Does a hiring season exist in the games industry?

zachagreg

Hey all,

I'm wondering if there is a season or period of time throughout the year, in the United States, that hiring and recruiting kicks up for the game industry? If there is a high time when a lot of places are generally hiring. My guess is it would be around the end of fiscal years and when various budgets are being refreshed or evaluated. 

Also whether or not there is any practicality in preparing for this time, if it does exist. Like busting out a project to make it in that time or anything of that nature, of course I think it would be silly to wait for this time if there are open positions you are considering though.

PixelMasher

A lot of big games ship in late fall, so that means studios are pushing like crazy the Jan-may/june before that to wrap production, so that would probably be a time of ramp up, especially for contract work. 

but studios will also hire really good artists even if there isn't an open position, usually through word of mouth, networking or the open application form most places have, but you are gonna have to blow their faces off with extremely high level work for that. 

zachagreg

Ah okay that makes sense, that second part is much a long the lines of why some studios always have Senior or Lead positions constantly open right? I doubt big name companies are going to sit around and wait to put out applications when a "blow your face" artist wants to join their team.

Jonas Ronnegard

Yeah It's not so much about there being open positions or not, even if it says there are no open positions most bigger companies will still take the gems when ever they get the chance, devs/artists tend to switch companies a lot especially the skilled ones, so it's good to bunker up on those in case all of a sudden one quits.

When projects end there is of course some people that are let go or contracts that run out, but there is also people that move on to other companies, many have just been waiting for their work to finish, most commonly seen when games don't turn out as great as expected.

zachagreg

@Jonas Ronnegard
Does that sort of thing ever occur with mid level or entry level positions as well? At least in regards to the open application hiring/recruitment?

Jonas Ronnegard

zachagreg said:

@Jonas Ronnegard
Does that sort of thing ever occur with mid level or entry level positions as well? At least in regards to the open application hiring/recruitment?

Depends on what you mean with entry or mid level, from time to time you see students that have clear skill and sense, and those can certainly get picked up without there being an urgent need for someone.

zachagreg

I just mean positions that would be listed as "Associate" or just "Environment Artist" basically those listed under senior level. I don't really know if there is a convention that is followed by job title. I guess it doesn't really matter in the end if you're listed as a senior environment artist or environment artist if you're getting paid the same. I just remember some discussions on Polycount saying that the titles matter.

Jonas Ronnegard

Hm yeah not sure, never really worked at a company that had an official senior artist position, you had to become a lead before the actual title changed.

zachagreg

Fair enough, and thank you both for your insights!

NikhilR

I think the titles are more for your ego, than anything to do with actual workings within the company.

I've seen a rating system where the responsibility is staggered, and this helps with organisation and who to report to for what purpose, but not sure if this is one of the legit ways to become top tier.

Those self proclaimed titles likely help when you want to negotiate better offers and stab your current company in the back.

zachagreg

NikhilR said:

I think the titles are more for your ego, than anything to do with actual workings within the company.

I've seen a rating system where the responsibility is staggered, and this helps with organisation and who to report to for what purpose, but not sure if this is one of the legit ways to become top tier.

Those self proclaimed titles likely help when you want to negotiate better offers and stab your current company in the back.

I don't really know about all that? I don't really give a care about all that top tier nonsense, I'm only asking based upon the job postings I have seen before and that I would infer there would be a difference between a Senior listing and an associate one. I can guess based upon what I've seen and experienced that a talented artist can get a non-listed senior or lead position but didn't know if that also applied to those positions of less seniority or experience.

Example being the top and bottom postings

Jonas Ronnegard

I think many companies might use titles such as senior artist in their job ads without actually having an official title like that in the company, it's just an easy way to hopefully not get thousands of emails from artists with no experience.

marks

No.

Meloncov

A studio might not list a job explicitly as junior level despite being willing to consider sufficiently skilled new grads, but listing a job as senior level when it's actually not? No, never. That's just gonna end up wasting everyone's time, because most qualified candidates for a senior-level role aren't going to accept an offer for a non-senior-level role. And it's not just a matter of ego; a senior-level role should have a substantially higher salary.

PixelMasher

Most of the studios ive worked at had internal positions levels such as: junior, intermediate, senior and then principal/advanced

or at ubisoft they just use numbered levels with lvl 1 being jr and lvl 3 being senior.

It definitely determines salary range of an offer, but each studio had a big spreadsheet of responsibilities required of each level of role.

Jr and intermediate roles was usually something along the lines of make art and contribute in a positive manner to the team, while levels above that the requirements were a lot steeper.  such as mentoring other artists, assisting with leadership tasks like creating and managing jira tasks, being more proactive in communication and assisting to push large milestones/demos to the highest level of quality possible. As well as things like helping to develop new workflows and internal documentation etc

basically as your seniority rises, you are expected to do more, have more responsibility and autonomy as well as develop some form of leadership skills. 

zachagreg

PixelMasher said:

Most of the studios ive worked at had internal positions levels such as: junior, intermediate, senior and then principal/advanced

or at ubisoft they just use numbered levels with lvl 1 being jr and lvl 3 being senior.

It definitely determines salary range of an offer, but each studio had a big spreadsheet of responsibilities required of each level of role.

Jr and intermediate roles was usually something along the lines of make art and contribute in a positive manner to the team, while levels above that the requirements were a lot steeper.  such as mentoring other artists, assisting with leadership tasks like creating and managing jira tasks, being more proactive in communication and assisting to push large milestones/demos to the highest level of quality possible. As well as things like helping to develop new workflows and internal documentation etc

basically as your seniority rises, you are expected to do more, have more responsibility and autonomy as well as develop some form of leadership skills. 

Oh yea I definitely grasp the concepts and can infer the responsibilities of higher positions. It seems your experience is very similar to the way my job works as well using the number system to denote higher positions. I was more so inquiring about the frequency at which those 1 or 2 positions would hire people regardless of listed openings. Much like the way Jonas was mentioning early with bigger companies. Sorry if I got off track with questioning

Eric Chadwick

There's no particular time of the year. 

Around Christmas it can get really slow since many are taking vacation time. 

But it's a fallacy to think about prepping for a particular time. The job seeking game is always on. The sharks are circling and looking for a tasty leg. Give them that meaty calf!

If you're not getting bit, it's 90% likely your legs are too thin... err... your art isn't good enough yet.

Continually push yourself, improve your art, cull weaker pieces. The sharks are always hungry, give us that solid chunk of flesh we just can't resist.