for everyone joining this is the gaming Playbook this is my weekly podcast this is the LIVE edition So today we’re

getting into something which is the most requested pretty much which is how to get a job specifically in the games

industry and I thought who better than Christina we had a chat about a month ago talking about this topic and she’s

actually been through a layoff last month sorry last year and as of today is

actually her company just been acquired so she’s been gone from a contract recruiter to now a permanent recruiter

so I thought what an amazing story to share and then we can both go into

actually practically what to do following a layoff before a layoff and then we have some time for Q&A at the end so yeah really excited to have

everyone here I’ll quickly start with Christina just giving a bit of a kind of

recap like who is Christina yeah so I am a industry

recruiter I’ve been a recruiter in HR for about a decade or so I’ve been in games the last five years I actually

started in games doing contracts I was actually really terrified of being laid off and so I started doing contracts I

had a full-time job and I started taking small contracts and then I was really good at it my husband encouraged me to

go full-time um I had kind of reached the peak of where I was in my previous role decided hey what the heck I’ll go

for it and then I ended up Landing a full-time role um at naughty dog so I was at Naughty Dog the last two years

and then I was subject to Naughty Dogs layoffs in March um that’s kind of where I think my layoff story

starts okay so for everyone watching we’re going to get into that layoff

story practically what Christina did and then we’re just going to go a toz what we would do if we were in that situation

so Christina you were laid off tell us what happened yeah so um actually my

story goes a little bit before the layoffs so I had just come back from maternity leave I had just had my second

baby um and I had come back to find out that while I was on maternal leave part of my

team had already been laid off um and so I kind of came back from that last the

quarter four of 2023 realizing like part of my team had been eliminated um there

was some assurances not not guarantees but they said you know we feel comfortable with where we’re at we don’t

expect any more layoffs uh a month after being back from eternity leave my husband who also works in games he

himself got laid off so that was kind of Step One uh was a my team got eliminated part of it and then B my husband so we started

kind of navigating and taking some of these preliminary steps knowing that one of us had been laid off um we’ll kind of

talk about those steps a little bit later but we kind of taken some preliminary steps I felt confident um I had been given a ton of work I was

working on special projects and then uh one of the announcements came that one of the games we’ve been working on um

kind of had been canceled we thought that’s okay it makes sense that this game is canceled it kind of doesn’t really align with what naughty dog is

working on um kind of being like a a first uh party like narrative team uh it

makes sense and then a month later a month later I woke up to news that Sony

had let go of the London Studio they were like Hey we’re closing down the London Studio I thought oh that sucks um

I was ready to make a LinkedIn post about it I got to my workstation and realized that my workstation had been completely shut off and me being an

optimist I thought oh you know what it’s probably unrelated it’s probably just like a weird it thing um thankfully have

slack and and outlook on my phone I’ll just ping the IT team um and that’s when I opened my email to say to receive the

email that said hey you know we are unfortunately subject to layoffs uh you can expect an invitation from HR and I

was the first person to meet with HR that morning um a little frustrating because if I hadn’t had outlook on my

phone I would not have known that I had been laid off or when my actual meeting with HR was um so I think that the roll

out was probably not ideal but it’s my understanding that actually was kind of a shock to even like our like direct

manager so my manager wasn’t aware who was getting laid off so I think it was pretty sudden for our studio a little

unexpected um and so yeah I was impacted there and it was pretty devastating

being like a leading industry voice on LinkedIn uh I had really been an advocate of everything that that nauy

Doug stood for I still love the brand my last name is Drake um and so I have a

certain affinity for the Uncharted franchise as I’m sure you can understand stand in my interview they asked me why

do you want to work at naughty dog and I said well I want to work for the company that brought my family Legacy to the

Forefront of pop culture and they were like that’s a great answer so uh still a big fan still super supportive um but

was pretty devastated knowing that I had just spent two years really like promoting this brand and helping so many candidates find roles either at naughty

dog or in the Sony family and that had kind of been like the rug pulled out from under me and one Fell Swoop that I

was pretty unprepared for yeah no and hearing what you said I’ve

noticed because a lot of us-based Studios have done that like very sudden very short notice layoff and it seems

like the most painful one because you don’t have time to process you’re going into a HR meeting and then even if you

do have paid Severance just the emotional toll that happens like it being so sudden so I want to take this

to The Listener now cuz that likely resonates with some people watching so

that’s happened next day you said you did some prep I’d love to know what was the prep yeah so um I think there’s kind

of two things one there’s like there’s a couple of camps anybody could be in one you know a layoff is coming you maybe

have the inkling for me I ignored that feeling um I thought oh it’s just my team right oh it’s it’s you know they

they assed us it’s just the game our our job should be okay um I kind of ignored that little little voice in my head the

prep I did when my husband got laid off is really sitting down and looking at your finances and figuring out not just

uh what you can cut right or what you can reduce um but what you can reduce

that will still keep a your quality life and B make you happy so I knew uh I have really bad OCD um because of that we do

have like housekeepers that come every two weeks and kind of help like with the deep cleaning portion to keep my own

brain at Bay I knew that that was something for my own mental health we needed to maintain so we we made cuts to

other parts of our budget to continue to allocate for that need right so really looking at your personal budget and

starting to reduce expenses where you can um we did a pretty significant budget restructure U when my husband got

laid off um keeping again like all the basic necessities and we felt pretty confident I mean we were like okay we

can definitely survive on this particular income like having our income more than half right um we can survive

with these modifications so that’s kind of part one two is starting to if you can if you have enough advanced notice

start squirreling away some savings it could be $50 $100 uh $25 right $5 dollar

a month but start squirreling a little bit away because you won’t know what the

need is in the past I used to advise candidates uh to have at least three to six months of savings uh to kind of last

through the duration of a typical job search in games especially right now we’re actually seeing that extended out

9 10 11 months with 10 and a half half being the national average in the US so

I would say right like if you can start squirreling away some of that income absolutely do um there are things that I

sacrificed that were nice to have in my life um and then things that we we definitely had to maintain so the first

piece I really think is like looking at the financial prep piece and what you can do there two obviously some of the

Practical stuff right make sure that you have a master resume I think we’ll talk a little about that later um but having

a master rume on file and being ready to accommodate that and start putting your ear to the ground and hearing like what’s out there what jobs are coming up

um and who can you start to to Really buddy up with or who can you start to uh be a little bit more proactive about

maintaining a relationship with should you need to reach out when a layoff is kind of impending so a little bit of that I would say is the initial prep

work yeah I’d second all of that especially the expenses side like the

breathing room regardless of layers of having 3 to six month expenses is worth it alone but also knowing that hey okay

I have five months that’s go because then you can track the progress and decide am I getting something part time

am I going to change industry in the meantime what have you but knowing what

the runway is is like step one for me and I I don’t think there is a better

first step and to your point of the having the master R before you need it

oh my God like I’ve done a lot of CV reviews um especially like last year in Christmas I had a week where I wasn’t

that busy so I did a post I said hey doing free TV reviews I did like 20 and some of them were like heads of

development for example and I noticed most people do amazing things but they

don’t have them on the CV they just talk about the description and the longer time passes you see when you do it when

someone like me says hey what were the numbers you said you’ve improved this process like what was the numbers it’s like oh they struggle and they sometimes

most of the time they actually find it which is nice but what if you forgot that’s not coming back unless you go and

dig in and try to find the numbers so any numbers related to your performance just put that on the CV if your boss

isn’t doing performance reviews of any kind then do it yourself just say hey by the way last three months I’ve done this

and you can have that as a bullet point in your CV because I’ve noticed when I’m selling a CV to someone that’s what they’re looking at the yeah like the

bullet points of like outcomes and if you’ve done outcomes Please Don’t Leave

it to two years after doing the role to be oh what were my outcomes so like having that Master resume just treating

it like a like I don’t know like some like an art piece like you just add to it like a portfolio yeah exactly so I

tell people my master resume is like 14 or 15 pages long um it includes every

job I’ve ever had so your master resume should literally be just a running list of every job you’ve had every

accomplishment um the template that I frequently pass around to people has a section of the top for key achievements

and awards and people ask me like what if I didn’t get an award and it’s like right so list your key achievements and

what is a key achievement a key achievement is something I describe it a key achievement is something you’ve done that nobody else would have noticed that

you’re proud of and there are some really easy ways right to list that so I give this example all the time as a

recruiter I tell people my job effectively a big part of my job is reviewing RS so I could very easily say

