I recently graduated college and have posted a resume on monster, but from what I hear, employers want a cover letter as well and a word/pdf copy of a resume. I just got a call from a game design company the other day about sending my resume and was wondering if anyone could give me some tips about my resume/cover letter. I know I have to format it a bit better, but I'm more concerned with the content for now. If anyone is in the industry or has interviewed people before, it would be much appreciated. http://www.mediamax.com/mindspin311/Hosted/Chris_Connors_Resume.pdf I was also wondering how to dress when going to a job interview in the game design industry. I know that dress is very casual, so should I wear a t-shirt and jeans? or a button up shirt and tie? And my portfolio isn't up and running yet.. I plan on setting up the site later. Thanks in advance.

Quote: Original post by mindspin311
I recently graduated college and have posted a resume on monster, but from what I hear, employers want a cover letter as well and a word/pdf copy of a resume.

Don't expect any results from that.

Contact all the studios you are interested in directly. You should generally try to follow their hiring procedures, even if they don't say they are hiring. If you can't find their hiring procedures online, call them and ask about their hiring procedures. Even better is to find someone who would be your future teammate or boss and ask them about who inside the company to send it to, and find out about their staffing needs. It's important to not deviate too far from established hiring practices, if they have them.

Quote: tips about my resume/cover letter

The first cover letter paragraph is an excuse. Rephrase it. The whole letter should be focused on what you can do for them. It looks like a generic letter that could be sent to any company, and not an actual useful letter. Rewrite it.

On your resume, put your education first since you just finished. Include useful details about your projects. "Game Designer minor" doesn't tell me much, but a listing of what you enjoyed designing for your courses, and fun things that you learned will tell me a great deal. The same is true for "graduated with honors" and "tutored". What cool transferable skills did you gain?

The Skills section is not really useful as written. I personally prefer to see a buzzword list at the bottom or completely gone. Find a way to include all the skills in your project details. As an example, saying "SCRUM" (why all uppercase?) doesn't mean much, but if one of your projects says that you "implemented a playable game with four programmers using PyGame, Python, and Unreal in four 2-week scrum sprints." that tells me something much more useful.

Two other notes. You wrote: "I have been programming for twelve years now". You can say that you have been doing it as a hobby, but DO NOT put that in as professional experience. They are completely different, as you will learn once you get actual professional experience. Second, you seem to not know the difference between programmer and designer. They are very different jobs. From your skill set and experience it looks like you are a programmer. Designers come up with concepts and gameplay, and generally have some credentials you do not. Programmers implement it. There are usually around 10 programmers per designer.

Quote: I was also wondering how to dress when going to a job interview in the game design industry. I know that dress is very casual, so should I wear a t-shirt and jeans? or a button up shirt and tie?

Probably a button up shirt and slacks. Save the t-shirt until after you're hired.

A tie is a must as it completes the male professional outfit. Including a jacket would be more professional, but play the business game and appear subservient to your future boss and wear everything but the jacket. A man fears his equal.

First off, here's the new resume: http://www.mediamax.com/mindspin311/Hosted/Chris_Connors_Resume.doc

Quote: Original post by frob

Quote: Original post by mindspin311
I recently graduated college and have posted a resume on monster, but from what I hear, employers want a cover letter as well and a word/pdf copy of a resume.

Don't expect any results from that.

I actually got a call from and independent recruiter who said I would be a good fit for the company. I don't know much about the company except that they're kinda a social networking mmo company who uses the Unity engine and Scrum. I added that stuff to my cover letter btw.. "learning Unity, and have agile software development practices in past projects."

I emailed the recruiter to get the name of the company so I can customize my cover letter better, and contact them after sending in my resume.

Quote:

Quote: tips about my resume/cover letter

The first cover letter paragraph is an excuse. Rephrase it. The whole letter should be focused on what you can do for them. It looks like a generic letter that could be sent to any company, and not an actual useful letter. Rewrite it.

Rewrote the whole thing trying to put in as much of the software/languages I have used in project.

Quote:
On your resume, put your education first since you just finished.

Done and done...

Quote:
Include useful details about your projects. "Game Designer minor" doesn't tell me much, but a listing of what you enjoyed designing for your courses, and fun things that you learned will tell me a great deal. The same is true for "graduated with honors" and "tutored". What cool transferable skills did you gain?

I put a lot of this stuff in my cover letter so should I be redundant and list some duplicate info about projects I did in my resume? If I had to pick one thing EVERYONE tells me about resumes, it's keep it under a page if you are a recent graduate.

Quote:
The Skills section is not really useful as written. I personally prefer to see a buzzword list at the bottom or completely gone. Find a way to include all the skills in your project details.

I just deleted it. Now I have an extra quarter page to fill in some info. I should elaborate on my project experience under education. Correct? Kinda going back to my question before of is this redundant info to be in my resume and cover letter?

Quote:
As an example, saying "SCRUM" (why all uppercase?) doesn't mean much, but if one of your projects says that you "implemented a playable game with four programmers using PyGame, Python, and Unreal in four 2-week scrum sprints." that tells me something much more useful.

I must've had the caps on my accident. Thanks for pointing that out.

Anyways, I made 2 mentions of agile software development practices and added similar to Scrum since their was no scrum master or "chickens", but we did break it up into iterations, reevaluate our progress, and have bi-weekly meetings.

Quote:
Two other notes. You wrote: "I have been programming for twelve years now". You can say that you have been doing it as a hobby, but DO NOT put that in as professional experience. They are completely different, as you will learn once you get actual professional experience.

