cut it out, sorry was rubbish.
But please note my last post, where I put an excerpt of a vacancy in.
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No Answer about Application - Am I totally useless?
Quote: Original post by notnoted
Dear kindjie.
Thank you for your comment. Ok, why bother hiring any programmer or any productive part of such a production. Lets just hire human resource guys and analysts, let they do the games or particularly the graphics stuff, if its all about this!
Please note my last post, where I put an excerpt of a vacancy in.
That doesn't follow from my post, but I'll respond anyway. Often there's only one HR person for a company with 80+ employees. They've got more responsibilities than just hiring, so maybe hiring more HR people would work out in your favour. They're not going to do that, though. Margins are already quite thin, and they'd prefer to keep their company running and potentially miss out on a great new graduate.
You don't have to listen to anything anyone tells you. I'm sure if you keep at it, you'll eventually get hired - might take a few months longer, though.
We understand that you're smart and that you can show that you know C++. It's just that that's about half of the hiring equation and personality and experience count for a lot.
Quote: Original post by kindjie
Employers are people too. That means they have limited resources and can simply forget about you. They'll read your resume and think you're interesting, then read another 100 and forget you exist. Maybe you're on the bottom of a pile and they don't need to hire someone for another month. That's why you should follow up on every application. It also gives you an excuse to talk to them and show them how you're a good fit for their team.
This reminded me of something someone said to me whilst I was at a career fair this year when I was talking to a senior programmer of one of the companies and he said that he would have forgotten about me by the end of the day so should contact him the next day just to refresh his memory. That was face to face, I'd hate to imagine what its like for a CV stuck in a pile in a HR department.
One thing to note is that X years of experience in software development on your own is actually quite different from X years of experience working as part of a team. I usually always look for team experience when hiring and I likely would never hire a core tech (engine, graphics, etc) position that does not have software experience in a team environment even if it was a junior position. For someone that has great demos and/or resume but no team experience I would still look at them for higher level code positions.
Obviously this does not apply to every company or anything like that, I just thought I would chime in on how I've hired over the years.
Obviously this does not apply to every company or anything like that, I just thought I would chime in on how I've hired over the years.
Quote: Original post by Saruman
One thing to note is that X years of experience in software development on your own is actually quite different from X years of experience working as part of a team. I usually always look for team experience when hiring and I likely would never hire a core tech (engine, graphics, etc) position that does not have software experience in a team environment even if it was a junior position. For someone that has great demos and/or resume but no team experience I would still look at them for higher level code positions.
Obviously this does not apply to every company or anything like that, I just thought I would chime in on how I've hired over the years.
This is something I was going to mention. Eight years hobby programming is a long ways from eight years professional programming. And those are the kinds of people that are applying to the same jobs as you. In a perfect world employers would tell you why they didn't hire you but when they get 300+ resumes for one position its kind of hard to do that. Just because you worked harder in school then most other people doesn't entitle you to a job. Have you worked on any kind of group or open source projects? Sounds kind of like you are a lone wolf programmer and companies don't want people like that. If you can show that you work well with a team it will help your chances of a call back. And as was already said, the economy is down all over the world. Its going to take a little time to get a job. A couple of months looking isn't all that long given how things are going.
Quote: Original post by stupid_programmer
A couple of months looking isn't all that long given how things are going.
Definitely. When I entered the industry in 2003 it was booming. My job search took 7 months before a reply and that was after I already had 4 years of experience programming professionally in non-video game industries and I had good friends in the industry passing my resume around.
-me
I feel like I learned a lot about the job application process so I'll lay it out for you. Keep in mind I was applying for an entry position during several rounds of industry wide layoffs and competition was/is fierce. I did not have the luxury of a booming economy.
For my job as an entry level SE at an awesome well-known company:
*Approximately 70 serious applications. This means I wrote custom cover letters and followed up with each and every one after a week and then again after two more weeks.
*6 months part time polishing my portfolio and resume while working to get it to the point I felt I had something worth showing. MichaelHamilton.com This includes a complete re-write of my 2d library, a template language implementation, the website itself etc. It may not look like much, but while working full time programming it took a lot of effort. Note: I hadn't actually been applying actively at this point.
*6 months while unemployed (I quit my old job to focus on finding a new one before having another one lined up.)
*I went to GDC out of pocket (flight and ticket), and applied for jobs that weren't listed
The results of the 6 active months:
5 Programming tests without an interview first. Of these I'm pretty sure I did pretty well.
I got three phone interviews as a result of my 5 programming tests, one of these it sounded like they already had someone else in mind, the other two went really well.
Of those two that went well, I got to choose.