I’m a recruiter who reviews resumés that’s pretty boring um that’s pretty standard that’s the expectation but when

I say something like I’ve reviewed 56,000 rums in a single year that’s significantly more impressive right that

is yeah that’s true that is a fact yeah yeah that’s the

response yeah yeah um and I’m pretty quick about it um and the other thing that that I like again as a recruiter

for me one of the things that I prioritize is is candidate communication so I typically respond to all my

LinkedIn messages even if it’s two or three weeks later I eventually get to them um but I also do my best to respond

to every single candidate so it’s easy for me to track because I’m like okay I reviewed 56,000 resumés I know that I’ve

sent out over X number of candidate Communications um in my current role I’ve already reviewed sent out I’ve sent

out almost 1500 candidate Communications wow in yeah um in like six a little more

than that seven weeks um so so it’s a lot I do a lot of communication that’s insane for reference like I did agency

Recruitment and my project Bank after two and a half years I think was was

around 500 to a th000 it was very Niche like the sheer volume you just described

is insane so it’s intense and so that’s the kind of thing right like my bosses may not especially like right like at so

like my boss may not have known that that’s how many applications I’ve reviewed but I knew that and it was something that I was proud of and I know

that when I say that to another organization that’s really impressive so I I will say like your key achievements

can be things that you have done that nobody else has noticed but you’re proud of so just keep that in mind um because

that’s what’s going to help sell you and really differentiate you against another candidate so um Pro tip there but keep a

running master resume um and the reason I say that is because then a you know like har said you’ll have a list of

those key achievements of things you’re proud of things you’ve done your metrics ongoing and that’s prep you can do at

any point in time regardless of the status of the industry um just keep it running log do something you’re proud of

like pop over to a Google doc or pop over to your word document and add it to your master resume and then you don’t have to think about it later when you’re

already stressed out because you’ve just been laid off um then I just use that as a guide and I just pull right those

things as applicable for the jobs I’m applying to so I have a couple versions of a resume I have one that’s like very HR focused because I have an HR

background so it’s HR plus recruiting I have one that’s events plus recruiting and I have one that’s University plus recruiting right so it’s easy to pull

those things and extract them from that Master document than to have to recraft rehash customize for 100 150 200

sometimes a, applications um it’s much easier to kind of bucket those and then apply

accordingly for consistent skills that you’ve hopefully reversed engineer and know apply to that General

demographic yeah absolutely I’d second it like when I I’ve went solo in April

and before I went solo I actually did applications I actually got an offer to move to Texas to be a recruiter there I

nearly had a universe where I was in America being a recruiter and when I think about how I got that

job the CV for that was different to other CVS because they wanted someone to come

in and bring the UK way of doing business development and for me it was

podcast so in the CV I definitely leaned on that quite a bit I was like look I pioneered LinkedIn Live Events I’ve done

x amount of podcast but it was a recruiter job but I talked about all of that in the CV and then the presentation

when I think back that is exactly what you said I didn’t get that as a report when it comes with my numbers like oh

you pioneered this amazing it’s like no I had to think oh wait that is relevant cool and also it’s the size of the

company because I also had a job offer for a recruitment company which was one

person right so when I sent my CV for him it was very much just like how much have you generated and can you do that

here so I was like okay here are the numbers here’s what I think I can do in your industry boom pure math other

places it’s more like you know what ways of BD have you learned even if you weren’t that successful we want to know

about it because then you could bring that over so I think yeah having that CV tailored to like you said the types of

role also like the size of Studio especially when it’s like an employers market now like having that extra

tailored thing it’s worth it but it takes less time when you have that Master CV like you said which I haven’t

actually thought of it like that before so my CV is still only two pages but now that I think about it that’s because

I’ve cut a lot of stuff where I know some they might have actually appreciated so I think I should actually have kept the long one and then have the

short one like you did so I love that tip y fantastic

okay let’s get into so we’ve talked a little bit about CVS we could go on CVS for like five hours I appreciate a lot

of a lot of these topics we can so I want to go high level on a few topics

and then we can go straight into Q&A and get a bit like down and dirty so

with a layoff I’ve had this where I was at Gamescom

and an artist came up to me and he said he’s not sure if he should keep trying

he’s at eight months he’s got great work everyone says he has great work he’s had

gone through application process where the hire man said we have great work but we don’t need a hair artist for example

he was an concept artist in this case and he was like I don’t know if I should keep going like logistically and then it

was a question of like okay should I learn new skills or should I just keep applying so I was curious did this

happen uh in your case did you have this thought like should I learn something new to get a different role or should I just keep going like what do you think

about that so I think there’s a couple of layers to that number one I I think the biggest thing people want to really

dissect things into black and white yes or no do I don’t I um people say like do

I get into games well maybe right do I keep at games maybe um for me

I knew right away that post layoff I didn’t have the luxury of taking a lot

of breathing room right like I said I had just had a baby not long before I think my daughter was gosh she was born

in May so she was maybe just turned a year um I was having major surgery that

I needed medical benefits for my surgery was literally scheduled for I think like five days or something four days post

layoff um so I think for me like there was a lot of things that that hinged on me being employed especially when our

family had already cut down to one income so I knew that I didn’t have a lot of breathing room um I started

immediately trying to a diversify income streams you have to do one of two things right it’s either you decrease your

spending which we’ already done or you increase your income so I knew I had to find a job of any kind I needed to find

some way to bring in income to go back to your question of like whether or not you should stick it out and keep trying

for me the answer was yes and the way that I came to that is I kind of set myself up with some very realistic goals

I knew that we could survive on my severance package for approximately

three months um assuming we didn’t have anything happen no tires popped no leaks

happened right which feels like that always happens the second that you like don’t need an emergency it happen I knew that I had approximately three months to

invest in game roles specifically um I could survive for three months I knew

that after that 3-month Mark I had to diversify my search into tangental roles

so recruiting in other markets things I’ve done in the past so again University recruiting maybe Finance um

I’ve done a lot of entertainment so I started I knew the next layer of that for me would be music um I’ve worked in

the music industry in the past so music industry fashion industry uh anything entertainment TV film would kind of be

next I had I had literally timed it out like I knew that I had six weeks that I could search for those particular roles

before opening up further in my search so then I was open to any recruiting role after any recruiting role I was

open to any HR role and I knew that by 6 months I would take any job that I could

get it didn’t matter if it was relevant or not so really setting yourself up of like what is your actual again like with

your prep work what is your actual Runway time and how does that look for you so it may be like hey I can look at

games roles for four months I could look at game rules for four days or four weeks right what does that actually look

like before you start diversify and I think there is no I’ve done a lot of talks about the side quest I think there

is no wrong way to side quest I use this example a lot I had a student student who was a mentee of mine and she said

hey I got laid off I can’t find another job um I don’t know what to do and I

said well let’s start looking at some transgender roles like let’s take your skills and apply them somewhere else they ended up getting a job being a

crime scene Reconstructionist and so they work for the court system and they now animate and rig like different like

crime scenes so car collisions they’re they’re doing anim um animation for like

gunshot wounds and presenting that court cases and I’m like even though it’s a sidestep it’s not in games necessarily

you are making yourself a more diverse candidate for the stabilized Market because now you’re not just an animator

now you’re you’re doing rigging you’re doing vehicle collision so you’re doing physics simulations right like you now

have an opportunity to do things that you’ve never done in the past because you took a side quest so if anything

you’re going to come back in the industry a little bit stronger than if you had just stayed in your role sure

you are side stepping out of games for 3 6 9 months a year 18 months two years

but when you come back you’re going to end up stronger and I think there’s no shame in that so if you evaluate your

