Tips From the Trenches: How To Help Recruiters and Hiring Managers Get You In The Door

[Music] all right so welcome everyone thank you for joining us today here in person oh my goodness uh i'm nicole minka the recruiting manager at crystal dynamics and i'm gonna be your moderator for the panel today uh so welcome to our panel tips from the trenches in this panel we will be talking about hiring in the gaming industry so there's hundreds of job openings in the gaming industry right now and there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes we'll be looking at this from a few different sides those who are looking to get into games those who are looking to make a shift maybe from one studio to another or different types of industries and then tips for hiring for your own team if you're a hiring manager so how i want to start this off is just kind of getting a feel for who's out there in the room at the moment so how many people here are already employed at a game development studio

arvr okay perfect and then um keep or re-raise your hands if you are somebody that has helped interview on your team have you been that person before all right and then if keep your hands up if you're the hiring manager like the one calling the shots making decisions okay and uh is there anybody here that's looking to break into the industry or students all right all right and uh this is for both hiring managers and for those who are looking for work have you ever partnered with a recruiter on either side to help you in that search either for a person or for yourself okay just a few so now we'll move on to our panel so we have a mix of internal recruiters uh agency recruiters and hiring managers so uh the recruiters play a critical role in building the teams of successful studios as do

the hiring managers that they partner with to build those strong teams so what does that entail what happens when a job gets posted as a hiring manager how do you get strong applicants how do you as an applicant make sure that your resume stands out from the bunch so maybe you've got interviews we'll touch a bit on that how do you make sure that those run smoothly and then maybe it's time to make an offer what do you need to know so that things don't fall apart at the end so hear what it is from people in the trenches and we will kick things off with our panelists so first up we have nelly hughes who is the design director at xbox game studios publishing nelly can you tell us a bit about yourself sure i'm a 17-year game design veteran who's done all types of design including game design design leadership and design management along that road i've done lots of departmental hiring i'm here today because one of my loves is just to help folks break into the industry and help folks or experience get the jobs they're going

for awesome it is nice to have you here nelly thank you next we have alejandra rodriguez now at the end who is a principal recruiter at probably monsters alejandro thank you my name is alejandra rodriguez and i'm the recruiter supporting uh probably monsters and the plethora of students within our org it is my goal to support and encourage an environment that is inclusive professional respectful to all within uh before probably monster series to be a reunit two for three google mobile wpb for a bit yeah all right thank you alejandra and before i move on to the next two panelists i want to point out that nelly alejandra and myself work internally at game development studios the following panelists are from an agency so they support studios externally so iris moon i'm going to have you introduce yourself but can you also tell us a little bit about what that means sure first of all it's great to see everybody back in person thanks for coming to our panel i'm iris moon i'm the managing director at gglocators if you haven't heard of us or

you haven't heard from me on linkedin we're a boutique staffing firm and we specialize in recruitment for the video game industry we unlike nicole nelly and alejandro we don't work for one studio we partner with multiple studios across this industry to help them fill all types of roles within the gaming industry we part of the reason a studio would reach out to us is you know there's multiple reasons but some of the main ones are maybe they don't have an internal recruiting firm or an internal recruiting team they might not have the capacity if they do have an internal team to fill all the roles that are on their plate especially in the current market or they might be ramping up to grow the studio excessively and so they'll reach out to us and we will form a partnership and help them fill jobs awesome and last but certainly not least we have cami who is a recruiter at gg

locators but has also worked at a few gaming colleges in the past so yeah thank you thanks nicole yeah it's really great to see you guys in person you have no idea um so yes i work at gg locators but i have spent 12 plus years 15 years i've lost track now working at college is like full sale working in the career track helping you know helping coach students with resumes portfolios soft skills whatever it takes to prepare them to get into the industry but also my job was to build relationships with the industry so they would look to me or our school when they're looking to hire so relationships are really critical i've probably helped i don't know thousands of grads get launched in their first jobs but what's really cool is now those grads since you heard me say 12 to 15 years those grads now own their own studios or

