I''ve just been given my very first interview for a game programmer role in a very high profile company. No doubt I am chuffed to bits and really excited but feel at a disadvantage because I have had no previous experience in interviews with game companies. I have read many articles about it but does anyone have any more advice and tips? What can I expect? What sorts of questions will they ask? I really, really want this job and can''t afford to make any mistakes.

Hello Billy Lee,

Great, good luck!

Here are some tips.

1) know what the company has done, ie what games.
2) be honest about your skills, but also point out your strengths.
3) Know wat you want to do and know what they need and see how you can fit in.
4) try not to talk about money until they come back with an offer.
5) if you can't get money try vaction time.
6) ask about typical work load, ie hours worked per week.
7) ask about how long others stay at the company, if they have high turn over watch out, means there not doing something right.
8) ask about furture path for moving up the ladder.

That is about all the things I can thing of.

Some companies ask for question about how you would code something, or give a short test.

See if you can talk to someone doing the job you would be doing.

Good luck,

Lord Bart

[edited by - lord bart on October 31, 2003 8:25:19 AM]

Here are some questions that don''t hurt and in fact might help you during the interview:

a) What is the company culture like?

For some companies, culture fit is important. For example, if the company is known to be conservative (as in not taking risks), then emphacize your realizations where you saw problems coming along the way and you found solutions before the problems became nightmares. Conversely, a very innnovative-driven culture will tend to measure your ''bat average'', i.e. how many times you took risks, how many times you were successful, and what is it you did to manage the risks involved (this last item is crucial here): i.e. did you thoroughly brief management about the possible risks involved, or did you plan your implementation in milestones, or manage it some other clever way?

b) What are the top 3 things I need to do right to be successful in my position?

The answer should be in line with the company culture''s, but for some reasons, some companies have very specific behavior patterns they seek and that transcends culture. For example, honesty in all communications (there are no secrets nor hidden agendas) or be willing to make sacrifices for the greater good of the company (live through crunch mode periods, fix other people''s bugs, hacking your pristine code in order to ship a product on schedule, etc) are the usual culprits. Those values will evolve along the way depending on you role in the company, so ask this one on a regular basis (every 6 mo or so).

c) What are the top things I should be learning right away to have an immediate impact in the company?

Yep, an Open Question. A smart tech manager will deflect this to more technical issues like learning the Boost library or Direct3D. An HR manager might revert to culture and general business processes. But overall it shows you are eager to get started, willing to learn new stuff you''re unfamiliar with, and making sure you get your priorities aligned with those of the company. Your goal is to perform like an employee who wants a promotion within the next 12 months.

d) Ask the manager to give you a "real-life" problem he''s currently facing that he would want the new employee to solve on the first day on the job.

Consider the interview as your first day on the job. Given a problem, go through the thinking process in analyzing the issues in light of what you''ve learned from the company so far. Propose solutions that come to mind and explain why you think they will work (it''s ok to make assumptions, but state them verbally). Spend no more than 5-8 minutes and skip details; just give an overview on how you see the problem and ask questions along the way. Prove you''re a natural-born problem solver.

try and be relaxed and take your time to think about and answer questions. Ask questions that you can follow up a strength with, your really trying to sell your talents. "do you all do xyz process for this"...."Well at my last job i''ve had experience with this."

congrats man!

1) Be on time

2) Call and confirm your interview appointment, and ask her what time the company has - tactfully, as I have found that time between what my watch says and what the companies have can vary as much as 10 minutes

3) Practice in front of the mirror either asking yourself questions, trivia pursuit questions, or just reading poetry. This will get you more relaxed with hearing your own voice and keep you concious about your posture, etc

4) Check yourself before you leave your residence and then re-check yourself when you step out of your car at the interview site

5) Keep a copy of resume''s and refferences on hand. If you wrote a game on your own, bring a sample of your source code along, maybe even on a CD-ROM

6) Prepare the night before - make copies, print resumes, and assemble any demo(s) you plan on showing to your perspective employer

7) Remember, you are the best person for the job, you are the man, you can do anything or LEARN anything. You are the person for that job. Get yourself in the mindset that that job was made for you

8) What everybody else said

> What can I expect?

