle area I also am a system administrator at oculus thank you um Alexei Alexei Ryan I'm the studio recruiter for Romeo but before that I was working with Seattle studio three four three four halo and before that I said this in another talk but before that I was a professional theme park performer so I know I noticed like to get a job in the industry with no experience so hopefully we could talk about that yes we didn't bring it last time we definitely should Cammy yeah I'm Cammy Smith from Seattle I work at a studio I mean a school that's called Academy of interactive entertainment or aie we have four campuses in Australia and two campuses

in the US and my job is to help the students connect with recruiters in the u.s. awesome right so we're going to talk about what candidates can do and they stand to stand out and sort of the process of getting a job and that kind of thing and how the world is changing and that's being affected all that sort of stuff but first of all the very first thing and anyone can jump in on this what's the first thing you notice when you're looking at a candidate's resume I guess a bit of both yeah yeah because the first thing I noticed and well it's not the first thing I'm looking for but the first thing I noticed is the layout like if it's a you know that kind of CV that I can find all the necessary information quickly I think it depends on the context so I'm hunting for a specific

role then you know I have to be super hyper focused on what is it the hiring manager is looking for and you know if we're going through hundreds a day you know it's like seven seconds I think is the attention span so I'm looking for those key skills or I'm looking for projects or companies that that the higher manager might recognize because at the end of the day my job is to basically pitch you as the candidate to the hiring manager so it has it has to make sense on paper within those first few seconds right I coach our students to make sure their skills are at the top all their links to their projects are live so people who get to them quickly and of course their portfolio link is right at the top as well make it yes yes I'm you don't want to have the person have to spend too long looking for the info

because they're not going to they're just looking for pertinent skills and related projects that are relevant to the role that they're applying for and if you don't see that then it's not gonna get much more like much more that's creamy than I guess it's kind of on that topic as well because you know obviously we're going you're looking for specific information and the way resumes and CVS have been handled there's kind of Airy much set in stone I would argue and you know you can do different things but the typical sort of like want to page let's just think things that way is that still the recommended way to do things should you just have the standard resume that everybody sort of sees and sends out or should you try and make it stand out in some sort of way I've seen things online of like people put in progress bars of things that they're learning it's like oh my skills in Adobe Photoshop or 60% is that worthwhile or is that just gonna make you look daft I could make a comment I mean I I don't

care what the layout is to be honest or or you know the fancy things like that but I think you know Academy is right that it just needs to be the most important information needs to be accessible and right at the top and I think what might be pertinent like to what Tim is Tim does within these your work on Indy or even your work in school might be really pertinent to the work that that company is doing but it might not be recognizable so what you can do is you can use like you can use keywords you can use buzzwords like Oh this was a Forex strategy game you know put that put that up at the top if your programmer put the languages the engine that you're using at the top right just just assume that it that they're just gonna skim it right yeah and for an applicant the CV is kind of like the only way to probably stand out

so I I kind of think that although it's good way to stand out that way it has to reflect your personality as well so whether it's a standard template or it's kind of like new modern t : the colorful it needs to reflect who you are you know I think it depends on the company you're applying for as well if it's like a huge corporation that gets tons and tons and tons of resumes it's probably going to go through some sort of automated system to filter things out and so you'd probably want it to be easily readable by something like that but if it's like a small indie company and maybe you're going for like an arts position then making it a little more artistic and showing your style a little bit could could benefit you so it sort of depends on the role in the company you're going for and I'll add to that too is yeah it totally depends on the company it depends on who is looking at it and

sometimes that who is is a system right but at the end of the day whether it's possible or not someone if someone is going to look at it one other thing too I'll say is I think that Seabees except maybe for the exception of designers or artists where it's very visual I think Seabees aren't even totally necessary I'll go on and say that because we have LinkedIn you know and I think that as we get used to reading LinkedIn we get used to that format we like that format it's familiar and then we go and read a CV that has a different format it just kind of jars your brain a little bit so I would if you're gonna spend your time on anything just make your LinkedIn super awesome and constantly be updating it also pro tip when you update your LinkedIn sometimes recruiters can see that and they go oh this person's updating maybe the thing about moving