their leadership at snapchat or whatever so it's like having your children grow up and i'm working with a lot of them now at gg locators awesome all right so what happens first first comes there's a job opening so a studio realizes that they need to hire now what happens uh nelly can you tell us from your perspective sure so the first thing that i do is i work with the leads to get the notes get to know the role extremely well you know i i need to just like buckle down and understand exactly what the short-term and the long-term goals are and then i write a job description and in the job description i have to get really detailed and just kind of get down to the nitty-gritty to just you know do that sorry and then once i'm done with that i hand it off to these guys and you know let them kind of take over so on that note alejandro pass it off to a recruiter we take your your ball and then uh once the team puts in a request

the hiring manager as well for a job opening the recruiter meets with hiring manager to determine the needs of the studio and create a sourcing strategy to best fill this opening and on our side we don't always get the ball thrown at us sometimes we have to go out and and find the ball um but once we connect with a studio on an opening we'll have an initial call talk to them about their needs find out what they're looking for um you know in terms of the role in terms of candidate a good culture fit for the studio and then we'll typically request to hop on with the hiring manager that way we can really dig in and and know who we're going to be submitting candidates directly to um and have that relationship going and then we get out there and start looking awesome um and i know we had a few hiring managers in the crowd as well so i'm curious to know what sort of things are the hiring managers telling you and getting you as a recruiter set up for success so alejandro we're on first and foremost really is just have a good intake

meeting right at the beginning of this or the beginning of the process really work together to have an effective recruiting strategy recruiter really is a force multiplier to you and so really it's just work to get intended to understand what it is so the hair managers have a clear expectation for the studio's hiring needs and work to have keywords or anything that will help them on their search on linkedin or any source thing they can have i always like to make sure i nail down very specifically i like to when i talk to our clients or the hiring managers you know give me your top three skills that you must see with a candidate that we're presenting to them i always like to have examples i'm very visual so if they can send me you know a portfolio from their team so i can get an idea of the style or a video that i can really focus on that way i can you know narrow the aperture when it comes to helping them uh helping us find them the type of candidate they want

um yeah and i'll just add one one last thing it's always really helpful if you're a hiring manager in the in the audience for external recruiters if you can somehow be involved in the process that way we can connect directly with you and really learn what you're looking for and be able to get you the right people faster and so as you can hear it's really important for the recruiters to understand the pieces of the role and the job descriptions so that they can help attract the right candidates get the job descriptions out there so that people can apply and then as they apply they're talking to these candidates like yourselves and we're hearing a lot about what's going on in the industry right now from candidates so some of you might relate to a lot of these things but uh what do you all think are some of the things that you've heard candidates are looking for uh you know since covid a lot of it is work from home or a hybrid work situation um you need to you know a lot of people are moving away from the typical tech you know locations

um you know comp is another one uh there are some companies out there that are basically taking a dump truck full of cash and kind of backing up and dumping it on people so those are really the the two biggest ones that i'm hearing right now yeah for us remote is huge after covid the last two years most people have gotten comfortable working from home most people can do their jobs from home so a lot of people are currently looking for that um and then creative flexibility is another one growth opportunity is something we see a lot we also definitely in this industry uh work life balance is huge no more crunch i don't think i think most studios aren't doing it anymore so um you know people are are excited about that but each candidate is very unique so i usually try to do my my thinking like i'm listening to them what's their motivating factor is it compensation is it working remote or are

the growth expectations of that studio you know what what's their order of priority and honestly really a respectful and inclusive environment so you mentioned inclusivity and i just was curious if you could tell us all a little bit more about that one yes well honestly game studios are making games for our diverse markets and in order for them to make games in order to make games uh that resonate within those markets they really should themselves reflect that diversity within the team compositions so all this happens before the job's even posted out on on a website um so they try the hiring managers try to make it straightforward for us so that we can put that out there um and if they've got a job description already made that makes things a little bit easier for us so that we can formulate that job description and get it out to you all but maybe it's something that the team hasn't hired before or maybe it's a new role or something that they haven't hired for in