Runway right and you’ve started to to Really open up into those like Pockets you can find something that will give

you transferable skills to Pivot back that’s why I call it a side quest like you’re not leaving for forever right

you’re not giving up on your dream you’re doing what you need to do now to survive and stay relevant so do you

uplevel your skills maybe like I didn’t find that there was anything I needed to do to be a better recruiter or to be

more attractive the thing I needed to do was to stay relevant give back to the community something I’ve always done and

really continue to be a leading industry voice and the job would come um and I think the other thing with that is like

not being afraid to say no um there were a couple of positions that came up

almost immediately um that were significant pay cuts and I knew that in taking those rules it would eventually

be misalignment and this gets really in the weeds with like backend HR stuff right but it would be it would be a

significant misalignment for me and for the company and ultimately I would be hurting my network the company right by

accepting that job out of desperation when in reality I knew that if I just held out a little bit longer something

that would be the perfect fit would come along and and I ended up finding that right around the four month Mark which is like unheard of um in the industry

right now yeah no there’s a lot of things to unpack there the yes like the crime

scene side quest booming cuz I just envisioned her if she wanted to come

back to the industry how cool is that to say in an interview and I think a lot of people forget that a side quest isn’t

necessarily a compromise sometimes it could actually be a benefit like you said it now establishes her as an artist

full stop which is an animator which then has all these tangental benefits

interesting the H so with your story it makes sense in the sense of like you

actually had months or weeks planned where you’d start expanding the search

and I want to talk to Kiren here who’s said this is literally a question about

me concept artists in that position I just want to come back to the person who’s a concept artist because I feel like art specifically just to dedicate

some time are like the most hit and I know this from speaking to some game

studios like a lot of them are just holding fire even if have needs because they just want to see what happens and

when that’s happening even if they have money it’s like you could be the best artist in the world it’s just Logistics

there might not be enough roles right now so that point that you said of just

getting a job in the meantime I wonder if there’s like um it

might be worth asking the chat a little bit but like what do you think is stopping people from actually doing what

your mentee did where just looking for an adjacent role like do you see any friction there I think there’s a few

things one people don’t know where to look right they’re like hey I got this job out of college I’ve always been in the game Space or you know I used to do

X but now I’ve been in games for so long you’re seeing a lot of senior Talent getting hit um some people right have

been like hey I got hired like I was talking to someone last week and they said hey my first ever job was at ex

company I’ve been here x number of years I’ve never had to make a resume because they cherry-picked me from University so

what do I do so I think part of that is people don’t know where to look um I think part of that is yeah absolutely I

think part of that is there’s just an overwhelming uh sense of for boting about the sheer quality and caliber of

talent right we don’t have a lot of roles open so I tell people like I give this example too about production at

naughty dog I had a production role and in the past I would get a few hundred applications right um over the course of

a week maybe 5 six 700 I opened a roll at naughty dog and had over a th applications the first 24

hours try to tell my hire manager like hey we’re taking this off the website because I can’t in good faith review

more than a thousand of these to give you the top five candidates to interview so we’re seeing that across the board we’re seeing that in recruiting we’re

seeing that in bis we’re seeing that in HR we’re seeing that in in art right we’re seeing that in a lot of roles so

knowing where to look or or I think is is probably a big hurdle and I think the answer is it doesn’t have to be concept

art now right it can be something else and you can dedicate your personal time to concept art improving your portfolio

uh dell Walker put out an incredible like course about like eyebrow like how

to draw eyebrows and and be very expressive with character eyebrows so you can still be doing that personal

development piece on your own time outside of work um even myself I I took a I posted about this I ended up taking

a role at a consignment shop uh I took a role at a consignment shop and I worked in Consignment retail minimum wage uh

contract job um that was only three weeks long but I knew that that would give me enough to be able to pay basic

expenses between unemployment and what I needed for my family so yes I’m a I’m a

leading industry voice who’s working at a consignment shop uh I have friends in rocket science who are waitressing right

like it’s it’s very different and so I would say like yes art is brutal it’s

hard to know where to look I know someone who ended up getting a job with a a sports league so they now do the

animatronics or like the graphics uh on the Jumbotron at sports events um I know

people who’ve gone into fashion merchandising and done concept sketches for fashion so really thinking

critically about where could any of those skills possibly transfer and what does that look like coming back I think

people say like you know if I leave an entertainment I can never come back that may have been true five or six years ago

right but that’s not true now recruiters are very aware of what the industry is

doing the lasting effects it’s going to have on our Market I can’t guarantee that yes recruiter will have a soft spot

for this particular time period in the games but I think enough of us especially those of us that do have good

big followings and are leading industry voices we recognize the lasting impacts and hurt that these layoffs are having

and we’re much more inclined to say hey we understand why there’s a gap on your CV we understand why you went from being

a a concept artist at a major AA Studio to doing graphics on a Jumbotron for the LA Kings right like we kind of know why

those things are happening and we can then champ in on your beh have you don’t have to justify that to a hiring manager

necessarily if we can vouch for you that’s what’s going to matter and I think right now the majority of recruiters are industry are recognizing

the pain the hurt the frustration the devastation and the lasting impact that

this is having so I think that yes the side quest is totally possible if you don’t know where to look um you know

it’s going to involve a little bit of creativity um into kind of figuring out what that looks like but I definitely

think it’s possible um again I think that there’s two layers to it so should

you level up your skills yes absolutely remain as relevant as possible uh can you leave the industry and come back and

pivot I can’t guarantee that you’ll you’ll come back but I think that the chances are High um if you were my

candidate I would want to Champion you especially if you work in the industry you’ve got the titles you’ve got the credits um I I don’t see a reason why

prolific Talent would would not be allowed to come back or not feel welcomed back or not be welcomed back by

recruiters um but I definitely also understand the other piece of like you still have to make a living you know um

no one’s going to fault you for for me feeding my kids or keeping my house or right um so I think that there’s

multiple facets to whether or not a concept artist or an artist themselves should definitely whatever you do if you

can put it in your portfolio to stay relevant right like maintain your portfolio don’t be stagnant I think that

your ability to be resilient will demonstrate more prolific growth than someone who I think is

um maybe having a more negative perspective on LinkedIn and and kind of sharing the

the I don’t want to say like you know be fake and like always be happy it’s it’s not about that but I think there’s a

fine line between feeling and my posts are prime example right I’ve gone through a lot of BS in the last four

months and I I’m pretty transparent about it on LinkedIn um but there’s always some semblance of growth and

resilience as opposed to just complaining I always try to make it constructive so you in the way you present yourself and the way that you

navigate some of these adversities is going to make you a stronger candidate overall regardless of which direction

you take it yeah I couldn’t agree more and the

point of the side quest can benefit when you come back I want to address the

message that came in the chat um which is a bit of a just like a counter argument is like the risk of jumping

industry is that when you come back as an artist most I’m guessing account directors or want game Focus experience

if you jump out of entertainment in general I find it can hurt recruiters are open to cross industry but it’s when it gets to the leads and ads that is the

issue they don’t feel the same feelings on the subject I wanted to just add a bit of two cents um and then Christino

would love to hear yours so in my experience it’s a perception thing so

when I was placing so my experience before doing business development for gaming cosos is I did recruitment for

the nordics mobile gaming Studios only Unity developers I was on a team where I saw the Artist as well and this is all

contract recruitment a lot of the people that got hired were good full stop so

let’s take the assumption that we’re good which in this case means if I then jumped industry would

that um harm my getting back into the industry so my argument is on LinkedIn

they can see what’s been happening so if you’re a contract concept artist for a year after leaving a full-time position

as a recruiter I’m just like okay cool let me dive deeper but from perception

it doesn’t look like you’ve left but in essence you might have been doing one two hours a day relative to the eight