jobs so I would invest more into your LinkedIn yeah I agree with you fully LinkedIn is super important nowadays can we I think when we were sort of setting up for this panel you said you had some thoughts on LinkedIn about people sort of trying to connect with you if you could tell us more about your beliefs in LinkedIn that's great yeah well every day I probably get you know five six seven people just clicking the button to link in with me I want to know why they're linking in with me so I know if you use your phone maybe it's changed this week but LinkedIn doesn't really have an easy way to write a comment if you're gonna ask to link in with somebody I find that horrible because I don't know why they're linking in with me I have people all over the world and I want to know what is it why do they want to talk why do they want to link in with me so I try

to coach every student and I ask every speaker to say that they're not going to accept any LinkedIn requests unless the student writes a one-sentence note doesn't have to be long but just say why they want to link in just my pet peeve um yeah I guess so for everyone else is that is you know you're saying that like LinkedIn is great is it like would you replace entirely or your CV with just here's my LinkedIn or something like that could you could you go so drastic and it's still sort of work in your favor i I couldn't make the switch yes as long as the applicants would actually update their LinkedIn sure because there's definitely much more information available on LinkedIn when it comes to CVS I often want just you know max to page CB I don't want to read a short novel I

don't have time to do that so so LinkedIn that would be super handy so just yeah updating that yeah that's the key and you can link to you could you it's it's easier to just if you even if you have a portfolio if that's the type of person that you are it just click there's my portfolio there's my website there's all this and that there are my recommendations there's oh I don't recognize that company it was an indie company I'm gonna click on it now I can learn about that indie company I mean I think TVs are are gonna be obsolete in the in I don't know when but they are but when it comes to like I I made one that was super cool and fancy and tried to show my personality but now I just like I don't want to update it so I just download a PDF of my LinkedIn and I send that but I would say yeah all portfolios still are always going to be relevant obviously hmm um I've got some questions

coming in from the audience there's one I think that was being asked in the morning and something that is relevant now anonymous attendee is asking link saying LinkedIn is used by some communist governments to monitor their citizens and so these candidates can't use LinkedIn is people still succeeding with just standard Seavey's I think we kind of said yes but like yeah yeah yeah of course and there are yeah there are some limitation in certain countries that you are not able to use LinkedIn yeah but I will also say having been to one of them in question and and being connected with those people still on LinkedIn question you know depending on what the situation is you can double VPN and get around it so it is not impossible we're not advocating for that but it is possible but of course if anything you know or an original CV will be fine and staying at

you you shouldn't use one okay and so kind of talks about the applications and stuff and Alexis you mentioned like portfolios are still going to be relevant no matter what and so obviously it's going to differ between disciplines and what you need to show in that kind of thing but do you have any sort of general advice on what job seekers need to prioritize in their portfolios what needs to come first what or do you need to set it out in anything like that well let's see what else go first this time I feel yeah I usually from what I'm when we bring in people the art people that talk about portfolios what we hear is you don't have to put everything in there you know but but what you do put in there you want it to be the best and you also wanted to show the progression from the concept to where it finished so usually I have all our students on art station

and it's a they can make their own websites from that and then they can show their the progress of their artwork suck and I think what I hear from the art community is that's what they want to see where did what was the idea and how did they go through to get to their final project on that yeah I actually asked our art director one day a year also like what is the thing he looks in the portfolio and it was like very short sentence like versus our samples quality before quantity and visible step-by-step progression if only possible so fully as as you said come in seeing general nods of agreement I'm guessing there yeah I mean I would say you try to take a look at the company that you're going for and see what their art style is and try to