a long time so there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes to make sure that what we're putting out there to you all is in line with what the team is actually looking for so i just want to touch a little bit more on how hiring managers and recruiters partner together to make sure that those job descriptions are are out there and accurate so um nellie what do you all do with your team uh lots of communication you know we spend a lot of time with recruiters and going over in great detail about what the job itself is what the goals and the needs are for the role and you know we need to be available as much as possible because you know we need to just be nimble right now the job market is really really hot and if you can't be there to answer those questions that candidate may get away well sick um honestly it really is find previous examples of these jobs clearly determine the specific needs of the team for example do you need to know unreal do you do you have other expectations for c plus plus um but honestly what are the

quantifiables and let these job descriptions be as concise as they can be and hiring manner managers don't always have job descriptions from previous roles so you know part of of what we will do is help you write up that job description and get it posted um and i'm a visual person i like to see examples of the artwork the style i mentioned that before and and really listen to what the hiring team uh or studio is specifically looking for in their next candidate a lot of listening is important awesome and i'm gonna hold the audience again really quick so once the job's out there you see the job description on there i'm curious to know where you all are applying are you going directly to the company's website and applying on their sites if you are raise your hand for that all right what about if you're using or using anything like indeed okay any or any other careers that monster

how many of you are on linkedin keeping that update and you're using that for networking to find jobs all right um what about something like art station for those of you might be artists using that cool and then anywhere else maybe like a discord or a forum reddit well is there anything that i haven't mentioned yet that people have done other than like events that we haven't done in three years all right so uh nothing now that i just mentioned a whole bunch of them that that uh once it's created and it's posted um is there anywhere else in alejandra i mentioned a lot of ones you push them in anywhere else you can think of well honestly us company right we post our roles in the career side on indeed linkedin our station but really we go into discord into forums we honestly wherever you are

at we're going to get there eventually right we share our jobs out on socials i'm a social media nerd i have specific groups that i've since my early days at full sail on facebook there's a lot of great facebook things going on also of course on twitter and discord i have a lot of grads and friends that i reach out directly to and see if they can give me any ideas or contacts that they might share with me for the job yeah friends relationships yep usually you know i end up hitting my network and my team usually does the same thing oh yeah so definitely a lot of places where we're posting a job but uh i know cami mentioned outreach and you're obviously talking to some recruiters here too so we're doing the outreach and reaching out to to candidates as well so are you all finding better candidates from postings are you finding them somewhere else

um we are classic headhunters we'll go out there and find the right person for the job we do look at art station we look at a lot of portfolios a lot of candidate backgrounds skill sets technical skill sets and then another great thing about this industry is it is really intimate in a lot of ways so we've been you know we've been around for three years now so we've built a lot of relationships um and just a lot of referrals come through our dorm from people we've either worked with or placed or um even clients we've worked with so i really want to underline linkedin linkedin has a great ai so just to give you an example we put all our words in for the skills in the filter it spits out to us you know a list of candidates all over the country or wherever we filtered it down to but here's my favorite part i go to bed at night linkedin's ai is still working so when i get up in the morning linkedin is pop populated another 40 50 people in my

search section so honestly i can't emphasize enough how important linkedin your linkedin profile if you're seeing a job make sure you weave those words into your profile and just keep it active it doesn't mean you have to post a lot of stuff it just means keep your own profile active so after well honestly we find our best candidates within the industry communities discord and social media yeah so get yourself out there network make sure things are updated and like they all said the seo on linkedin that's where they're finding some of your profiles is through those keyword searches um so all right we're going to move on to when we identify a candidate so we're going to dive a little bit deeper into the channels that we use for finding talent but before we do um i have one last thing about those job postings so say a hiring manager some of