hours a day you were doing before but let’s just take the assumption that you were a contract recruiter if you were doing a portfolio piece let’s say every

month every two weeks some of them paid some of them maybe unpaid just to show

momentum I’d argue that you’d be in a very good position versus the person who

didn’t do that because it really really does show that momentum and you’ve stayed in the loop also one point if

you’re in this position where you either have to get a part-time job or you have more time on your hands this is what I

did to get my first client which then allowed me to get seven clients based on that one case study so I now ghost right

for seven gaming CEOs naturally i’ never ghost written for someone before the first one so how do I get the first one

well I started coaching and how did I start coaching well the first two people I coached were for free it was a

figarola from King and someone who works in charity from BBC I just said hey let me coach you for a month I would just

want feedback and a testimonial if I was good thank you and then actually was like oh crap I actually have to do this

now so I had to build a whole curriculum build the notion resources and try to make it as frictionless as possible I

learned a lot from doing that and then with that testimonial I then took that to someone who wanted paid coaching and

rather than say hey let me coach you I said hey this is what coaching looks like here’s an example boom boom boom

completely different conversation I closed him and now rest is history I’ve leveraged that to get clients now in the

example of an artist if you come to the interview or the CV or the portfolio you

say hey I have all this stuff that I’ve been doing they don’t need to know if it’s paid or not it just shows that

you’ve been doing work and doing work is better than not doing work in the eyes of the recruiter so I just wanted to add

that point that yes you’ve left the industry but you don’t have to leave the perception that you’ve just done no work

in art for a year like that doesn’t take the same a hours a day so I just wanted to add that point I think that was a

little relevant I would say too uh in terms of you know Jr you asking like you know

whether or not our art directors or our leads have the same conflicted feelings uh hopefully not right is it possible

sure um but again I think prior to this absolutely I think that that stigma

existed of like oh you left and came back or you weren’t good enough to stay that’s definitely perceptions that

existed that was prior to the last two years that we’ve seen um every conversation I’ve had with a hiring

manager and art director has been a lot more compassionate a lot more empathetic a lot more aware um my Executives right

now absolutely understand what’s going on uh they’re in the industry news they’re seeing the news they’re seeing every single layoff that’s happening

they’re frequently asking me to reach out to lay off people and just establish connection and see if there’s anything we can do for them so I think that in

terms of in the past stigmatization sure but I think going forward we’ll see that kind of reduced pretty significantly and

lean on your recruiter right if you’ve got great rapport with me during a a pre-screen ask me like hey you know does

does is this important to your hiring manager um and if so how can we better leverage me to answer that question as

to hey I saw that you took a contract at a consignment shop for three weeks what happened there I told them I was working

my butt off I was I was doing one-on-one uh resume reviews in dependently during

my four months to to maintain income but I had to feed my family and part of that was joining this consignment shop so

again kind of diversifying your income or or even your skill set and maintaining that sense of like leveling up or continuing to work if your

portfolio stays stagnant and you took a side quest maybe you’re like hey the only job I could get because I happen to

work on my car on the weekends is like working part-time for an automotive shop right cool that’s fine is that inspiring

you to create are you now creating like vehicle Concepts and are you now more diverse there um maybe you make this

like really rad concept of a monster truck that’s like full of with like really hairy like it’s like just covered

in shag carpet right like those kinds of things are things you can put in a portfolio that you’re working on that show that you haven’t stagnated the big

fear that art directors have is that you remain stagnant so finding ways to really showcase you haven’t uh kind of

like har was saying right like it may not be eight hours a day 40 hours a week it might be contract work it might be

volunteering it might be game jams it might be personal projects something to

prove you’re not being stagnant yeah absolutely I’m wondering if we pivot

into Q&A because we’re getting some good question we get so many I know I’m like I feel like I didn’t touch it all let me just really quick give a couple minutes

here on on some of the things I I think will be beneficial if you face a layoff um I did do an entire write up on this

so you can follow my LinkedIn and kind of see I tracked every day what I did um I’m more than happy at any point in time

to go into to more depth on those like shoot me a message and we can chat about it um effectively you know every day

honestly taking time to breathe and time to be yourself um for me that meant like

walking my dogs in the sunshine and just taking a 15 minutes a day to like ground

myself and my mental health is is really important and then doing a lot of the administrative practical things you can

only apply to so many resumés per day before you’re staring at the screen blankly going what am I doing right

there’s only so many jobs open per day right you can’t just like machine gun a thousand jobs and then feel like you’re

making progress it might feel good in the moment but it’s not actually benefiting you long term um so again I

would spend part of my day being my own boss I would say okay ktina as as your own CEO today I need you to fill out you

know or or reach out to 10 15 connections start to make this number of many phone calls start your one-on-one

appointments um so really start to think about like what can you in the meantime and breaking up your work day because

unemployment is still work um if you’re someone who doesn’t have the luxury of taking a break again I know many of people who said hey I needed a month to

grieve before I could even jump into the hiring process if you’re one of those people fine pick up on my tips after

you’ve taken that break that you need I didn’t have that luxury I jumped right in so resume obviously number one

finding qualified jobs that you feel like you are a good fit for spending some quality time applying to them

leveraging your network and seeing what’s available um doing all the administrative prep so filling out any

documentation you need for unemployment um assistance any kind of offboarding

anything like that right um so really doing that but again I have a whole breakdown on LinkedIn about like what I did for the two weeks that I was

unemployed um or the two first two weeks of unemployment um to really kind of help set that framework so given that I

did promise to give some of those tips today I feel like I’ve checked that box

um but I would definitely say you know touching on that okay okay Q&A I want to

say one thing before the Q&A because it might answer a few questions so the

thing I remember you said as a recruiter you had a production role thousand applicants in a day you then turned it

off so I’m just thinking if I’m actually going out there applying for roles it sounds like speed is very relevant right

now very relevant so actually having a system to have the job fors that you

check whether it’s like twice a day once a day I’m just thinking about this from like a sales perspective you need that

Master resume ready and then like a gun to be like okay douch douch all these

jobs just opened up we have amir’s job board which I think is pretty good like I don’t know if that’s conclusive I

haven’t used it as a jobseeker but job boards like that you have that as an exercise and remember speed could get me

the job I think that’s number one and to take it one step further as a recruiter I was in charge

of finding people who hire Unity developers and then saying hey hire this

contractor naturally if I waited until they posted a job I would not make any money because I had to place a

contractor which is like the interim solution before they managed to find the fulltime hire what I’m getting at is I

had a lot of relationships monthly with hiring managers I had like 20 monthly calls with all the hiring managers in

Nordic catching up like hey let’s CH about the podcast hey I have this new

Unity developer who’s just finished from tab Baka do you want to have a look they say actually yeah we actually need that

in two months time great let’s have the chat now if I’m a candidate now I’ve had given this advice to someone who’s

actually used it so this isn’t woooo is build relationships with people who

either hire for you or know people who hire so practically what to do and has a

coaching uh spreadsheet not enough people do this so this isn’t going to be like a negative thing but go to anyone

in your niche and just send a very nice message saying hey I would love to do an informational

interview because of XYZ I love to just talk about my career and it would really help me this would help whether you’re

from an intern or in the future just have speak to someone who’s currently working because then you’re actually

going to know what are people looking for right now and also they have friends who might know jobs jobs before they

actually go public that’s what they tend to do and this is just a first step like

at least I saw this with recruiters is the first thing a studio does before they hire someone is they ask who do we

know this makes sense because they don’t want to on board someone who then leaves

so how do eliminate that risk a little bit to go for someone that someone trusts already it’s just the facts it’s

not nice because that limits the pool but the fact that that happens I just want to say it doesn’t mean you’ve

worked with that person for 20 years imagine me someone that someone knows from an e coffee or that someone’s met

at conference so you want to get into that little pool and I’d find doing that you can either go to conferences or have

e- coffees with people in the industry or post on LinkedIn like all or all three which is what I do for