There were also quite a few e-mails back and forth with HR people in a few companies which just weren't hiring people without at least a couple shipped titles and I only had one from an 8 month coop term, and coop experience is good, but not quite as good as straight employment.
So, basically, it's a lot of work to get good work. It is thankless and brutal and served with failure. If you can stomach it, you'll get stronger and more streamlined and you'll trim the fat and become a lean mean application machine.
You need to learn to sell yourself.
I remember standing in line at GDC and I wanted to network the crap out of the place, so I practiced striking up a conversation with the guy in line next to me. I asked him what he did and he worked on iPhone games, I said I worked on websites and a content management system tool because that was what I was employed to do most recently and he said "why should I care?". As insensitive and brutal as that is, it was honest. Why should someone doing games care about some business application I wrote, people accept lower wages to work in this industry because the work is more interesting and fun.
I re-evaluated my introductory pitch and refined it, honed, and sliced over successive conversations and arrived at "I'm an indie game maker, I developed a top 10 most played mod for Warcraft 3 and develop C++ games in my spare time."
It's truthful, but focuses on the right aspects, it shows that I'm capable of delivering a fun experience, I'm passionate (what indie developer isn't?) and I am technical (I don't develop browser games in flash, I know C++.) It's also a little vague, it provides hooks for conversations and leaves someone wanting to know more. Your own pitch will be different, but it should have the same qualities.
Your resume is a different form of pitch, and it has different rules, but it's the same idea. You need to trim the fat and cut it down into an effective and interesting tool to get a call back, that is its one and only job. An effective resume is the start of a conversation, not an autobiography.
Much of the application process is honestly evaluating what doesn't work and instead focusing on the skills that people want to know more about. You've got to hook them.
[Edited by - M2tM on November 9, 2010 10:00:18 PM]
For my job as an entry level SE at an awesome well-known company:
*Approximately 70 serious applications. This means I wrote custom cover letters and followed up with each and every one after a week and then again after two more weeks.
*6 months part time polishing my portfolio and resume while working to get it to the point I felt I had something worth showing. MichaelHamilton.com This includes a complete re-write of my 2d library, a template language implementation, the website itself etc. It may not look like much, but while working full time programming it took a lot of effort. Note: I hadn't actually been applying actively at this point.
*6 months while unemployed (I quit my old job to focus on finding a new one before having another one lined up.)
*I went to GDC out of pocket (flight and ticket), and applied for jobs that weren't listed
The results of the 6 active months:
5 Programming tests without an interview first. Of these I'm pretty sure I did pretty well.
I got three phone interviews as a result of my 5 programming tests, one of these it sounded like they already had someone else in mind, the other two went really well.
Of those two that went well, I got to choose.
There were also quite a few e-mails back and forth with HR people in a few companies which just weren't hiring people without at least a couple shipped titles and I only had one from an 8 month coop term, and coop experience is good, but not quite as good as straight employment.
So, basically, it's a lot of work to get good work. It is thankless and brutal and served with failure. If you can stomach it, you'll get stronger and more streamlined and you'll trim the fat and become a lean mean application machine.
You need to learn to sell yourself.
I remember standing in line at GDC and I wanted to network the crap out of the place, so I practiced striking up a conversation with the guy in line next to me. I asked him what he did and he worked on iPhone games, I said I worked on websites and a content management system tool because that was what I was employed to do most recently and he said "why should I care?". As insensitive and brutal as that is, it was honest. Why should someone doing games care about some business application I wrote, people accept lower wages to work in this industry because the work is more interesting and fun.
I re-evaluated my introductory pitch and refined it, honed, and sliced over successive conversations and arrived at "I'm an indie game maker, I developed a top 10 most played mod for Warcraft 3 and develop C++ games in my spare time."
It's truthful, but focuses on the right aspects, it shows that I'm capable of delivering a fun experience, I'm passionate (what indie developer isn't?) and I am technical (I don't develop browser games in flash, I know C++.) It's also a little vague, it provides hooks for conversations and leaves someone wanting to know more. Your own pitch will be different, but it should have the same qualities.
Your resume is a different form of pitch, and it has different rules, but it's the same idea. You need to trim the fat and cut it down into an effective and interesting tool to get a call back, that is its one and only job. An effective resume is the start of a conversation, not an autobiography.
Much of the application process is honestly evaluating what doesn't work and instead focusing on the skills that people want to know more about. You've got to hook them.
[Edited by - M2tM on November 9, 2010 10:00:18 PM]
Quote: Original post by notnoted
Ok, my initial intention was not to make the impression of "I dont want to do anything else than beeing in the game industry". I just wanted to say that I made a lot during my spare time (worked on my portfolio as you called it), more than most of my fellow students and I just wanted to know why, in your opinion, my efforts are not noted by those companies.