you may be out here who don't have a recruiter you don't have an hr team um what are some things that you can do to get more applicants other than networking with this with this group well you know uh i'm gonna beat the drum of linkedin get a linkedin pro you know account but uh i just it's a job within itself so you really kind of need to count that into your schedule so um you know i think i'm just really gonna you know stress that because you it's a lot of work but you know just um use your network and and word of mouth is a lot of it and um just make sure to continue to you know just get it out there i mean naturally i'm going to say call gd locators yeah we work with studios big and small i mean you the small studios i always have a soft spot in my heart because i know how much energy it takes to source

and and pre-interview people so if there's only one person at that studio you have to be so um you want to swoop in and help them out right but we work with big studios too and their hiring numbers are so huge that even their um their most coordinated teams can't keep up so it's always great to be a recruiter like us yeah so as a candidate you might be thinking hey what the market's so hot all these people are hiring like i applied i never heard back um if there's so few applicants and you guys are having to do all this outreach how come nobody's answering me so do you all have any advice for the applicants to make sure that their applications are getting noticed when they apply to quote our talented director of our recruitment uh make sure your resume looks like a job description right tell your resume to create trust within the hiring manager by aligning your experience what exactly they're looking for uh make sure they don't have to jump and make leaps of trust remember for you

don't understand what you do use the keywords from the job description itself in your resume right most resumes are first also filtered by an ats ai that really uses those keywords to filter them out and allow me to see them first i always you know i've worked with a lot of students and grads and i'm really a big advocate for making your uh resume very easy for the hiring managers they're getting they may get a hundred to a thousand resumes they don't have time to read everything make it very clear don't give a long objective they don't give a rip what your objective is right they're there because they need to get their team up and running so don't care about that stuff use bullet points you want them to be able to skim that resume really quickly and you want them to be able to see your skills honestly there's a lot of stuff that doesn't get in read in a resume so make the most important stuff easy um with

live links make sure your live links work before you send that resume in i've had a lot of resumes where i've tested a live link and it's taken and and i know that person you know has a great live link but i it doesn't work so every single time make sure those live links are working make it stupid easy for recruiters to help you and i'd like to go off of a little bit of what they said too applicant tracking system make sure that there's not a bunch of crazy graphics on your resume because when it uploads it could it's going to totally make it wonky if there's too much stuff on there so keep it simple and then also if you are matching things to the job description you want to be like yes i check these boxes but also make sure that you can speak to the experience that you have because hiring managers are going to dig into that and they're going to make sure that if you're saying yes i've done this required skill that you actually can do it and speak to it so align it but make sure that it's also staying truthful and accurate um so what about job descriptions that

require portfolios we'll go to the design director on this one all right well you know i guess i'm going to start kind of general and then hone in so you know make sure that your portfolio looks like you put effort into it um you know flashy sites and elaborate portfolios don't mean much if um you know it doesn't have the content that is good uh put your best stuff in there and only your best stuff um you know i gotta stop saying i'm sorry uh take the old stuff out as you grow keep it up to date show versatility um if you're not sure if your best stuff is ask others get feedback all the time you know um curate that so sorry i swore and be picky so we're gonna be picky so you should be well you should be as well keep it super friendly keep the career track that you were going for so some of the things that i've seen especially with people who are kind of starting out in the industry is there's like a smorgasbord of things

in there they're trying you've got design work you've got art stuff and you know i think if you're trying to go for a couple different tracks that you should make a different portfolio for each track you're going for or decide you know maybe what track you are going for and and focus on that you know if you um uh oh my gosh i got lost uh anyways yeah that's where i'm going really rosa nelly thank you for that yes um to continue uh make sure your art applies to the work of the student you want to be hired at uh your portfolio should honestly look like you've already done the work that you're saying you've already done the job that you're applying to do you know and it's like to kind of hone in a little bit if you're an artist one of my artist managers basically said avoid the tna fine art dudes are great you know drawing one thing but exploitive of creepy anime is another and kind of just don't do that and design show your thought process you