BD that I’ve noticed is just a good Roi I guess you’d call that Network in I’m

not saying replace your entire strategy but I will also say just I want to piggyback on that if you are someone

who’s reaching out right to kind of establish some of those Baseline connections um if you’re asking for

informational interviews if asking for those types things two things one don’t ask your recruiter for that I just don’t

have time um I feel really guilty every single time I have to tell someone who spent the time to message me like hey

Christina I love your content I really love what your Vibe is I would love to connect over coffee or I would love do a

virtual just 15 minutes right just 15 minutes I have 60,000 followers just 15

minutes is like an entire Year’s worth of work right I just don’t have 15 minutes to spend on every IND best to

get it from a hiring manager who have more time had a question from someone who was

like right or industry Pros like a lot of times my hiring managers don’t have that time right but one of my one of my

Engineers might right one of my Engineers might be able to do yes of course so so I always call it like

parallel like go parallel to your recruiter as opposed to vertically um so I would say start parallel because then

what’ll happen is the more and more you connect with parallels then all of a sudden your name will pop up right and

then I’ll say hey hey like Studio I’m looking for this position and they’ll

say oh you know what I had a chat with Harry I I really clicked with him I would love to have him on my team here’s his info right or they’ll say to me hey

you know I met this guy recently at this event we talked for like 10 minutes I think you should talk to him and I will

always take my team’s uh suggestions or referrals whether they’re soft we call them soft referrals like soft referral

over a a blank like applicant makes sense like someone’s already done the

vibe check exactly so you want to be the guy Vibe checked totally totally and then someone

I saw in the chat was asking about referrals um I referrals do help uh

formal referrals help in that again right it it it gets you what I call like a VIP ticket uh everyone wants to get

into the dance club everybody wants to be in the studio right everybody wants to get in the door there is a line a

thousand candidates long 500 candidates long 15 2,000 whatever you have a referral you get your VIP ticket you get

to come to the front of the line for me to look at you so it it means that like you’ll get first consideration it does

not mean or guarantee you’ll get an interview applicant on a job posting it

still it you like a cut the line path you get a cut the line path yeah so I always tell people like you know

referrals are great and that it does help you get to the front of the line but it’s no guarantee you’re still going to have to do the interview yourself

you’re still going have to go through that so just know like yes Network or or connect or do coffee or or whatever that

looks like like start to establish yourself and make connections with others in the industry so that when I

ask people in my network my soii is like your sphere of influence when I ask my

SOI who do you know your name should come up um because again I I don’t have

all the time to sit with every single one of you as much as I would love to like I have a full-time job I have to review those 56,000 resum it’s Lis yeah

yeah but if I do ask I want your name to come up and the more it comes up the more likely I am to give you a call back

um yeah one Avenue to give you a call back absolutely I’m going to move to the age question now because I want to just

share a story and it’ be great to hear your point Christina before I do that quick remember I remembered something so

if you’re doing an informational interview the ultimate goal of that is to actually build the relationship which means a follow-up call so this is my

hack let’s say you book 15 minutes or 30 minutes at the 14 minute Mark say hey

we’re coming close to time really appreciate your time I’ve allocated my whole hour for this in case you had more

time otherwise this conversation been great but it would be great to continue most people will say yes if they

actually have the time especially when you’ve done it for 15 minutes what that does is they can get to know you as a

person and then you can say hey I’d love to implement everything you’ve said and be great to share what happened in a

month’s time amazing guess what you now have a monthly call with someone who’s going to be like a spy in a sense and

every Mentor loves to to have a Luke Skywalker because you give them all this advice they go do it I feel amazing and

also it validates whether the advice is good so people want that sort of person who’s actually going to implement and

then report back in a sense so if you gamify this I found using something like

folk it’s a CRM that’s free you can like track like ah I can have networking people I’ve had e coffees I’ve had DM

conversations I have a monthly call and then you can gamify that search which I find because finding a job doesn’t feel

like you’ve done anything until you’ve actually got the job that’s dangerous because then when you wake up you’re like ah I’m a failure but then if you’ve

moved across the networking thing in the meantime or you’ve applied for certain jobs I find that just trying to get that

recurring relationship whether it’s every three months every month um Game Changer I mean that’s what I did as a

recruiter worked for that so yeah um an idea yep and I use Trello for the same

thing I just literally made a Trello board um and then just literally moved cards across for both my applications

and for leads or calls that I was having when I was unemployed absolutely yeah okay so the age question cat I think you

asked what age uh I think for me it goes back to the same thing cat it’s not black or white um there are absolutely

people who are going to look at that and and pull some like informal age discrimination uh the same thing happens

because I’m a mom um the number one thing people told me was like stop advertising that you’re a mom on LinkedIn uh if you want a job and I was

like I’ve literally created and founded moms in gaming uh my kids are everywhere

they’re my number one priority they will never like Triumph or take precedent

like my job my 9 to5 is never going to replace my five to9 so I’m absolutely

not going to give up on the fact that I am a mom and being public about that so I think like yes fism can be a problem

there’s a couple ways you can combat it right number one um Number One removing

any indicator of age or graduation year on your resume uh if you haven’t

graduated right now if you’re not a graduate of 2024 or expecting in 2025 I don’t expect a graduation year on your

resume for any education component uh two cutting your resume down to 10 years of experience um it’s great that you

have 20 years experience you can put that in a profile statement you can talk about that in an interview I would probably cut it to to 10 years on your

resume it also keeps your resume from getting like multiple four five six pages long um so cutting to 10 years uh

would be number two and then um number three maintaining relevancy right stagnancy so if I see that you’re using

languages and you’re a coder and you’re using a lot of languages that haven’t happened in the last you know five or 10

years I’m going to wonder if you stayed relevant um so I would say like let’s

absolutely like work to position yourself in terms of relevancy um but I would say like no I don’t think that

you’re unhirable right 15 years cat is fine like 15 years is fine um I

technically have been working in HR capacity since I was 16 but I don’t tell people that I’ve been doing that for

like however old I am right I don’t know I can’t do math sorry I have other skills um but 15 years is fine right so

I would say no you’re not unhirable in your 40s I’m not far away from 40 but most people don’t know that people are

like oh you’re like 25 and I’m like no I am not at all close to 25 but thank you

I have two little babies um so yeah I would say like yes yes there will be at

some level at some point probably some form of discrimination but no I would say

for me I don’t think that makes you unhirable um in the state of California there are actually like benefits and

demographics that prove that like there are initiatives to hiring and maintaining um some of our like more

senior talent and just from a national perspective in the US this is the first time in US history we’ve actually had

five generations or four generations like in the workforce at the same time so we have gen Alpha entering the

workforce we have gen Z in the workforce right we now have Millennials in the

workforce we still have Gen X in the workforce now we have Boomers in the workforce like our our gen Alpha is like

my niece is now 16 she’s coming into right the workforce so no I I would say

like again it’s not black and white for me personally I would not hold it against you I don’t see anything against

hiring talent that is much more seasoned especially in Game Dev people who have that historical recordkeeping and

knowledge so long as they’ve maintained relevancy have not remained stagnant

yep I have a story here as well yeah bring it I placed a Unity developer at

King this was in my first year and he was 55 and the CV there was like oh my God

he’s worked on games since he was 1998 but he got a unity game developer on a very new age type of game now when