Wait... Why not?
Let me just briefly touch on this as well and excuse my language, it is meant to underscore how serious I am about this matter.
If you aren't bringing your game face, if this isn't exactly the one and only industry you want to be in, if this isn't the very job that defines your wildest fantasies what the fuck are you doing applying in the first place? There are lineups of industry professionals who are currently out of work and gunning for even entry level jobs.
You have to want it more, you have to care more, you have to be exceptional.
Do not sell yourself short at mild enthusiasm; nobody cares about lukewarm participation. Nobody gives a damn. There are a lot of people who would "kinda like to work making video games somehow" and you have to break free of the mediocre masses and be better than that.
Even harder: it has to be genuine.
Quote: Original post by notnoted
Dear reader.
My question is how long might it take to get some kind of answer from a company and do I have made something wrong in my application?
Recently I finished college with a Bachelor of Science degree and I thought to apply for several junior positions here in Germany not only as a C++ Programmer but also as a graphics programmer and other similar positions.
Two weeks ago, I sent my applications out but still got no answer from any company. In my opinion, I fit perfectly for the positions I applied for. Along with a nice email, I sent in a resume which contained a link to my portfolio website where I gathered some information about some my projects I did so far.
I put a reasonable amount of pictures of those projects onto the site along with some explanation of it which could be read or not. These projects of course are absolutely topic related, for example, the ray tracing on the Playstation 3 project, the fluid solver on the iPod project or my demo engine where I show (also by video) how I have implemented OpenGL 4 tessellation and how it works by simple example of the PN-Triangles technique. Another video shows real-time GPU histogram processing for HDR-rendering.
I put some time in this website in order to have it very structured so everyone can easily go through it and see whats going on. And I checked everything about correct syntax and semantic in the resume and the website. I think everything is very plausible and well sound and structured.
Further more, I do approximately 8 years of C++ programming and nearly 5 years of OpenGL so I think I am perfectly suited for some vacancy as a "junior" C++ or graphics programmer. I started programming 4 years before I started my studies of computer science.
Now I have received no single answer from no company so far. I feel a little bit useless. I mean, they have this vacancy online still, but they dont give any guess about what(I feel more like ftw) is going on.
So this is a bit of the story. Sure, it is hard to give some guess what is going on, but please give it a try and what you think about it? I am very depressed right now!
Thanks and thanks for reading
Some depressed guy
Hello,
its very common that you won t receive any answers if your profile doesn t match their expectations.
There are a few things I want to mention, some might disagree with me though:
You mention 8 years of programming experience? Most companies don t care about that, all that matters are professional experience as employee.
A lot of companies place vacancies online even if theres no position to fill.
A good why to get onto the top of the applicants queue is to contact the company asking some question about the number of employees or some details about the position that are not mentioned in their vacancy, this why you might get the email of a contact person to send your resume to. Otherwise you are just one candidate of their jobs@companyname.com email applicants.
The next big question is the salaries, don t expect too much 42.000 € is the maximum the average junior may expect.
A good guarantee to get a job in germany as software engineer is know how in java development. There s really a hype regarding java.
Maybe you should look for a position as IT consultant, on the long term you eary considerably more are a usually software engineer and your professional experiences you can reference in future resumes is of higher value.
Another option is to apply anywhere and to switch the company after a year.
bye bye
Author
Hi all and really thank you for your comments. I really appreciate that you took your time to read and write here.
M2tM said:
The reason is simply that I would like to do what I worked for intensively the last 4 years. This is C++ and graphics programming. A game, is not only made of a game or guys clicking some tools to produce levels or scriped game situations!? It ALSO consists of graphics and to some extend, to high performance real-time graphics what means, utilizing the GPU at most is fundamental for example. This is what I heavily experienced the last few years. And, you know, I thought, maybe due to my naifity, that, if I do more than my fellow students, working hard on programming and the mentioned graphcis programming (like for example I know what a shader is compared to 99.9% of my fellow students), I could put me into a good position. Because, the one big picture I got of real-time graphics programming position during my study was that I have to know how to do certain things on the GPU with shaders(talking about GPGPU) or what ever, that puts me to the front concerning "junior" positions because I know alot compared to others(and I dont talk about world of warcraft experience, I even never played that game).
And it is not like that I am applying for a senior position! I apply for junior positions and if those positions are proposed, I assume that the people applying for do not have any industry experience, which, btw, is exaclty what those vacancies say in their proposal! They say, "you dont have to have experience". But if they really mean, "You can apply for a junior position, no problem, but you need a Dr. in computer science and you dont get paid for it, because junior position here are equal to "unpaid internships"", then, I'll be honest, I wouldn't apply for those positions any longer. If they think they get such people, they should think this. In my opinion, they think like this, because the vacancies for junior positions I applied for are still on the company's website listed!