maybe prioritize some of those pieces in your portfolio if you have any that are close to what they're already working on er they've worked on before so you can show that you're able to match that or at least do something in the in the same genre I guess and then go the the progression piece definitely we've also worked with art directors who like to see the variations on a theme so if you say I'm gonna make I don't know a rocket-launcher warrior or something right you could do one that is super hyper realistic pub G then you could do one that's kind of mid like fortnight and then you could do one that's really chippy cartoony like I don't know clash of clans and it's the same character but it's a it's completely different styles that says a ton to a lot of art directors cool I was

actually really interesting I'd never thought about that that's yeah we've got a couple of questions from the from the audience as well about generally sort of standing out in different roles so we've got one here asking how would you advise someone in production eg product manager and that can't have a portfolio like an artist or a tangible work like an engineer would how would they promote themselves when applying for a new role in any resume you want to talk about your measurable accomplishments not your responsibilities so you know like I was in charge of this no I took this from here to here and product management is actually very translatable on paper because it's numbers what did you do to the numbers you know and and that and that says that says a lot more than you know listing that whatever the functionalities and programs that you

use anyone else any feelings or is it like si just nailed that one okay perfect helps another person asking for any advice on how to stand out as a marketer trying to move into the games industry but coming from a technology background they've started volunteer positions helping solo developers to create marketing plans for their upcoming games but they don't have the professional background in games that most companies are looking for I think I think Alexi said it man measurable numbers yeah it's probably good for almost every resume you're using I don't care what your applying form but you want to show it so quantitative analysis on your resume is where it should be right show the campaigns you've done in the past whatever they're relating to and how

they've performed I think it'll translate any any industry awesome please do keep questions coming in if you're in the audience need any more help on that standing out we'll move on to slightly different topics we've covered like the application process the portfolio thing say congratulations you've made it through the first thing and now you doing an interview um how is the whole interview process changed because of the pandemics obviously we can't go out and just meet people you know and do a face to face like what would have been the main changes and how is the whole process of been affected I mean it's not too different I suppose and there's there's just like there's the question of the on-site interview I mean every company has their own process but kind of in general it's you talk to someone you

talk to someone maybe a recruiter or HR or you talk to a hiring manager or something or someone refers you then you talk to someone who specializes in the crap that you do maybe it is the hiring manager maybe it's the craft lead then maybe there's a test and then usually you meet everybody right and that's usually when you come on site that's usually when if if it's applicable the company's gonna pay for you to visit if you're out of country or whatever but I think now we're seeing that it's like the on site is virtual so you meet everybody through a panel so the candidates have this extra burden of going well I can't visit the if it's a relocation thing I can't visit the city that I might live in so that is that is huge can I know it's just at Rovio we've seen we've had people accept sight unseen you know and that is great that the projects and the people we're exciting enough to them but it does take

a little bit extra work on the candidate side especially research the place that you're going make sure that everything that you could possibly do to make sure this this place could be a good fit for you you do I think we're really lucky right now since there is so much social media I'm networking at you know on slack I'm finding you know jobs on discord and finding jobs and I could talk to a community on Twitter and get a real feel of what that community is like or I go hit up you know like if someone wants to know about Seattle boy if you can go on Facebook and find Seattle Indies you get a real good feel of what our culture is about here in the game community yeah I fully see access point because the relocation is probably the only that has changed now as we have critical forest we've we've handled interviews online already for quite many years I think

well at least a few years so so the only thing that has changed is the kind of like the last interview which is usually the visit to the office and meet and create but that base nowadays a panel as I saw like I said but they're just different people in the panel asking questions as they would do that in the office in normal way yeah I mean for me I'm like it's a little different I would normally have a certain way I go about bringing people into or want to help out and volunteer by like you know having them come to our in-person events and get involved that way and now we obviously don't have those so I'm more looking for people who are like responsive online and want to tend to our community that way rather and like I can rely on to be there when we need them for online events or to be do

community management type stuff so it's a little different than it had been in the past I think good communication skills have never been more important mm-hmm yes so on the topic of like good skills and things that are important one thing I did want to sort of ask is what are some common mistakes people make when doing interviews that you think should be addressed and people need to be aware of and stop making I'm gonna jump to Mir on this one before Mia any thoughts on mistakes of people making skis I tend to discard a lot of like little things here and there in the interviews as they are quite nervous situations but I think that one thing that I really dislike is certain