I think back as to why he got the job cuz it wasn’t automatic it was the

Showcase of the actual stuff he’s done relative to the project so when I take

this to your example senior UI ux typically very hard to find um a lot of

the time is that relevancy that Christina was talking about I highlighted all of that for that Unity

developer at the top he had worked in C++ for like 10 years but then he did 10

years of unity that C++ 30 years ago I don’t need that on

the CV so it’s a perception thing from the hiring manager if half of your CV is

dedicated to stuff which is out ofd they might think you are half out of date so it’s just all of the things that you

think the H manager would love to hear like bingo bingo bingo at least the whole first page needs to have that

especially with yours which is visual if you have visuals then this is undeniable like go here’s my work here’s my work

and also age I could see as a benefit when it comes to retention I have had hiring managers

tell me like hey we don’t want someone who’s going to leave in 6 months 12 months can you like take that into

account well legally they can’t put that in the job description right like please stay but like I’m going to check for

that when I’m presenting candidates because I want a happy customer and the way to get a happy customer is to

talk to people ah what are your goals if you’re speaking to someone I would make

it clear like look you’re looking for your next home you know don’t want to go anywhere and the age could in that case

actually be a benefit because it’s actually likely for you to not want to jump around

so cat having I was gonna say cat I actually know you so I’ll I’ll just touch one thing um for you I definitely

think that that part of this has to do with just industry influx right we have very few uiux roles on the market and we

have a significant number of of people who’ve been laid off um we’re seeing the same thing in recruiting I think the latest statis to come out or there’s

144,000 recruiters uh unemployed right now and when you narrow it down to the

number of recruiting roles in games last I saw there was four right so that’s a staggering statistic on like the number

of let’s just say every single person applies that means I would have a one in 144,000 chance of getting a job so so

don’t allow the current market conditions to dictate your value or your worth and please don’t try to assume or

assign anything outside of flavor right because a lot of this just comes down to flavor of a role I have plenty

of people who are qualified talented who could do a job but like I’ve given this

example a lot and Harry this might be lost on you because I don’t know how frequently you guys have Taco Bell in the UK and Cyprus but I’m actually have

a Taco Bell the only one is in the L Mall 10 minutes away from here and also I hate Taco Bell I hate Taco Bell it’s

the worst thing of all time over I’m going to say it publicly I don’t like the way it makes me feel my

tummy hurts and I think that means you’re probably not getting enough fiber in your day-to-day diet because Taco Bell statistically has the highest

number of fiber per caloric intake of any F not order a burrito every time I don’t want to talk about it I just don’t

feel good so okay so so that’s fair that’s valid but I am a Baja Blast when

I think about like who I am as a flavor it is absolutely 100% Mountain Dew Baja Blast so if I have a hiring manager

who’s really looking for a Diet Coke nothing that I Christina do will make me a Diet Coke right I’m never going to be

a dark soda I’m always going to be a Baja Blast and a specifically a mountain de Baja Blast right so no amount of me

modifying a resume changing my Persona dressing a particular way having a

different background is going to make me a a Diet Coke right so what I need to do

is start targeting my talent and targeting my focus into roles that really want a Baja Blast soda and that’s

okay but it doesn’t mean that I as a person less valuable because of my age because of my gender could that be maybe

maybe that’s the reason my flavor profile is inaccurate but I’m not going to put that blame on anybody else knowing that the market is so

competitive so I will just say for the most part right be mindful that like 10 out of 10 you’re probably a rock solid

candidate this the pickings are slim economic like from an economic standpoint it like a economics piece

right it’s hard like we just don’t have the number of roles right so that’s a

big part of it and then again the other piece is just flavor so if you may not that role again like I I talked to

multiple Studios I got very close to offers multiple times but sometimes things just weren’t the right fit and I didn’t feel comfortable changing my

flavor to fit a role and at the same time I didn’t expect them to change their offerings for my flavor so just be

mindful of that yeah for sure and something that I just replied in the chat like sometimes it’s the title like

when I was in contract recruitment Tech hard was always super hard but guess what what people call a tech hard is is

sometimes very close to what other titles is just with a little bit of spice and flavor in it so just be look

at those job descriptions of like Tech artist anything adjacent like wait a minute I have 80% of these H and I’ll

make sure too Harry to share with you um I worked with a couple of people Matt Barney and tyac on a big listing of

potential job titles with various flavors I’ll reshare that too so that all of you guys have it um because I

think that’s a really good resource on like what does a a muscle simulation

specialist actually mean well okay it’s different depending on um for some people that that’s a a um a character

effects artist right what does that look like for some people that’s a physics and character artist some people that’s a tech artist so I have a whole listing

of that that I can share with you guys that’s a pretty good resource to help you kind of navigate some of those nuances as well yeah 100% like when it

came to me hiring for a Unity developer so many times they actually wanted a technical artist that knows unity and

the other way around sometimes they said I want a Unity Tech artist like wait a minute you just want a developer that can implement this this is very

different so yeah don’t assume the job title is Gospel like sometimes you just

need to dig deeper and also this is why having those calls with people currently working in the industry helps gives you

that context great we have probably time for like one more maybe yeah one more

question also I just want to close off online please follow Christina just like

for everyone who’s come from my neck of the woods just follow Christina she posts great stuff and it’s real in the

sense that like she documented that Journey so like please follow Christina and anything else that you’d want to pay

attention to it’ be good to know like women’s in gaming anything else that they should check out yeah so a couple

of things um I absolutely 10 out of 10 uh I did like I mentioned this I started

I founded moms and gaming we’re a Discord server we do some some pretty cool offline stuff um so if you are

somebody who is a working mom or if you know a working mom in the industry who’s looking for a place to connect um you

can go to momson gaming.com the link is in my LinkedIn profile to join our Discord server um so I would

say I would absolutely suggest um you know kind of connecting with me there also again follow me on LinkedIn um I do

put out pretty consistent content I like to believe it’s pretty authentic um so all in all I would say those are

probably the number one and number two places to find me offline amazing Al righty would you like to do one final

question yes okay pick your FV I have one that Prav has very patiently said a

couple times which is how to get a job in the game industry when you don’t have gaming

experience uh get experience um and the question is like how do you do that right how do I get experience um start

going to game jams uh start doing game Jam start volunteering with literally cat just posted it right um cat posted

it for me thank you Cat so start looking at at game jams in your area whether they’re they’re uh local whether they’re

online start lishing your own self-content hio uh I also teach um for

both Indie Game Dev Academy and lagona College of Art and Design so look at Indie Game Dev Academy right start signing up for their weekend boot camps

their session twos or session threes and really start getting your your feet wet in the industry to start establishing

that Baseline and also recognize as much as it pains me to say this like now may not be the best time for entry um we’ve

talked a little bit on this call but you are competing with massive number of Highly qualified ifed specialized talent

that does have a ton of experience and one thing we are seeing is we’re seeing a lot of top level Talent applying for

lower level roles which is pushing the barrier of expectation entry a lot higher than we’ve seen in the past so

when I have seniors who are applying to mid-level roles it makes my mid-levels apply to entry-level roles and my entry

level roles are now being forced out so just be patient um really start I would say you know setting your sites on maybe

2025 I’ve I personally again I don’t have a crystal ball I don’t speak for me like my employers this is just my

perceptions um I’m not an economist so I don’t know exact predictions I know in the US there’s a lot of political

turmoil and economic conditions that could affect this particular suggestion but my pitch so far has been Quarter Two

of 2025 I start to see kind of I predict there being a much larger optic in kind

of stabilization be it Indie Studios who are starting to see crop up um whether

that is doublea whether that’s mobile whether that’s streaming services who are starting to get into games LinkedIn has a gaming component now whether

that’s gamification other Industries so we’re seeing a lot of gyms starting to implement gamification components right

so Orange Theory is a popular one that comes to mind um we’re seeing them doing some really cool stuff with plugins to

Spotify so really looking at gamification and other Industries might be a better launching Point than trying

to get into maybe your number one choice AAA studio right now um that would be my

suggestion y I love it and also you’re in data I’ve just looked at your profile

and I feel like with you is slightly maybe easier but I would go back to my previous Point like speak to people

actually working in data because they will know and they might just give you the honest answerers like bro wait a

year or they might say actually this is how I would get in and if you have the

goal of getting a job imagine the goal of having a conversation with a data engineer at a gaming company that’s a

lot more achievable and that might actually give you information which you can actually then act upon I do appreciate that people have

said that I have a very noticeable um personal brand we’ve actually just

talked about this before backstage Harry was saying that he was doing some research he was like the number one thing that kept coming up about you is

that you’re a punk rock princess who loves Taco Bell and I was like accurate like that is 100% the vibe uh punk rock

princess mommy Taco Bell recruiter those all fit that all fits under the meable

you don’t want to be it’s like that Buzz Lightyear meme right where he like I’m special and it’s just like 50,000 Buzz

