Company News MCA gives advice

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Chris Avellone; Obsidian Entertainment

For those of you who think it's a good idea to get into the game designing business and earn a petty ~30.000$ a year, <a href="http://forums.obsidian.net/index.php?automodule=blog&blogid=1&showentry=129">MCA has a bit of advice.</a>
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<p style="margin-left:50px;border-style:solid;border-width:1px;border-top-color:#ffffff;padding:5px;border-right-color:#bbbbbb;border-left-color:#ffffff;border-bottom-color:#bbbbbb;">Second, don't use a recruiter. Please. Spend an extra hour and check the game companies in your area, then apply to them on your own - if given the choice between candidates, we're less likely to go with the candidate sent via a recruiter because they have the recruiter's fee on top of the normal salary that we have budgeted for the position. If you absolutely must use a recruiter, try to do enough research to choose one wisely - there's certain recruiters that know the business, others that don't know the difference between production and design candidates, nor do they know the first thing about how to place a programming candidate. Popular recruiting agencies don't mean much if the recruiter you're assigned to is a junior or is new to the industry.
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Passion. It's all about passion.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://forums.obsidian.net/index.php?automodule=blog&blogid=1&showentry=129">MCA's Blog</A>

 

[Gragt]

Someone is getting desperate for news items to post.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Warning: Long Post.
- not dong a tl;dr version. You're not missing anything important by skipping to the next poster.


I love it when I see employers dissing on recruitment agencies. Over here, professional recruitment agencies are wankers. They act all horrified when you tell them that you've made some applications themselves, pretending that having done so will jeapordise your chance of getting work (they'll tell you not to make your own applications under any circumstances). It's just a scam to make sure they get their payment. Any professional should be capable of making their own job application, and usually are much more capable than a recruitment agency. Who is going to know better - someone who is actually a member of a profession (or heck, even someone who has studied that profession and done work experience in it), or some junior human resources grad?

When one tried that on me (when I was still working in law) I laughed out loud and told her that when, on occasion, I've been the one sorting through applications and interviewing, I'd always found recruitment agency applications far less impressive than those without assistance, as the recruiters just end up reflecting their own policies whereas I want to get an idea of the applicant herself/himself.

Then she asked me why I was contacting the agency. I told him that I wanted to get out of the large-firm scene into something community-based, where I could work part-time on something that would help others, while going back to do my honours part-time for a couple of years before applying for a research student spot. She ummed and aahhhed and eventually said, 'I don't know that we can really guarantee that kind of work. That sounds like it might be really hard to find. It's a bit out of the ordinary in law.' 'Yes', I said...it IS something a bit rarer....that's why I considered using a recruiter. After all, there's a shortage of lawyers with more than 2yrs experience in the general big-firm scene, you can pretty much walk into those jobs, if a recruiter has any use at all then surely it is matching people up to the less common kind of jobs.

She pretty much said it was going to be too hard and that I should reconsider. I got exactly the kind of job I was after, from my own applications, within 4 days and had several other offers for similar positions arrive not long after. Basically, recruiters are like actors' agents. They don't actually DO anything for you. If it takes effort, they aren't interested - they just want to send people to all the ultra-obvious jobs at places that are always hiring. Going out of the ordinary makes them have to work, and that lowers their profit margins. Which means there's no point using them - anywhere that a recruiter can get you an interview, you could easily get one yourself.

I've heard exactly the same story from accountants, architects and engineers. Each with an experienced professional who has done hiring herself/himself trying not to laugh when a 21 year old recruiter is telling them not to send out applications themselves. It's even funnier when the recruiter promotes herself on the basis of having a law/engineering/architect's degree. In almost every case, they are the folk who couldn't GET a job in their professional fields, and so they've ended up working for a recruiting firm as a fallback. So you have someone who came out of uni and couldn't get a professional job, trying to tell people with industry experience that they don't know what they're doing. It's all a scam to trick naive uni graduates into giving up a portion of their starting wages by playing on their fears of unemployment, before they have enough experience to realise that recruiters aren't needed.

At least actors' agencies, in my experience, are completely up front about that (I've heard of dodgy 'acting and modelling' agencies that promise the world, but they're known as dodgy and aren't union-accredited). They'll tell you outright that you'll have to do 99% of the effort, but they'll just help by letting you know what auditions are coming up to save you the time and effort keeping tabs on things yourself. Professional recruiters, by comparison, are almost fraudulent in their leeching.


Given the rather grimy, employee-devouring nature of the gaming industry, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to discover that their recruiters are worse than most - preying on those who are already being exploited.

 

[Lingwe]

I can sum it up a little better.

1. Know someone
2. Have done something
3. Know something

In that order.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Chris, here's the deal...my allergies, they're real bad. REAL bad. right now i can't breathe through my nose. i already took some claritin and it ain't doin' shit and netti pot ain't gonna work because i can't fucking breathe.

ADVICE PLZ.