What matters the most to hiring managers is the kind of experience a candidate has. Hiring managers have a specific set of tasks they're looking to hire someone to do for them. At an indie studio, they are probably looking for a broad set of experience, someone able to field many different types of tasks. At the typical AAA studio, they're probably hiring for expertise in a specific field - somebody who's an expert at AI, or procedural content generation, or in-game economies. Whatever skillset they're looking for in a candidate is what they're hoping to see in the applications.

If I get a resume that has the relevant experience and skills doing the kind of tasks I'm looking to hire for, I'm interested in that candidate - especially if some company has paid the candidate to do those tasks before. I generally don't care whether that person was paid by an indie or AAA studio to do it, I really only care if they did so at in a professional capacity. Even amateur experience is worth considering, if it's in the correct field of expertise!

This makes the act of tailoring your resume incredibly important, because that's what we're reading to determine whether you get a callback. If you're taking on the dragon type trainer in the elite four, you want a team that can resist dragon type attacks and deal super effective damage to dragon types. When you're working on your resume, you want it to be as super-effective as you can. This means changing the descriptions of your past experience to better fit what the job description is looking for. If you can manage that, you'll increase your chances of getting past that step of the hiring process.

[Join us on Discord] and/or [Support us on Patreon]

Got a burning question you want answered?

• Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter
• Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on BlueSky
• Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr
• Frequent Questions: The FAQ