Light Years like as long as your differentiate in fer isn’t like liking a

fast food restaurant which is very very bad for you it is like you’d be fine it’s the number one healthiest fast food

restaurant statistically year every year but it’s okay it’s okay it’s fine it’s we can have some differing opinions and

still be friends there you go we can agree never go out to dinner together ever not a Taco Bell that’s for sure we

can have some nice traditional Greek food then everyone has a good time I also don’t eat meat and I’m allergic to

wheat so I’m kind of like I I even eat okay okay like know

what I would eat when in doubt halumi there you go perfect awes amazing Al righty Christina thank you so much for

your time I will stick around for 5 to 10 minutes guys for some Q&A because I see some people saying personal brand

stuff but yeah Christina thank you so much thank you I actually don’t know how to leave if you don’t there’s a I’m like

I actually don’t know how to leave so I I can make you leave by pressing the button or you can just close the screen

thank you all so much thank you thank you and Harry thank you again for having me I truly appreciate it thank you yeah

talk to you later bye later bye bye amazing hello everyone so I will

keep my voice down a little bit because some people sleeping but I see

Katie saying I’m hungry thank you Christina thank you thank you thank you thank you yes so once it kind of becomes

just me and you you being The Listener I can take some more questions when it

comes to personal branding recruitment interviews because there’s a lot to

cover in one hour so I will stick around for a little bit for some questions and some from late night Vibes I’m your

radio host Harry Fu and as soon as I see a question I will put it on the screen

and get it going and also yeah feedback by the time you’ve seen this if there’s any feedback more than happy to

take it all righty where are you streaming from I’m

streaming from Cyprus Cyprus so it’s 11: p.m here and my pleasure

patreon boomman I’m going to scroll through see

I missed any questions aha Kristen any tips for connecting

without being able to attach a note to your connect request I hate coming across this cold or just out to bump my

connection count all righty so Kristen I actually have data on this so for my CEO

clients the accept rate is anywhere from 30 to 40% on a blank connection and

sometimes it’s lower with a personalized connection request so what do we do with

this information I would try a network with people who are close to your

network parallel or one above so if you a senior engineer senior Engineers or

Tech directors once they accept like you said you don’t want to come across as cold

what I found very successful into get an outcome which is like a call I say thank

you for con accepting my connection request have a wonderful day smiley face and then I stop talking sometimes that

alone starts the conversation otherwise the next day I say say hey I’m christen

this is what I do love to chat or how’s that thing going in this case if you’re

looking for something I always try to lean on complimenting something impressive they’ve done and just being

quite upfront like would be okay if I introduce something because I know would it be okay if I asked you a

question we ask him permission to ask a question it’s like super soft so if the

goal is to like get someone on a video call that is how I would take it all

righty scrolling down for the next question booming

booming De le have you watched an episode of One Piece never I just have this here for

Branding Wendy what are your thoughts on the trimming down due to age on LinkedIn it’s easier to trim down the revenue but

I feel LinkedIn is supposed to be your total history I’m in the camp of just keeping

the full history because if they really wanted to know your age they can go and find your

education right so I would have that as my answer

I would just frontload all of it with actual work so they have to click see

more that takes a lot of time if someone’s like going on your LinkedIn profile click see more scrolling all the

way down so just make sure the top three roles are like boom boom boom recent

magic um you don’t want the oldest rule to be visible if you want to pack up

like make it bigger you can have like promotions or like transitions within an

individual role if you’ve only been at two companies for example for like a long amount of time but just look at your LinkedIn profile from a zoom out

perspective from like okay does this look like I’ve been out of the game yes no and definitely just have title which

is most relevant to today don’t be afraid to change the title to make it more relevant if you are actually doing

Tech art say you’re a tech artist this is my opinion don’t sue me but if they

gave you a title which is underplaying what you did just call yourself what you did that’s my argument then the three

bullet points is the actual things you’ve done with numbers so situation

the task action result numbers along the way which are impressive three of those bullet points that is the way I would do

it for production management roles would you recommend to take the time to get certified something like scrum

unfortunately I have not recruited for production management when I had seen people

recruit for it they pretty much only looked at the production experience and

whether they used to scrum in that production experience I’m not sure if they like looked for the actual

certification I’m guessing it won’t hurt so I can’t tell you not to do it so yeah sorry I can’t give you more

answers there uh Jr register I found a lot of Studios seem to be open up in

Cyprus that is true after the war both Wars actually so the war in Ukraine and

then the war in Israel a lot of companies are moving over and there’s a bit of very nice tax incentive by the

government something like silly about 1 to 2% tax something crazy so yeah load

Studios do you have a crash course on personal branding marketing Pro but can’t Market herself aha well I’ve done

an actual podcast on the topic so step one I have a little newsletter so if you

scan that you get the newsletter which I try to give tips practically how to sign more clients on LinkedIn which includes

personal branding so if you scan that you get the next one and then if you go

to my podcast called the gaming Playbook I not the episode today but the

episode before was Business Development Playbook and in that I pretty much explain exactly what I do like a toz

otherwise have a look at my content um and if you got any other questions feel free to let me know and I could give you

a little um I can put you in the right direction or just give you some resources hope that

helps I’ll leave that QR code in the top Corner we have people scanning amazing

so if I go to captions bring down more questions am I

using streamyard no I’m using restream it’s my favorite one at 20 bucks a month

that is my favorite Jan Carlo when it comes to metrics in resumés any advice

for someone like me with a writing and journalism background I’ve never dealt directly with traffic numbers or anything like that so I don’t have easy

numbers I can refer to so you have numbers of posts numbers of

words journalism background well in my head you have

the the places you wrote for have numbers so you might have written for a

insert impressive number type of website newspaper what have you so

leverage the numbers you do have which you always have numbers so either number of words number of Articles or number of

kind of like type of Journalism you’ve written for so just find a number which shows the sheer volume that you’ve done

when it comes to getting the exact number let’s say words written articles written if you don’t know guess them it

it’s better than nothing should I be descriptive while cold messing or very short in my message

content this is my cold messaging

process send blank connection request thank them for the connection request and wish them a wonderful day smiley

face then compliment something impressive they’ve done on their profile genuinely that you’ve actually think is

impressive like they’ve built something from scratch they’ve got a big trans uh career move then ask them you know about

their goals for the rest of the year that’s my play if it feels icky to ask for the goals for the end of the year

because maybe it doesn’t feel right then just ask him about that impressive thing and then or potentially just ask

permission to ask that question when you ask the question ask it very clearly they give you answer and then you say ah

great give your own context and be love to get an informational interview out of the it would be the it mean the world to

me if it’s in the context of getting a job that is how i’ would play it if you send 100 connection requests a week you

probably get around 30 accept and about like two or three accept for a call which is crazy because that’s 12 calls a

month which is amazing so don’t take it personal people don’t reply not everyone’s on the platform 24/7 but yeah

um that is how i’ play it when are you able to review and give

feedback on resumes and portfolio website trying to get a full-time paying game design position would love to get

insights from you Al righty so I don’t currently do it I am closed on coaching

however I can recommend Richard King if you search for those two words he gives

amazing resume uh feed feedback very affordable as well I believe like two bucks a minute so be 30 bucks for

15minute review and I’ve heard I’ve had him review mine and it’s been amazing so I’ll start with Richard King and then he

probably knows someone who could review your portfolio website so I would love um I’d suggest having a chat with

