For the sake of this article, I’m assuming 2 things:
- You actually want to be found by Recruiters
- You work with Game Development (but most of the tips work for other industries as well)
As a retired (and recovering) Recruiter I could spill the beans and just list out everything you should do to optimize your profile, but what’s the fun in that. Instead, we will play a little game I like to call “You Try It”.
Let’s pretend you woke up on a different body, not as a president, or Elon Musk’s, definitely not as the Pope. You got bit by a radioactive recruiter and now this is who you became.
What will your day look like?
Like LinkedIn’ UI.
Ok, ok, we don’t spend the whole day looking at it, not every day at least, sometimes you get to play on Artstation as well.
Depending on where you work, usually a big Recruitment Agency aka “Where your dreams go to die”, a small boutique targetted agency, or inside a company, as an internal recruiter, your focus will be slightly different.
It might be that you talk directly with the Hiring Manager about their needs, or your manager directed you towards a tricky role no one can fill. Maybe you found a Job description somewhere and now you are pestering the Studio into letting you be their Super-Hero.
It doesn’t matter how you got here, now is time to get the “Perfect Match”.
Let’s say you are looking for a Tools Programmer, the first thing you will do on LinkedIn Recruiter is to start a new search. Out of all the filters, you will mainly use Job Title, Location, Industry and Seniority, when there’s no hope you will jump to Skills&Assessments and Keywords.
Job Title
So your first filter will look a little bit like this:
“Tools Programmer”, “Senior Tools Programmer” “Lead Tools Programmer”
“Tools Engineer”, “Senior Tools Engineer”, “Lead Tools Engineer”
“Tools Developer”, “Senior Tools Developer”, “Lead Tools Developer”
“Assistant Senior Tools Programmer” “Associate Lead Tools Programmer”…
You should try to cover everything because people like to get creative with their job titles… I would also throw a few “Tools Programer” “Tools Programmar” and so on because people don’t grammar check.
Location
This one is pretty self-explanatory, you would assume, but God knows how they worked the LinkedIn search algorithms out.
Sometimes, depending on the weather, adding all the countries in Europe will give more or fewer results than if you type “Europe” instead. As a good Recruiter, you will A/B Test it and hope for the best.
Industry
If you never recruited in your life, and if you specifically never recruited for Game Development, you’ll notice A LOT of roles overlap with the Animation, Entertainment, Gambling, and Computer Software industries. Which is not a bad thing at all, but not every Studio is open to candidates from outside of Games.
Different games require different and weirdly specific skillsets. That’s the reason why you should have jumped on a call with the hiring manager before, to cover your bases, but oh well... Now, just make sure you add Computer Games as the industry (sorry consoles, no filter for you, Linkedin doesn’t care about the difference) to save yourself from guessing wrong.
Seniority
Again, a tricky one. Over a chat with Linkedin a few months ago they’ve mentioned that an “entry-level” profile would be in between 0 and 4 years of experience.
A bit insane.
And then you also have to consider that well, it’s more about where, with which tools, and on what kind of projects that person has worked on. If someone spent 5 years working solely with AAA racing titles and you are trying to recruit them for this indie stylised project, your chances of getting an interview won’t be big.
Years on the role will give you more of an insight, especially if you have a bit of knowledge on games’ production cycles and the difference between mobile and console development. What you should be attentive to is how long they stayed in each of their previous roles. Jumpers get people nervous.
Skills&Assessments
You will fall here when everything else failed or if this is the 4th week on a roll you’ve been sourcing for the same position. Now and then, you will get such a niche job title you are pretty much sure they aren’t sure about the role either. It has been on their website for 7 years, but you told them you could do the job.
You have played with every possible combination of Job Titles and still, there are only 55 relevant people for the location you chose. Unfortunately for you, half of them ignored you, 49% said no and 1% told you to go f*ck yourself.
Now what? Back to the drawing board…
You will memorize the Job Description and test every single combination of skills they asked for. A programmer with 5 years of experience on Unreal 4 and C#? Get to work.
Keywords
Imagine that you need to find a person willing to relocate to Montreal, but you are lucky enough to be working in the middle of a Pandemic, forget about Visas and international relocation, time to get local.
Your beautiful boolean search is done, there’s no way you won’t find the right person for the job! 5 scrolling hours later you realise the perfect match doesn’t exist.
After scrapping the whole search, trying to fly only using Job Title&Location and spending 3 more frustrating hours looking at LinkedIn, maybe is time to try something else?
You remember hearing, some time ago, that Ubisoft (a studio you will most likely resource from until you die) has a role called Technical Architect, which now and then can be close to a Systems Programmer if they’ve worked on a very similar project to the one the hiring manager told you about.
You will keyword the shit out of it, trying all the possible ways of writing whatever you want to find. And there it is, the Unicorn, the golden profile you have been dreaming about for weeks. After tailoring the best inmail of your life, and refreshing LinkedIn 100 times, the apple of your eyes answers you back:
“Another recruiter messaged me 2hours ago for the same position”
Ready to go again?
Hopefully, you’ve picked up 2 things:
- You need to tailor your profile to how Recruiters search
- Be nice to people
Quick update guide:
- Add your city and country
- Have a personal email on Contact Info
- Use Computer Games as your Industry
- Fill your About Section with a brief explanation of your experience and in what you specialise/would like to focus on, add tools and your level of exp with them
- Utilize your Featured Section wisely, depending on your discipline you can add case studies, personal projects, podcasts episodes, articles, Powerpoint presentations that you’ve created, portfolio links…
- On your Experience Section make sure all roles have a brief explanation of your responsibilities, tools that you have used and projects you were a part of. Make sure to stuff it with Relevant Keywords
- Ask yourself if your Job Title is a bit too niche and if reflects the direction you would like to go towards. If you are changing areas/disciplines make it clear on your About Section.
- Add every single tool you feel comfortable working with on your Skills Section
- Networking: Show your personal projects on LinkedIn, tell us about your process, struggles, lessons and successes. A good idea is to tell your network about your Job Hunt, you would be surprised with how many people are or have been in the same boat, and would love to help.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Do you have any questions? You can find me on Twitter!