know i want to see how you have solved problems you know write exactly right examples post-mortems on all of your examples that you're showing of you know your your game design stuff and it's really important to just make sure that you have quality not quantity just make sure that's make that your mantra quality not quantity absolutely and uh i know some people might be wondering well like how do i how do i make my portfolio look how do i know what it's supposed to look like um so alejandro i know you touched on that a little bit but are there should be people that they can look at that work on these games or the games themselves right like can you can you elaborate a little bit more on on how they can find what they're supposed to be absolutely i mean it'll be very simple just go on linkedin and see who's working in the studio you want to work at like see those artists that you really want to emulate or be and look at their work and just if you may reach out to them for advice or if

you're not look on go on discord or forums and and just get the advice from there too but honestly your work should be able to to be at that caliber of those artists you you aspire to be and uh let's see so we talked a little bit about you all looking for for for jobs and and making sure that your portfolio matches um the roles that you're looking for your skill sets match what you're looking for um but from a hiring manager perspective i'm curious too is there anywhere that you all can recommend that a hiring manager can look for talent maybe if they're not working with a recruiter how can they they find some people too let's see who's on that you want to jump into oh see i'm just like oops um you know you can have your team help you out you know i think everywhere that i've ever worked all of my teams have been really excited about where they've worked so they've kind of just continued to

pass on all the job openings to their friends they've linked in again sorry and places like facebook and everywhere else that you know they can kind of just spread the word and you know you i've never asked them to it's just something that if you're excited about where you work that's kind of you know you want you want your friends and other people to work with you awesome yeah i mean i've already said some of these uh there's some great i know not all this generation you guys that are here now are on facebook but there's some great diversity um game uh facebook pages that i really rely on um of course discord groups for sure twitter we were working with an esports company and then i had to really source a lot on twitter because that's where they were we try to go to where they are and dig deep in that uh in that space yeah and i know it sounds like we've touched on that a couple times too is that we're a lot of the places that we're reaching out to or we're looking

for people it's like they're already in they're already in games they're already working games so is there anything that you can suggest to people that aren't in the industry yet how how can what if they're just starting out in their search i would say go to events go to game jams career fairs find a mentor you know this helps you in a few ways it helps you network it gets you new portfolio pieces uh it helps you practice interviewing skills and it helps you build relationships yeah um relationships are key right for everything you'll ever do right so i always say show up to any game events if you don't have any in the town you're in start a game meetup there's a lot of people who probably would appreciate that um if you're an introvert that's really your superpower because you can really focus on what you're doing but when you go to any of these meetups or game jams

i always say you know come prepared with maybe in your head three questions that you can be ready to ask and at any time because if you're in a situation where you don't know who's sitting next to you you can come up with like oh what game are you working on or or you know what are you using unity or unreal you know just get the conversation started and a lot of times that's a relief for everybody in the room or anybody you're next to talking i also like to go to you know to events and kind of force myself and go okay here are my three questions i'm going to ask you know just to have on in my back pocket but also i'm going to give myself i'm going to meet six people before i leave this thing tonight so i kind of i'm competitive with myself and uh try to come up with the six people i've met at that that event that's awesome advice even at any level i think yeah definitely um so next i want to touch on the interview process um so what's it like when you know there's a match there's a

job you get the recruiter wants to have a call um so what is it like when you're ready to start the interview process so how does it how does it start off absolutely internally really is recruiting first we do the whole verbal checkbox the extra human being and then from there they hire manager and then for if that goes well then we go into a panel interview which will be a full loop interview mostly five hours depending on the studio and then from there will be a higher no higher decision yeah and alejandro mentioned the five hour interview that's after four other interviews usually in this industry so um we like to try to be as thorough as possible in our pre-screen our initial conversation with candidates so that we can at least skip one step when submitting to our client and get the process moving a little more quickly and if the client wants to set up the interview which happens every day we like to prep our candidates beforehand we we go through a list of questions even the most seasoned