@little spoiler
Here in germany, a game costs +50 Euros! This is a lot of money. I mean, what do they do if they sell some hudred thousends or even millions of copies? Is all the money spend for skyscrapers for EA or Activision. Or do some analysts get all the money? Because as you say, employees dont get the money. They have to work for in unpaid internships. I feel that nobody in the game industry works there because of passion, but for moneny what is NOT my concern.
@little spoiler ends
And what really disappoints me here is that you all say that people from college or with sufficient personal(massive spare time consumed) work means nothing. But this is also what I expected initially. I am totally useless and worthless. Great, you got me.
You know, as a Bachelor student, I participated to some Master courses and I also work at the college in those courses as a tutor for several times. The one thing I realized there is that EVERYBODY in these MASTER courses didn't know(sorry) wtf even a shader is or even how to do OpenGL. From experience, I tell you that the percentage is 100% where I thought I am in a better shape compared to ALL of those students. A complete ILLUSION!!! I could even know nothing about anything which puts me into the exactly same situation. Great.
Initially I wanted to give some more details about my skills that you could kindly gave your opinion about, but as said, what for, it doesn't mean anything.
Sorry for the big text!
M2tM said:
Quote:
Wait... Why not?
Let me just briefly touch on this as well and excuse my language, it is meant to underscore how serious I am about this matter.
If you aren't bringing your game face, if this isn't exactly the one and only industry you want to be in, if this isn't the very job that defines your wildest fantasies what the fuck are you doing applying in the first place? There are lineups of industry professionals who are currently out of work and gunning for even entry level jobs.
You have to want it more, you have to care more, you have to be exceptional.
Do not sell yourself short at mild enthusiasm; nobody cares about lukewarm participation. Nobody gives a damn. There are a lot of people who would "kinda like to work making video games somehow" and you have to break free of the mediocre masses and be better than that.
Even harder: it has to be genuine.
The reason is simply that I would like to do what I worked for intensively the last 4 years. This is C++ and graphics programming. A game, is not only made of a game or guys clicking some tools to produce levels or scriped game situations!? It ALSO consists of graphics and to some extend, to high performance real-time graphics what means, utilizing the GPU at most is fundamental for example. This is what I heavily experienced the last few years. And, you know, I thought, maybe due to my naifity, that, if I do more than my fellow students, working hard on programming and the mentioned graphcis programming (like for example I know what a shader is compared to 99.9% of my fellow students), I could put me into a good position. Because, the one big picture I got of real-time graphics programming position during my study was that I have to know how to do certain things on the GPU with shaders(talking about GPGPU) or what ever, that puts me to the front concerning "junior" positions because I know alot compared to others(and I dont talk about world of warcraft experience, I even never played that game).
And it is not like that I am applying for a senior position! I apply for junior positions and if those positions are proposed, I assume that the people applying for do not have any industry experience, which, btw, is exaclty what those vacancies say in their proposal! They say, "you dont have to have experience". But if they really mean, "You can apply for a junior position, no problem, but you need a Dr. in computer science and you dont get paid for it, because junior position here are equal to "unpaid internships"", then, I'll be honest, I wouldn't apply for those positions any longer. If they think they get such people, they should think this. In my opinion, they think like this, because the vacancies for junior positions I applied for are still on the company's website listed!
@little spoiler
Here in germany, a game costs +50 Euros! This is a lot of money. I mean, what do they do if they sell some hudred thousends or even millions of copies? Is all the money spend for skyscrapers for EA or Activision. Or do some analysts get all the money? Because as you say, employees dont get the money. They have to work for in unpaid internships. I feel that nobody in the game industry works there because of passion, but for moneny what is NOT my concern.
@little spoiler ends
And what really disappoints me here is that you all say that people from college or with sufficient personal(massive spare time consumed) work means nothing. But this is also what I expected initially. I am totally useless and worthless. Great, you got me.
You know, as a Bachelor student, I participated to some Master courses and I also work at the college in those courses as a tutor for several times. The one thing I realized there is that EVERYBODY in these MASTER courses didn't know(sorry) wtf even a shader is or even how to do OpenGL. From experience, I tell you that the percentage is 100% where I thought I am in a better shape compared to ALL of those students. A complete ILLUSION!!! I could even know nothing about anything which puts me into the exactly same situation. Great.
Initially I wanted to give some more details about my skills that you could kindly gave your opinion about, but as said, what for, it doesn't mean anything.
Sorry for the big text!
This topic is closed to new replies.
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