Overall, job hunting is an exclusion process. Getting the interview is a sign you weren''t excluded ... yet. You''ll probably get an interview with HR first, so the questions are pretty much standard: what are your strengths/weaknesses, if you had a choice between option A or B which one would you choose, what made you choose school X, why did you do poorly in subject Y, etc. You''ll then get to be grilled by programmers, and then by the manager under which you will work.

> What sorts of questions will they ask?

As AP mentionned above, programmers are problem solvers. Expect questions about your realizations but more specifically what were the issues and how you solved them. If you don''t know the answer to the question, say so and if possible state a reference where you would find the answer (ex: "its in chapter 6 of the red OpenGL book", or "I would ask a coworker", or "there was an article in C/C++ User''s Journal about this last year"...).

Having been on the other side of the interview table, I kinda like imaginative questions where the answer is not so important as the thinking process and how the candidate is handling it (frustration, lack of patience, raising the right issues, making simplifying assumptions, logic & reasonning, etc). Here were my favorites questions: how would measure the amount of water flowing through the Colorado river? How would you determine how much gazoline is consumed per day in the US (or Canada, or France, whatever). And finally for the management-inclined: you have inherited from an old uncle a low-orbit satellite communication company, which you cannot operate anymore for lack of market; a russian conglomerate offers $120M for the orbitting satellites. What do you do? (it''s more of a series of Q&A to see if the candidate will find a way to get a better price).

-cb

Phone interview? Face-to-face interview?

Need to be specific for specific advice.

Day before my first interview, I wasn''t too sure what the interview would be like. I wrote a small program, just to get the programming mindset on, as I had been focusing on networking/sysadmin tasks recently. Checked that my suit was looking fine. I read up on the company''s web site, about their culture and advice for job seekers, as well as their recent headlines/news blurbs and investment info. I printed off 15 more resumes, exactly like the one I sent in originally (I was going to a panel interview, and had no idea how many on the panel or if they had copies--don''t want to be one copy short and piss someone off in the beginning!). Then I drove to the campus, and found out where to park and where the lobby entrance to the correct building was, and how long it would take me to walk there.

Came home, had a nice dinner a bit earlier than normal, then studied a little bit more. Packed my backpack with a nice working pen, nice portfolio, copies of resume, and one technical book. Double checked my suit, making sure all was in order. Had a few short phone calls with people close to me that were interested in my interview, but kept them no longer than 10 minutes. Then I hung out with my gf, and then laid down in bed a bit early and read some fiction that I had already read and enjoyed (read about 1/2 a book over two hours or so).

Morning of, had a very light breakfast, got a bottle of water and through it in my pack, and got dressed. I still wasn''t too sure what to expect, and was getting a bit nervous by that, so the next part was key. On the way there, listen to good music. For me, I listened to 8 mile about 3 times; a good song getting you pumped up about succeeding. Got their early, waited in the parking lot until 5 minutes before, listening to loud ass music, singing and laughing. I went into the interview pumped up with utter confidence, and I rocked it. After a follow up interview I got the job.

So make sure you know how to get there, that you are 95% prepped the night before, that you have extreme confidence without an ego, be two minutes early (but no more), and have some really good music!

Aftermath - was told that only hesitancy in hiring me was I interviewed too well. They were afraid that I was such a good interviewer that I focused on that, and not how to do a job. LMAO, it was my first one.

Also, I was told that they were extremely impressed when I asked about two major news articles about the company, and how their technology was implemented for another company. All of the interviewers had no idea what I was tlaking about, so I said I had read about it on the web site, and was wondering how they did it. Then I said it sounded like you would have use technology XXX with products YYY and ZZZ to do an ABC solution; it sounds neat. They all kinda just looked at me and said, that''s probably what we did.

So companies like when you show an interest in their stuff; So if you are interviewing for a game company ask some specific question about how they implemented some effect or algo for a previous game, and then say how you thought it may have been done and why it was neat.