developers or whatever you know it just really helps ease the interview process i don't care how smart you are an interview process your brain freezes that's just human so it's always good to practice and we try to do that and then afterwards we have a debrief so we can keep you know kind of hear what they're thinking if they have new ideas or you know questions about that company they just interviewed yeah we just kind of make sure we're aligning the whole process every step of the way i i think that brings up a good point what can the candidate do to prepare for for the interview so it sounds like some people do some some preps um i'm curious what else could be suggested to for to a candidate to make sure that the interview goes smoothly and are there any sort of things that hiring managers are looking for absolutely i mean before anything cami that's really well said uh honestly as you as an interviewer it's like much like public speaking so

i'll probably see practice and hone in your interview key talking points uh you should be able to succinctly answer your questions relating to your experience uh practice explaining the challenges you've had right um and how how your company or how you as a person have grown into into something better after that you know find out as much as you can about the role i've had a couple people who have just shown up to the interview and not even really known what they were there for and that's an instant downer so you know just absolutely do your research yep and i'll say um just some of the things i thought were obvious but maybe not um everything's been on video for the last couple years so look professional don't vape don't eat believe me these have things have happened so um yeah just make sure you show up like you would to an

in-person interview so there's a couple other things you know besides the obvious things you know do your research on the company itself understand the culture you know understand the project or the company's product to know the games play the games do your research on the interviewers that are you know going you're going to be talking to go to linkedin again linkedin sorry we're definitely plugging them today you know have excitement for the role be there be be jazzed pay full attention turn off discord turn off your phone you know slack everything uh definitely be yourself you know just you're gonna be working with these people for 40 hours a week so you know you want you want to be your genuine self uh and there's also additional things uh speak to your experiences in general wrap your answers up in a past story if you can this helps see the context of something you've done personally and allows us to dig deeper if we want details

and play up your successes this is really important you know you you have done awesome things and you should be proud of that so you know just just brag about it what this does is help me look for character traits and competencies so just for an example you know did you build a custom engine just because this shows me that you you know you've got a growth mindset that you're driven that you're you know you're curious do you work with artists engineers and producers this shows me that you you know you can cross communicate and you can work in groups it's you know it's not just can you do the job that we're hiring for but how can you complement an ad to the studio's team and value oops yeah adding value that one's huge so i always suggest that people write things down the night before because bringing things back from their long-term memory can be really hard so if you prepare for it then you'll have all of those top of mind when you go into the interview and also one other thing i want to add is ask questions be curious so at the end you never want to

go do you have any questions for me and then you're like no and then that's it prepare some questions before as well so that's super important i can't stress how much you need to ask questions yes um and so i want to bring up testing um tests can be a reality in the industry some studios do them some studios don't um so this is actually geared more towards hiring managers so what advice do you have for hiring managers that come to you and say hey i want to give a test for this role i would actually ask that you think about if you really need to test at all because many companies are ditching them and a lot of candidates won't take them anymore and you know if you really feel that you do need to give them you need to let recruiters and candidates know that you're going to give the test right away because it's you know it's just a waste of your time if you get through a phone screen and they just won't test it and they won't take it and

you've just wasted both parties times and so what if a test is part of the process how should a candidate prepare if they have to take one well i think that you know the best way to do that is to understand the product that they make and understand again the position that you're going for very well do the research on the position because you may be able to you know combine the two and it would help you give you an advantage possibly like to follow up with that ask questions again if you're taking a test and you don't know what you don't know ask questions if they can't answer it then they can't answer it for you and if they can then you've got an answer to the question so be be curious can i just jump in there you should never be afraid to ask a hiring manager and or a recruiter a question because you know that that's just really good and don't be yeah just don't be afraid it shows that you know you're you're interested in the job absolutely really well sent out all right so candidates interviewed

they've taken the test the team is deliberating on next steps maybe they're talking to a couple other candidates as well about the same role so how do you all make sure that a candidate has a good experience as they interview what are some things that you all do personally for candidate experience a lot of communication give a 48 hour turnaround time on a decision if they're the only candidate if they're not the only candidate it comes down to transparency let them know you don't want to basically dangle a carrot and you know let's just not communicate with them it's really disrespectful for you to you know just for people's time for them not to have it yeah and as nelly already mentioned communication is key just keeping candidates in the loop we will not ghost you we'll make sure that we're following up regularly if we haven't heard from a studio we'll let you know we haven't heard and that we'll have feedback as soon as we do here and we'll we will share it with you um and you know if if we end up hearing from the client after you've interviewed and the interview didn't go as as well