vagueness kind of like if you come with a good CV you seem confident that all but your answers are fairly way they kind of like doesn't fully much the the competence that we see on TV that that kind of that creates quite a lot of doubt and in a long run it might not end well if we need to start asking more and more questions to kind of like clear the so yeah that's probably the one thing that I could to mention I I like to see a candidate that is ready with their own questions what kind of questions that they have about the the company the culture because that's you know I want them to be an advocate to see if this place is for them too it's a two-way

street so I'm always suggesting to our students some good questions or when they're talking to a mentor maybe ask what good questions should I be asking at an interview yeah that's actually a good point they just know that I think about it it's yeah the the kind of like the examples that I'm talking about they're being so vague that they don't they don't have any questions so it's kind of like just basically monologue they're like hey so and and always you know it's a CSU family said it's two-way street so make it a dialogue you like it it's not about if you would fit into the company it's also if if the company would fit you like if you feel you're like career path and so on I think like me I said you can sometime just like oversell yourself on your CV and then

not be able to back it up in the interview and that you'll get yourself into a problem real quick there sometimes I personally like get a little too hung up button also like getting the right the right answer that I think is that what the person is looking for and stumble a little there and get myself into a nervous situation and have a hard time when out of it so I think it's more about like showing that you have the like thought process to get to the answer rather than always getting the exactly the right answer you know yeah we're talking about the the portfolio before I don't know what anyone else's school upbringing was but when I was in you know school as a kid who's always like show your work guess what we always want to know what how people get to the answer it's not about the right answer yes show ask questions I think there's there's this tendency it happens a lot with junior people new grads where it's like I'm up for anything I'll do

anything I have no opinions whatsoever and and that is just the wrong way to go because then that screams to everybody whether it's conscious or subconscious this screams this this person needs me to hold their hand they they need me to tell them what to do of course don't go in there the other side that spectrum is like the other mistake is like just trashing every other every past employer I didn't know they sucked because of this reason they sucked that they suck and then it sucks now and that's why I'm so so yes have opinions but they should be of course tactful but they should be you should know what your strengths and weaknesses are know where your values are and if you really like the company and you really like the product and you're really trying to impress them and they're like hey we have this job for you that you really don't want to do what does the aspect of

it that you're really not strong in and you're like yeah well I'm excited about these things but I'll be honest this part doesn't excite me and that is going to mean a lot more than the count do whatever you want just to get in and going prepared don't assume that they're gonna have your resumes already printed or your portfolio link already on there there their computer you go go in with it all and have it for whoever you know 10 people if there's gonna be 10 people there be ready with your your stuff I've heard of stories where they haven't they've assumed that when they got to that office that their office computers we're gonna have the links and everything live already don't assume just be ready and depending on which way it goes your you come off looking more prepared totally and play the games please yeah

yeah there it should be should be not worth mentioning but man yeah yeah there's a decent chance that like the people that are interviewing you were just handed your resume as they're walking in the door which has happened to me a few times and I have energy people and so don't assume that they've already read the whole thing like don't just go in there and regurgitate what's on your resume but also like be prepared to talk a little bit about you know yourself and your background as well and I'll blast ago throw a throw on that topic there actually I believe it's a Shopify in Canada they actually intentionally do that in for their interview process they don't prepare any of their interviewers with with the resume they don't read it up beforehand so the idea is like I want to come into this Merson and i want to learn all about you from from your lips so it it happens

intentionally as well and something I'm always curious about as well in the interview processes after the interview how should a candidate go about following up with you or should they even follow up with you after an interview yes please depend depends on who I think everyone has their own preference but I know I do because I just have so so much especially where I'm at we're a teeny teeny tiny team supporting a very large organization for the ta team and you know things fall through the cracks sometimes sometimes my mind has been on you for the past three weeks but I have no updates for you and I had to do other stuff so I don't personally mind it if you reach out to me the worst that's gonna happen is I'll just be like yeah sorry I don't have any updates for you now but you know if you're getting