I didn't say I have work experience in programming for 12 years, just programming experience. Plus as far back as 8 years ago, I made some websites for local businesses and got paid. So in a way, that's 8 years of work experience in programming. I was also wondering if I should even post this, as 2 of the sites are no longer running cuz they didn't advertise, and one other is still up, but they got a different web admin when I moved off to college. Is it good to have this in my resume even though none of the websites are still running? I don't want to put it up, and have to make "excuses" for all 3 sites, plus I no longer have the source code for the websites.

Quote:
Second, you seem to not know the difference between programmer and designer. They are very different jobs. From your skill set and experience it looks like you are a programmer. Designers come up with concepts and gameplay, and generally have some credentials you do not. Programmers implement it. There are usually around 10 programmers per designer.

Just a brain fart when typing I guess. Thanks for pointing that out.

Quote:

Quote: I was also wondering how to dress when going to a job interview in the game design industry. I know that dress is very casual, so should I wear a t-shirt and jeans? or a button up shirt and tie?

Probably a button up shirt and slacks. Save the t-shirt until after you're hired.

Thanks, I will.

Quote: Original post by mindspin311
First off, here's the new resume: http://www.mediamax.com/mindspin311/Hosted/Chris_Connors_Resume.doc

Much improved. I have personal stylistic issues, and I think you could expound a bit more on your skills, but those are relativly minor things compared to the major points you've already corrected.

Quote: If I had to pick one thing EVERYONE tells me about resumes, it's keep it under a page if you are a recent graduate.

It is true even after you've got a few years of experience. In this industry, usually the details start to shrink and are replaced with a game credits list. There's no point in explaining that somebody who has been a programmer on three AAA titles knows how to use a compiler.

The hard part is figuring out exactly what is useful, descriptive content. Strip away everything that doesn't directly relate to the position or needs of the target company.

As far as the actual content, I have several paragraphs of blurbs for each project I've done. When I need to send a resume or portfolio or work history, I make a copy, strip out everything that doesn't apply, and touch up a few details as needed. I'll then copy the touched up details back to the master list so I'll have them in the future.

Quote: Original post by LmT
A tie is a must ....

Not in the games industry. No one (apart from the Japanese) wear suits and ties. Smart casual is the way to go in the games biz, especially for development jobs.

I didnt read the rest of the post but from someone who did interviews and hirings for a LONG LONG time I can tell you this:

Pay to have your resume professionally done. Its worth it and employers can tell. Resume specialists have an excellent way of wording everything.

Other people here tell you "Dress casual"...I take the person in the suit and tie more seriously then I do the guy in t shirt and jeans. Your level of dress tends to show how much you care about a job. Most jobs your fine with a dress shirt, nice tie and dress pants and dress shoes. Buy new if you have to. I would not dress any less then this no matter what anyone tells you. Trust me on this.

You probably know this already but ill post for people who may not:

During the interview ALWAYS start with a firm handshake and eye contact. Dont break eye contact (no looking at the floor when answering questions).

Dont be nervous. (I know its hard) You need to sell yourself to the interviewer and if your the nervous sheep in the corner its not gonna help you as much as if your the guy who is fun to talk to and you have a genuine conversation with your interviewer.

Dont be afraid to ask questions. This helps both parties out. You learn more about your position, and your interviewer learns more about you. Just make sure theyre genuine questions about the company and not something stupid.

Dont complain about anything (youd be suprised how many people do this). Always be positive! You dont wanna be the guy telling your interviewer how your stressed and yuor dog died and your car got hit etc.

And lastly, leave with a firm handshake and a smile. That gets you places and keeps you rememberable.

There are some who will argue with what I say above but Ive hired many people for many different companies and the people who practice the above usually get the jobs.

Also dont be surprised if you have multiple interviews.

Also, good luck! Keep us posted.

Good luck!

About dress, my rule of thumb (and I think its a good one) is to dress one step above the everyday dress of the employees. If employees are t-shirt and jeans (casual), an interviewee should wear slacks or a nice pair of jeans and a button-down shirt with a collar (ie business casual). If employees dress business casual, interviewees should wear a suit, tie and dress shoes (business formal), if employees dress business formal, you should wear your best suit, tie and dress shoes.

For every interview I've been on, its been a nice pair of dark jeans and a nice long-sleeve button-down shirt with a collar and cuffs.


As for the resume content, its important to distinguish that a resume should be skills-based for a recent grad, rather than experience-based as it would be for someone who has been in the workforce for some time. Focus on what you excelled in academically, and how you've applied those skills to real-life problems in your field. If you have previous work (independent projects or what-have-you) it should be followed by a bullet-list of your primary contributions and each bullet point should begin with a verb.

Here's an example from my resume:
Junior Programmer -=|=- Some Company - Redmond, WA -=|=- Jan 2006-Present
• Customized web-based Microsoft CRM application to client specifications using C#, &#106avascript, ASP.NET, SOAP and XML technologies.
• Developed custom applications to migrate legacy spreadsheet and database records into Microsoft CRM formatted databases.
• Helped develop and maintain internal build system and other tools.

Note that the "-=|=-" are there as a separator, since the forum doesn't support tab formatting.


As for the cover letter, don't try to make a blanket one you send out to each company, but its OK to base the general structure of it on a previous one as long as you change it enough. The cover letter should be viewed as your chance to pitch yourself -- Its what you would say about yourself if you had 2 minutes face-to-face with the head of development; but since you don't get face-time usually, you put your words on paper. It should state clearly what role you would like to be considered for and why you are a good match to fill it. It should summarize your skills and how they are relevant to the role. Finally, it should state your interest in the company, but keep it brief and don't be a kiss-ass (everyone hates a kiss-ass).

For opening I personally use "Dear Hiring Manager" as my salutation, but feel free to use something less personal (I've just never found a replacement I was satisfied with.) I sign off with "Respectfully yours" but again, feel free to change, I just haven't found something I liked better.