Recruiters?

ysalex

Forgive me if I'm bringing up already explored and asked topics, but I have a couple questions about recruiters, and was wondering if people knew anything about the pros and cons of working with them.

To start, in the last two weeks I've been contacted by three different recruiters from three different companies, all wanting to apply me to different jobs.

I'll lead my cons/red flag/something that bothers me first. Basically, each of the recruiters had two positions they wanted to apply me for. That's six positions. Of these six positions, only half were game art positions. The red flag is that this person who wants to represent me (I guess) found my portfolio of largely game-art and wants to apply me for a random rendering position. To me this seems like possibly a number of recruiters are not tech or art oriented people, and thus see some sort of art and just think of me as a do-it-all person to throw at the wall whenever they have any sort of position open. Rendering? Sure, I've got a computer creative-ish person guy!

That aside, I noticed that when I investigated the open game-art positions on my own that two of the three positions they wanted to apply me for were not posted in any way on the internet, so as a counter pro to the con above I guess is that they are pulling from a larger database of open positions that I don't have access to.

Anyways, I'm asking for experience or anything on dealing with and/or using recruiters. Does your company use them? Do they prefer to hire straight, or do they prefer to use these services especially for contract/freelance based work?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Bigjohn

That's a tough one.

I personally witnessed a situation where it came down to about 3 or 4 people, and one of them got disqualified because the company got his resume through a recruiter, and had they hired him it would mean paying a fee to that recruiter. And the job just wasn't that crucial that they'd be willing to pay that fee, and I guess budget was a major concern when doing that hiring. So that is something to think about.

That said, for higher-up jobs at bigger studios, you see them go through recruiters so they only get quality resumes. In that case they wouldn't mind paying the fee to the recruiter. So the result there is that the person hiring will have two resume piles. One from recruiters, which will be higher-quality resumes as far as experience goes, and another one that's just random resumes of people applying. Obviously the recruiter pile is going to get looked at first. And note that either of those piles will get a lower priority over the third pile, that is of resumes of friends of people already working in the studio.

Then the even bigger studios will have their own HR to filter through resumes. Or their corporate side or owner will have that HR in place.

So I'd say you have to consider the situation. If you think that there's very little chance of your resume being looked at otherwise, meaning if you don't know anyone at that studio, and you know the studio will look through the recruiter resume pile first (if they're paying for a recruitment company, then they will), then it could work in your favor. Otherwise, it may not. But gotta consider each situation.

ysalex

Thank you, those are the kind of things I was wondering. One job was/is with a major studio, and as the job isn't listed anywhere I imagine that they are primarily looking through recruiters OR looking to hire a friend. It's a junior artist position though, so at the same time I can't help but think that they wouldn't need a recruitment company or want to pay a fee to fill that slot (since junior artists seem disposable, seeing all the competition these days).

The other two I have no real idea about and can't scope.

Joshua Stubbles

I worked through an agency called AQUENT, for two contracts with Turn10 at Microsoft. I had nothing but a good experience with them. Decent pay, paid benefits. I know a few other people that went through FILTER and had equally good times.

ysalex

Filter and Aquent both contacted me about the same position at a well known studio, which is one of the positions I was wondering about. The reps are very nice, but I still wondered since I do character art and this studio as I understand it is looking for a junior environment artist. Good to know you had a good experience.

Great portfolio by the way.

Drav

My opinion, fuck recruiters.....leeching off other peoples talents and sucking money out of an industry they dont care about whatsoever except riding it to make a buck.

Having said that, I think ive been watching too many episodes of the Sopranos


Heres a question. Why do companies use recruiters, rather than their HR people? Only answer I can come up with is when they are trying to replace someone who doesent know hes getting replaced yet!

Bigjohn

Drav wrote: »

Heres a question. Why do companies use recruiters, rather than their HR people? Only answer I can come up with is when they are trying to replace someone who doesent know hes getting replaced yet!

Nah man. Not all companies have an HR department capable of sorting through resumes. Definitely not small studios. But then those studios don't see the sheer volume of resumes come in that would require that to begin with. And the large studios will have their own HR department to handle this.

It's probably more the medium-sized studios that will need it. They get a ton of resumes in, and it's often a huge task and a waste of time for an AD or a Lead to sift through them to find the good ones. And they're not big enough to maintain a job for someone in HR to just do that. That's where recruiters come in.

Lennyagony

When i worked in the UK i found recruiters were used pretty heavily, and in a few cases studios exclusively used recruiters for hiring to the point of not accepting private applications.

I found working with a recruiter in most cases to be a really positive experience, pretty helpful, informative, someone i could call regularly and hassle about jobs without worrying i was annoying a potential employer lol

Kwramm

Drav wrote: »

Heres a question. Why do companies use recruiters, rather than their HR people? Only answer I can come up with is when they are trying to replace someone who doesent know hes getting replaced yet!

You outsource the pre-screening to recruiters. Unlike HR people, who're often mainly admin, a good recruiter should have some games background. Recruiters do all the initial bla-bla, do background checks, etc. HR isn't just about hiring, they have a LOT of other stuff to do next to hiring new people, so this takes some work off their shoulders.

Recruiting agencies usually have advertising deals with game sites and mags, so it's easier for them to place ads and get the word out. i.e. they can place ADs in publications you visit about a job you would never have seen because you never visit the searching studio's own website. That's pretty valuable if your studio isn't named Blizzard or Ubi and draws attention just by itself.

I worked with 2 recruiters from the UK and they were very professional and they knew what they were talking about. I initally worked with 3 other recruiters but they weren't really good. If you work with recruiters, stick to a few you really like working with and forget the rest.