ghosted or delays or happening I'm gonna say 99% of time it's not a malicious act it's just people are crazy inundated with a lot of different little things and it doesn't hurt to be challenged yeah and it what I would like to add there is that it's good to be a bit mindful that the people are busy we are also humans we tend to forget things so just a kind reminder yes if you come with an attitude like hey so it's kind of like okay let's reevaluate situation because yeah mistakes happen and although we try to be very respecting the time that we give a like the time frame we give when we would know to next steps suddenly things happen like we had

to like me to meet more - with the Keurig 19 we were like a few weeks we were totally unaware what's going on basically so in those kind of circumstances you you prioritize the different things in your company so so yeah be mindful that we are humans - I always tell my students to just at least write a thank-you note to the interviewers make sure you have all their names and just say thank you for taking the time at least that should be the first communication in my my book yeah oh for sure and just remember that like time is different for the two different people like the further a candidate a week feels like a month but like for the person working on the inside it's like a week is like a day like you don't even you're so busy doing so many other things that you're not really probably not thinking about that one person the way they were thinking about you you know like it's it's a different

interaction just to get a bit more specific on what you were saying kami about thank you know how soon after the interview would you recommend sending that is that like as soon as your you get home after the interview just quickly email them or thank-you note nerd cool fair enough I'm gonna take some questions from the audience because we've got some popping in one thing that I think is really interesting in here what was the most memorable thing the panel has seen in a CV or resume I need to take this one first okay okay so I just I wanna drop a quick negative one and then do the positive the negative one was during halo someone I guess got banned from multiplayer and then they made a fake job application to that like choo-choo us out on getting banned with

all kinds of profanity and I'm like well I can see why you got banned very creative though but the the most creative one I saw was actually something that I advocate for is create relationships ahead of time don't just like reach out or apply and let just expect something to happen right away connect on LinkedIn let kami said like say why talk about stuff oh isn't it great PlayStation 5 just came out isn't this cool like this have a dialogue over time so there's this one candidate had really no full-on games experience had been working eyes on his own indie worked in the food service industry you know just just wasn't what the company was looking for but he kept up this just chatting with me and then he put it to me he said oh I did it just take for me to get like an interview with like one of

the head honchos and I like jokingly said I don't know you could like or no he said what was the best format to get an interview and I was like like you know paper or whatever and I was like oh well if it was if you did it in a musical then that would be doing the dude comes back and he didn't do a musical but he did a full like video where he was imitating me he got like a halo helmet and he started like shredding resumes and on the shredder it said hopes and dreams he's like and he just like basically mocked me and like all in good fun and it totally shiny light on like how elitist sometimes game recruiting could be he had fun with it and he basically like played like the evil recruiter and then him explaining his qualifications so he's like yeah what impressed me kid hahaha he's like actually I've done this and this and this this is why these things are applicable explained it perfectly it was funny it was engaging

and I went to the head honchos I was like look I know we can't hire him for this thing but like can you make this connection and they were like absolute like these are busy people and they're like I will make time out of my day this is hilarious so I don't think if he had send that to me it would have been a gamble just out of the blue but the fact that we had been talking he really showed interest in doing that he made us all laugh and he was able to make that connection and last time I talked to him he got a really good job offer in the city that he lives in what he had to turn it down because his own game is doing so well yeah that kind of attitude really gets people places can anyone top that I I sincerely doubt it like that people that will put their

photograph on a resume which I'm really not for but I had one person who had a t-shirt on and it said evil and you're not like his head is on the top corner there with an angle and you're like whoa the cross is very comfortable there is a company though it in the Bay Area called super evil Megacorp yeah yeah I remember one like eight or so years ago we had somebody sent us a USB key that was like an application for an audio job but it was just like a a video of them talking to us and know like samples of their actual audio work so it just didn't make a lot of sense like you want us to plug this thing into our computer and who knows what its gonna do and then you didn't send us any samples of your work so okay you do see those viral examples