as you'd hoped we will still let you know um and we'll keep keep moving forward keep pushing for the next opportunity so that brings me to the awkward piece that none of us none of us like is what do we have to do when we have to reject the candidate either skills that didn't align or just i guess how do you reject a candidate is there anything that can be done to make sure that that's a constructive learning experience as opposed to a generic email you know i i always collect feedback after a interview from the people that have interviewed them and you know i i curate it and i send it to the recruiter and you know it it depends if the person wants feedback or not if they do i i'm always willing to give it to them i assert i really appreciate what you just said um it is really important for people to be able to interview and grow from their experiences uh normally most companies can never really send you a support library email saying hey it didn't work out this time

i want to know the candidate but i ask you every time you receive one of those emails just go back and ask hey is there any feedback we can have and normally or ask them to to go on a phone with them right normally we can talk to you about the experience and over the phone we can share with you what we can all right so the flip side of that uh interviews go really well you're gonna get an offer so um but uh before we dig into that i think it's important to talk a little bit more about what the market's like right now um so cami can you tell us a little bit about what you're seeing yeah the market is hot it's really active it's almost exhausting um studios have a lot of hires across the board we're seeing that all over um but when we work with studios when we sign sign up working with the studio we really emphasize uh that they make they're ready to make the offer quickly if they interview someone and they wait for weeks to come back with an offer

they're going to lose the candidate you know candidates don't have to wait anymore if you're a tech artist you can blink and someone will want to hire you but you can probably have you know two or three offers by the end of a week so if the first studio is taking its time maybe they want to do another test they're going to lose out yeah and candidates are getting higher offers than we've seen especially with you know multiple years of industry experience so be adaptable like i mentioned earlier remote work is huge if a studio is able to accommodate that um you know some people are willing to take a little little less on their base salary to get that other perk and obviously that's from the agency side so i'm curious for those that that are internal uh what sort of things are you seeing you know people are getting the ass that they want we have to be really flexible and we have to be willing to work with them

when it comes to work situations and salary asks you know yeah very much so um coverage has really changed the market there are there is a lot more power to determine where we work from it's really shifted uh the landscape in our end awesome yeah so it sounds like we have to we have to move fast on candidates and so if you're not getting the responses feel free to follow up with your job postings be curious ask questions um we touched on flexibility what are some things that you all do to make sure that things do keep moving along quickly well after an interview you know i try to make sure that i have a follow-up meeting with the entire interview circuit the day after to get that feedback from them i work with the recruiter instantly after that to try to give them an answer within you know a day 24 hours is almost my personal limit within two days is is almost too much and then you know we

move from there exactly as it should be thank you thank you so as a recruiter thank you so much [Laughter] oh no you're fine thank you good experience is key good can experience is how we how we pretty much a metric for us it's how we tell judge who what what a good recruit recruit studio or good recruiting experiences and so yeah for us it's really important to get back to you as soon as possible and it's a goal of ours to make sure you have a good candid experience and i know i touched on being curious and following up but is there anything else that you all can recommend that a candidate do to help move things along yeah uh yes if if we're working with you and we're you know by the time this process is over we've gotten to know each other pretty well because we've connected over the course of those four to five interviews before and after every call if you are interviewing multiple places at one time just keeping us in the loop as recruiters letting us know if you're getting close to an offer what what your top choice studio looks

like and that way we can push on our side to get things moving faster in the process and just being transparent transparency is key all right so on that note i said that we're moving to the offer phase you touched on transparency so let's talk money um what does everybody need to know when it comes to making an offer uh iris you want to kick that one off our goal is to have no surprises by the time we get to the offer the first time i talk to you if you're my candidate we are going to talk money we're going to ask what you're looking for where you we can't legally ask where you are currently some people volunteer that information um but you know we we ask what you're looking for if it's completely out of left field they'll be like that's not really what we're seeing in the market most people know where they're at and what they need to take a little step up um so you know we it's important not to