Richard King I missed the first part of the stream so I’m not sure if you talked

about it but do you believe the game machine will improve soon in terms of hiring and entry level applicants ity

definitely won’t get worse timing of when Christina said

2025 mid so that is a way away 6 months when I think

practically people are hiring entrylevel applicants in

like the code development setting so not working directly on the games but working in support of the game sometimes

so definitely just remember that there’s two machines in the games industry you

have the developers and the Publishers who are doing it themselves and then leveraging Outsourcing then you have

Outsourcing Studios who sometimes leverage the cheapest Talent possible which would then be entry talent to do

work for the former so if we can’t get work here I know people who get their

first ever jobs in a company called like ironbelly for example like Outsourcing

Studios so to actually get a sense of entry level

applic I would have a look at what’s already out there just to get like a Feeler and

then if it feels like there’s not enough it’s talk to people in the industry and get that sense check because otherwise

it’s guessing go to conferences if there’s any local to you some of them are relatively inexpensive like the

ticket might be less than 50 bucks and then you could share an Airbnb so the whole thing could cost 100 to 200 bucks

um if they’re relatively local and then just speak ask those questions

and then that should give you a bit of a sense check but it would be a guess for me but there’s more money coming into

the industry some studios are sitting on a bunch of cash it’s just Logistics of like do we need to hire yet so there’s

always a boom around this time September right after summer holidays and it’s only 3 days after so starts to see more

jobs now but we’ll see how

many when it comes to programming how do you quantify things you’ve done in previous roles great question so time

saved and like features delivered very specifically so if you’ve delivered a

feature that alone is cool but if you can find out what that feature did for the game if it’s a live service game or

a mobile game that’s very interesting one thing that I did always in my blurs

when I was promoting a developer is have like Hero Stories so I had one

developer specifically who at quy he got given a refactor task which was

projected at four weeks or four to two months so one to two months and he did

it in one week that’s an amazing story and that’s numbers 8we task did it in

one week because of boom boom boom so when it comes to programming you can use

time amount of features you delivered and then the results of the feature whether it be saving time if you made a

tool from artists it could be saving making money or saving server costs so money is

another one could be making money could be increasing users you might have developed a feature which was played x

amount of times so you have time players money all that good jazz and just sheer

number of code sometimes is useful what is an effective Mentor menty relationship look

like great question so in my opinion if I’m looking at it from the mentor

perspective is someone who shows up on time ask good questions and not only ask

good questions actually implements and then comes back with feedbacks like hey this happened what should I do

next never rely on the mentor to get you the job if they feel that from you it

won’t make it a nice time because then it feels like I’m a I have a new dependent if that makes

sense so uh in my opinion Mentor menty

relationship you have the initial call you see if you Vibe first because it’s a personal one and then try to get the

follow-up calls whether it be weekly sorry uh monthly quarterly pretty much

anyone who likes you should agree to a quarterly meeting and sometimes that’s all you need and then you can just keep

a sync because you’ve now got something in the diary you have a relationship so you have a reason to chat

very much uh Wendy when is my next event I’m actually going to announce it tomorrow I believe I’m having a great

one this is um how to find money how to find money in the games industry by a VC

type character so it is from pontis maler so they close investment mergers

and acquisition so yeah going straight to the top in terms of the problems that we’re solving but yeah should be

interesting I’ll announce that soon so if you want to any of this information if you just follow me and ring the bell

then you shouldn’t miss it so I’m Harry Fu and also the gaming Playbook uh

podcast page that you see this that’s where the LinkedIn lives are announced and then the actual podcast that I do uh

on my page and then obviously you can subscribe on whether

it’s Spotify YouTube or apple

podcast I have an amazing mentor but they are very very busy any tips for helping reduce work on their part but

still get some of their valuable expertise good question okay if they’re very very busy could you

get their time in terms of 15 minutes 15 minutes is still a decent

amount of time to get a lot of your questions answered it’s surprising because I’ve paid a lot

for coaching this year probably like five to like 5 to Seven Grand something silly and I get something out of

everything and there was one coaching I paid for which was 750 a month for two months and it was only 30 minutes a week

so when you look at the time split on that it’s quite expensive but in that 30 minutes I was always surprised about how

many things we covered so I would just check how much time am I asking for from

the mentor could I reduce it to 15 minutes see what happens just come with questions prepared and

things to show the person I’d also just be genuine and say

hey like I really appreciate your time it’d be great to have 15 minutes is there anything I can do to produce work

on your part just ask me what you’ve asked me you want to Big up the mentor

because the mentor and everyone in the world love to be bigged up but then also you know just genuinely ask and if they

say look I’m so sorry I am very very busy but then at least you know so I

would ask for 15 minutes if you haven’t already and potentially voice notes so I

get a lot of my ghost writing done based on voice notes even the busiest person in the world will have an opportunity to

go for a walk and reply by voice note and give you like a seven to 10 minute reply so I have very very busy CEOs give

me 30 minutes worth of voice notes in a week plus a by-weekly call yes I’m ghost

writing for them but they have the time to send the voice notes because they know it’s important so if you ask for it

in a voice note form that might also help so those two options 15minute calls or voice note is what I would go for

hopefully that is helpful and yeah big up what you just said there um Jr so

mentors are one of the most OP things whenever someone tells me what to do when finding a job is find a mentor can

be paid it can be unpaid like step one just pay someone like Richard King to

review your CV if you haven’t 15 bucks super super useful and then once you’ve

done that you had context from someone who’s seen loads of CVS do the steps I took go to am ATV’s

coaching page on his spreadsheet go to his account go to the spreadsheet follow this follow the steps you will find it

and then there’s loads of people who’ve been added recently just send them the nice connection request like hey saw you

on the thing love to have 15 minutes of your time XYZ this is how I’m going to use it and then try to get those calls

and then those calls if you think about it from a sales perspective I’m just trying to convert some of those into

relationships also remember you’re giving them the gift of being a mentee

so people who sign up to that why are they doing that because they want to give back you’re giving them the gift of the opportunity to give back to someone

who’s actually going to implement it so yeah um super super

important to get a mentor basically and yeah 100% accountability partner is everything so I went solo as a Ghost

Rider in April but I was also a solo business developer contractor in this

October of last year and I would have been very very sad and lonely if I hadn’t had my online tribe so I got that

through e coffees just doing the thing that I’ve just said there and also through paid communities so I’ve going a

few LinkedIn ones but yeah just any communities you can join where you can have that accountability really really

helpful what are do and don’t in new profile so I’m going to assume you’re asking for help on your new profile so

number one have a profile picture of your face you cannot have the logo of

your company because then I’m just going to assume you’re not a real person just facts study in frame box don’t know what

that means so I’m just going to give you a full spicy roasting right now so I’m looking at A’s

profile welcome our enthuses do you like to share my recent explanation freelance yeah just more detail think about what a

good artist profile looks like so just search senior artist look at your favorite one okay what do you like about

that could be the way they put their portfolio could be the types of things they’re posting how clear the headline

is yeah real face smiling and approachable someone else took the

picture headline that says actually what you do and then flesh out the freelance like

what have you actually done so step ones for sure is those you currently found mines I want

to make one for job Seekers who love video games yeah I’d say Amir has a nice

Discord so you could probably start there if you want to find some people to start with leverage communities that

already exist and on that note I’ve lost my voice so I will love you and leave you thank you

everyone so much for joining still 30 people here which has been a pleasure so I will B you all forw and good night so

yeah thank you very much if you haven’t already scan that and you should get emails from me with Recaps of the event

and thank you again it’s been an absolute

pleasure I heard that there ‘s going to be a one piece which is going to be done with modern pacing and that would be

funny to watch so maybe is the answer I could do it

um when that new one comes out but yeah it’s kind of like a meme that I haven’t watched it and I have all this one piece

stuff I went to games con and bought this but then I realized I don’t know what to do with it so it now sits on the

radiator but yeah I just like the Hat it’s a nice hat other than that

never seen an episode I just know he has long arms thank you thank you thank you thank

you cheers thank you so much and Jin Carlo thank

you amazing okay I will now actually leave goodbye everyone