of people who I think I even played through it there was someone who made it was like anything was HTML or maybe is even a flash game of it their resume and it was kind of like a side-scroller platformer Mario and you're like jumping through I was the game because I know I mean if you do something like that and you could even get get some traction on reddit or something you know that will do well I mean I know EA like EA hires hires people that mod their games you know their ways to get attention Lexie I'm gonna tell my game design students to build a game with their the resume yeah designers always go what kind of resume am I supposed to show that's a tricky one for a student at least yeah whatever makes you stand out I mean it was like what a couple while back it was like what kind of cool crazy business card could you have you know what did it

do origami or something now it's you know what's your online what's your online schtick well do you think we're even going to use business cards I'm not gonna hand anybody take anybody's business card anymore no and and maybe maybe me I could can can comment on this too but I was trying to hand on my business cards here in Finland and one person was like like no we're eco-conscious here you that's a waste of paper and I was like oh sorry yeah it's usually like what don't you have a link ting sorry man I don't think we got your your most memorable CV yeah I was I was trying to trying to remember but the only only CV I remember fully unfortunately it was basically 11 page long and luckily that person doesn't

need a CV so basically LinkedIn works but but it was like 11 pages you you don't need this much yeah but I have everything there yeah so yeah don't make eleven page one series please the other thing you don't have to are the other thing that you probably don't want to or have to call out is that you've been playing video games your whole life and you really love video games because I think we pretty much understand that already like it's not gonna make you stand out I will say I once applied for a job and I built a twine game for my resume that did not work that was that was several hours of my life down the drain but I think it was probably just the wrong role for it it was more of a creative agency and I miss misinterpreted what they meant by creative and

like you were applying for like like a branching narrative design role then that would probably work well I know on the topic of doing these kinds of special portfolios Martin MIT nurse says we're talking about tailoring your portfolio for every company you apply to but they with a 1 to 2 percent success rate of even getting a preliminary interview it's kind of a full-time job unto itself and that coupled with making custom cover letters tailoring your CV and so on do you reject candidates if they haven't tailored every aspect of their application to your company or is a generic application still okay it's still okay of course I would then like to see at least a few phrases so why why us so I would say you don't have to

tailor it for every single one change everything but you should you should tailor it for what you want to do right you can you can still within the realm of truth you know change your titles a little bit to sound more like the thing that you're doing don't lie and make up new seniority or so that you haven't done but if you if you're outside of games for instance and you want to work in games you know use the buzzwords that are in games explain even in your in your you know mission statement or whatever that you want to do games and this is why your experience is applicable to that right and then cover letters I won't speak for everybody but I also think that they're gonna be obsolete unless you are maybe like an

intern or a training where where people don't have a lot to go off of but I know like I don't have time to read them all and know how you're gonna really have time to read them all so much better to state your intent like me I said just like right in the beginning and I also say like to go back to one of the earlier questions is you can follow up with the recruiter HR hiring manager whatever on LinkedIn and you could say this is why I'm specifically interested in the company and this is why I'm specifically an asset and just those two things and bam it makes it easy that's good I'm taking notes from you guys this is quite a long question in here so I won't read out all of it I'm just gonna try and summarize it but we do have Romney in the audience

who is asked so they've they've worked in QA in the software industry for the past nine years and they've done a master's degree in game design to try and transition into the games industry they studied UX design and found that there's where they've said that there's no UX for games but I don't think that's entirely true and I think there's a whole other topic we could spend hours discussing one of the problems they're having is that they need a visa to work in Europe or the US and they're having trouble I think from developers getting those because they currently live in Bolivia and not getting any support from the government bearing all that in mind does anybody have any advice on how you would try and break into the industry they say they've done some solo games for global game jams they don't currently work with a game studio I my personal feeling would be straight off the bat you should try and start working with with developers even small ones and offering your euro services there but if anybody else has any any thoughts they can add to that

