INTERVIEWING FOR A GAME STUDIO. WHAT TO PREPARE FOR?

The interview is an important and final stage in the recruitment process. No matter how great your test task is, poor preparation or not knowing what to do at the final meeting can take away your chance of employment. That's why we, based on our experience, decided to define a few points that will help you cross the threshold of the office - but already as an employee ;)

1. Learn the company and its business.?

There is such a phrase: if a company is not on social networks, it doesn't exist. It is important to find all sources of information: websites, social networks, forums, etc. Whatever the reviews, it is important to familiarize yourself with the pros and cons of the studio, to understand in what setting and what style it mainly works (regarding projects), what kind of clients it has, and what colleagues say. Try to assess the mission, values, and culture. Just from such analytics, you may have a number of questions that you will want to ask at the meeting, and questions are very important.?

2. Prepare answers to typical questions.?

Here are a few key topics that might come up in a meeting. It's important to remember that these topics may vary from studio to studio:?

• Experience. Put together a short but to-the-point narrative about your work experience (even though you've most likely already talked about it on your CV or in correspondence). Experience is an important and meaningful layer of professional life.?
• Pros/cons. Being able to assess yourself from different perspectives, whether it's hard or soft skills, will give you a general understanding of your strengths and weaknesses. Don't be afraid to talk about your disadvantages, because it will help to choose a task according to your strengths and build a development plan. But don't be too careful with the advantages; overestimation of you as a candidate can bring down the whole plan and negatively affect the trial period.
• Software. Tell in more detail about your personal pipeline, what software you use, and at what stages, what, in your opinion, is the advantage of this or that approach. But answer honestly and don't try to embellish, because when reviewing the test task, the lead will still ask similar questions on software understanding.
• Plans. It's important, even if you're not sure about your familiarity with the company's internal structure, to roughly understand what you want out of your career. Do you want to be an artist? What kind? Do you want to develop yourself career-wise? How? Well, and how much time are you going to put into it? Talking about your plans is not evaluated in terms of right or wrong. What's important here is to see how you argue and what you think. Moreover, there can be a lot of new and "fresh" in the thoughts of artists who have not yet been in production.
• Expectations. The first point about learning about the company will help you here. Having familiarized yourself with information about it, you will be able to understand what you expect from the studio and what projects you are interested in. You will also have an idea of why you want to work for this company and formulate your unique answer.

3. Prepare questions for the interviewers.

Any interview is a two-way negotiation process. These negotiations include not only the employer's assessment of you but also your assessment of the position, company, environment, conditions, etc. Our tips in this paragraph can be perceived as some kind of programming, so let's limit ourselves to light tips ;) Find out about the responsibilities, the employer's expectations of the position, work plans and schedules, performance evaluations, and the company's strategic goals. These are just talking points, and you can generate several questions that are important to you at once in each one.?

4. Practice your answers.?

The point may seem funny, but it is one that will allow you to relax a bit. Practice your answers with friends during an online game or at home alone. This practice will help you feel more confident during the interview, and it will also allow you to estimate how long your answers take and thus calculate them and improve your wording. Try not to neglect this point, because being calm and confident will let you say more and show your stress tolerance.?

In fact, these are the fundamental things that make up a lengthy and structured dialog. Additional topics are bound to come up during the conversation, but practicing the ones we've outlined above will still make all parties feel more comfortable. Of course, any theory needs to be backed up with practice. So keep a few examples of how not to (!) do things. They don't refer to any particular point; they are all different stories from practice.?

Story 1. Let's be honest, we don't cross a candidate if he or she is late. Of course, there is a limit to which everyone is sympathetic: no more than 20 minutes. But if a person arrives much earlier, it's very disruptive. We all got our dose of stress: both the candidate who arrived an hour early and now stands waiting for his time and the interviewees from the company. Everyone started to feel rushed, confused, and uncomfortable.

Story 2. In our interviews, we analyze the test tasks, and at the same time, questions arise in the course of the analysis. It happens that in the middle we realize that a person has done this test incompletely or has not done it at all (yes, yes, it happens too). You may say, But there is a portfolio; you can easily check the level of work there. Yes, there is, done with a mentor or step-by-step through a course. So step-by-step, the person did not understand anything :)?

Story?3. Video call is very important to us when hiring for a remote work format. We have a lot of respect for candidates who work, and it doesn't matter if it's related to gamedev. But please never hold a call from a forest where you're running around with a walkie-talkie, a marketplace checkout point where you're arguing with customers at the same time, or any other public place (both examples are pure truth). Of course, even in such cases, we brought the conversation to its logical conclusion, but the candidate was not considered afterwards. You can always reach an agreement with HR, explain the situation, and schedule the call for another time. We will definitely go to a meeting and can conduct an interview at almost any time, from early morning to late evening.?

Story 4. Changing your mind about going to an interview (aka having time to get another offer) is a normal practice. But only as long as you keep HR in the loop. It takes two minutes for you to write a few words saying you can't come up. And for us, if things unexpectedly go wrong, we have to reorganize our entire workday. Please be sympathetic and keep everyone informed in a timely manner.

Story 5. We exist in a competitive environment. Literally everything is competing, from developers to staff. The main thing is not to forget about respect for others in competition. Do not think that interviewers will be pleased to hear negative feedback about your previous job. There's a fine line on this topic: you can talk about what you didn't like in order to ask questions and give your future employer a broader understanding of whether they can offer you better terms. But never reduce the dialog to negative destructiveness.

Hopefully, after this article, there will be fewer stories like this. Although, to be honest, we will miss them :)

Don't be afraid of interviews, because at any outcome, it is a valuable step towards your professional growth and gaining useful experience. And if successful, it will lead to the development of your career and new great opportunities.