go way out of range but also not to you know undersell yourself um make sure you're you're asking for what you're worth in the market and you know every step of the way we're going to talk about this money every time i enter every time i prep you for an interview every time i debrief you for an interview i'm going to ask and make sure hey this is the compensation we discuss and then i'm gonna keep you know reiterating that to the client that way when we do get to the offer there are no surprises it's the offer you you were asking for the client knew from the beginning you knew and hopefully it's it's a done deal and everyone can celebrate the win definitely important to celebrate and every studio is going to be a little bit different but the resounding be curious ask questions transparency um anyone else any other things that we want to touch on on that piece definitely i agree with you uh starting the conversation in the beginning all

these negotiations or just that being able to develop a good offer package takes a while so now we can just flip it over and switch um we're going to definitely do your research on your end every state has different laws for when asking for compensation i recommend you looking at those california something good ones um honestly other careers we can't really ask you what are you making right now so really we're going to be asking you is what do you target what are you what are you hoping to achieve out of this and i know another part of compensation is benefits so um does anyone want to talk a little bit about how those can play a factor yeah well maybe the you know what 401k is it matching what health benefits does it pay your spouse um is there relocation money um is there a signing bonus what are the what is the bonus structure like annually across that some studio i mean some startups are going to offer stock options lately i've been seeing nfts be part of the package you just have to know what your

motivating factor is be real clear and uh and communicate that to whoever you're working with all right and then we always get a couple questions after everything's said and done the offer is out signed everybody's good and ready to go they got their start date um there are some common questions like like pto and i've got this wedding coming up and i i i only accrue it at this rate how do i take the time off so that's when i get a lot um do you want to touch on that one like what's the just ask just you know it's it's okay and you know nobody's gonna be mad just be upfront about what you need you know off before you get the job nobody's gonna be mad just just ask and be transparent same things have happened with holidays like they're not fully written out in the benefits package but you can always ask like what what holidays do i get and we can send you those kind of lists um all right um so we are we've got about 10 minutes left um i am going to wrap this up with uh

final words for those who are looking in their job search if anyone has questions after this we welcome you to come up here and ask us um so feel free we'll all be up here you can come up and and ask be curious and ask whatever you'd like but so final parting words for those who are starting their search any practical advice that you'd like to to share with the group before we wrap up um i'll just say don't beat yourself up it's a tough industry to break into but there are a lot of resources out there find a mentor connect with us maybe we can connect you with a mentor and just keep trying you'll you'll land somewhere eventually the industry needs you yeah keep building that working on that portfolio keep doing game jams a lot of times companies will go we want to see what they're doing outside of their work you know they want to know that you're still really obsessed with making games

right um but also take advantage of uh if you went to college or you know wherever you went go to linkedin they have that alumni button on that college website and you can click it click on the alumni and filter it out to see who might be in the industry that you might reach out to they may not respond but you never know it's a it's a way to say hey would you mind taking a you know half hour to just give me some feedback on my resume or my portfolio or my git whatever but build those relationships up well said um it is a marathon not a sprint make sure that you keep yourself fed motivated and make sure to improve yourself right from my experience um it takes people about two to three years after school to be able to ramp themselves up to a place where i can grab where i can hire them schools are really there to make sure you know the foundation of what you're getting into but it's gonna be up to you to to put yourself a position where someone like you can say yeah please bring this person over here and i would say you know just

continue to network hone your craft i mean everything that these folks said is absolutely true and you know just be yourself and and continue to march forward you know we we need you all in the industry and you know it's exciting that we have new blood all the time and yeah you're gonna make awesome stuff so i can't wait to work with you all absolutely awesome yeah thank you everybody thank you for coming to our talk [Applause] [Music] you