I'm curious to hear what Tim would have to say on this I mean I definitely agree with what Rick said like find an online community of developers and get involved with it and just start offering your services and do some online game jams just meet people that way and show what you're capable of and try to start creating a network of people that are familiar with your work and can vote for what you're what you're capable of I suppose I tend to people that are you know just starting out new grads they need portfolio they need experience I often say like go on game dev map calm reach out to indie and now we have you know the indie person here Tim I don't know do you have do you have other resources where people could find studios even if they're teeny tiny that where they could reach out and offer services we don't have like a repository

or anything like a website but people here know all the different companies that are in the area and looking for certain people and we try to keep job postings updated at least monthly and keep our community aware of oh that's it was a little easier when we were doing more in-person events here obviously but now that all of our events are online it's sort of opened up the possibilities to people that aren't physically here to join us and participate in meet our community and establish a reputation for themselves just by working with with people on projects nurtures our really active Seattle Indies discord and being on discord that could be a great way to begin to build that Network you know

yeah you need to find advocates in the industry for yourself basically is by proving that you can do the work yeah we're talking about when we're talking about visas I mean yeah you have to you have to be it's like it's a it's a legal thing at a certain point that point you know that that company has to basically vouch for you to whatever whatever the government is and and state that they could not find someone within the country that can do what you do so if you're a new grad that's just ink and so you has has to be you have to have built up the experience from wherever you are in order to make that happen now I know that there are some cases where the really big really big companies I know Facebook does this that will offer visas to new grads but in that case your

schoolwork has to be exceptional and you have to develop that relationship with the University recruiter and they're gonna have that that title University recruiter there's but there's people of those big companies at all their whole job it's a completely different skill set than work than what I do their whole job is to like find brilliant people who may not even know they're brilliant yet right so so in that case just be continue to work on your skills maude um I would say with a UX design in the games industry fun fact UX people have the highest turnover rate of any other craft so that says two things number one maybe the games industry doesn't know how to take care of these people and they're dissatisfied and/or there's in such demand that they keep getting higher offers to move somewhere else so

yes there is UX in the games industry so invest in that if you like it definitely yeah and then in VR we're definitely looking for talented UX people to like help figure out we're still looking for like what is the UX UI that works for people in VR and finding people that are looking to hungry to innovate on something we're definitely looking for great I'm gonna move on because we're pushing up against time and we've got a few questions I want to get through in the Q&A section anonymous attendee asks are there any positions particularly suitable for people who want to join the industry but haven't worked in it before my gut feeling is QA but feel free to shoot that one down if you want yeah well QA and the you know testing that's usually kind of like a stepping

stone mm-hmm I mean you still have to have some skill at that they're like just being able to play video games is like that's just part of the equation being able to like actually figure out bugs and what's wrong with things is definitely a big part of it but yeah cueing is one way to go I guess it depends on Tim I think we lost you there for a second oh yeah I said it depends on like what role you're looking for that okay thank you um sorry oh good a quick-fire some of these and Nicolas would like to know do you have any suggestions for people who are reaching out to company recruiters on LinkedIn to ask about future positions as a company can we you know people who message you on LinkedIn all the time what what do you actually want them to say to you other than like here's why I'm connecting with you I'm not you know I'm not working at a studio

so people aren't reaching out to me for that reason but just I usually say give a sentence about why you think something that they've done is valuable maybe something I posted was was interesting so I guess go a little deeper to me that's that's helpful and I'm sure know Lexi and those are you guys are the recruiters what do you want to hear from a LinkedIn connection I'll let me go even a bit well basically I if I've met the person before I want to be reminded like what was the occasion as there's so many game industry events I can't recall every one but if it's a like recently graduated person and looking to find or not even recently I said just person looking to find a spot in game industry

I would like to know why why should be kind of like why why I'm wanted in his Network or her network okay like what what is kind of like the value for me not necessarily for him but like what will that person bring to the table cool um I'm gonna just move on to the final question because the legacy I imagine you have a lot to say on LinkedIn messages but there is one last question in the Q&A saying pointing out quite factually and truthfully Alexis still hasn't answered how he joined the industry so it was promised a long time ago but if you could explain how you went from from theme-park before more to industry mogul as you are that would be a great way to round out this session all right only because you asked I hope I didn't overstep said yeah we're all

passionate in the games industry it's not enough but it's a requirement so that was me mmm the short version is basically I wanted to be I wanted to be an actor I grew up doing voices and I would play that this is before voices were in the video game so I play the video games and I would do all the voices for everybody and then would entertain everybody and that was where I really got my kicks that's what I was really celebrated for so I went into that I had a career in that I got some cool gigs working overseas in theme parks you know make a good money you know basically being a character impersonator but I knew I knew that I wanted to get into games but when I finally moved back to the States I couldn't find any work who's talked about not having experienced this guy

does funny voices for a living how is he gonna make a video game so I'd applied and I would wait and not apply and I would wait and of course nothing and I was I was unemployed an old by the way I traveled the for a year before that so I was employed unemployed for a year and I was unemployed for seven months in California trying to find a job I was I had to move back in with my parents like in my in my late 20s it was just it was absolutely devastating but you know they say that necessity is the mother of invention so I'm just like you know what no one told me this but I'm just going to start messaging people directly and I'm gonna start telling them why I'm going to be an asset to the business and also I had heard an interview with what's-his-name the guy who did the movie forgetting sarah marshall the main actor in that he said I had only been doing bit parts in my life because no one was giving me permission to be a lead so I knew that if I was gonna be a

lead I had to create the opportunity for myself so know what I did I said I wanted to work on a game so I found some random dudes I didn't know and we started building a space shooter on Android and unity in some dudes garage for free and no one knew what we were doing but we built it and it got done and we released it and I think I have five downloads so we made a game and so then I was able to then tell all these places look I made a game with some people and here's why acting is actually applicable to this because blah blah I applied to a recruiting studio specialize in games I was able to sell them on the fact that my acting training met a new psychology which means I could connect with people I could find out what they were thinking and I could listen to them because the core of acting is listening they like that explanation seven interviews later I had a job and then a year later I was the highest booking recruiter in the studio

because I didn't listen to them about sales tactics I instead I all I wanted to do was make friends so every time I had an interview with somebody I just talked about video games and and my bosses were like why aren't you putting this out aren't you pitching the sale that led to more placements and more hires down the line because I wasn't trying to pitch them which then led to my first internal gig Double Fine asked me directly to work for them which then led 3:43 which then led to Rovio so it's just all about following my passion of games following my passion of talking about games and people and and not waiting for someone else to give me a chance so if you don't have the skill set right now you don't fit that job description find out what you do have and figure out how you can sell yourself first of all on how your experience is translatable once you sell yourself then you can sell others on that and then create your own experiences

maude reach out to the indie community do fan projects there's there's a ton out that you can do this that is not for profit right you have a portfolio stuff show people that you're engaged and interested and so that when you finally do reach out to them and someone does give you seven seconds of their time they can see that you're proactive and your acne hand-holding awesome thank you very much for that Alexi there's a great ways to finish this off I am being told that we need to start clearing out now so I just want to say thank you so much to everyone for joining us thank you so much the panel it's been really interesting and I'll hand back to Dave now who'll take us out of this whole thing thanks folks that was I was actually fascinating thank you very much Mia Tim kami Alexi Rick thank you very much what are useful panel I really appreciate it thank you we do have to wrap up because because we've got more going on this afternoon there's another roundtable starting the art of publishing is starting right here in the next few minutes and so we're gonna start broadcasting that and and also in

the other track room there's a link from your meet to match schedule if you hard to get holder to the incredible Indies and Industry visions and values track which continues in just two and it's time about with the talk about maximizing your games reach from Kate Edwards of geography another Seattle Dennison for those of us who in this window who know her so um thanks folks I'm gonna stop there and hopefully you'll stick around catch some more talks thank you very much