UPDATED Hi, well loks like im looking for a job, so if anyone has some free time, could you please look over my resume which can be found... [edit] UPDATED 12/09/2004 Here and give any feedback posible, be it good or bad and any suggestions etc etc thanks in advance Chris !!!! all updated for new feedback please :) !!!! [Edited by - CrysAk on September 12, 2004 10:05:12 AM]

As someone in the game industry who has interviewed hundreds and hired dozens, I think I can speak from the perspective of an American Publisher/ Developer. I have hired designers, lead designers, programers, lead programers and producers. I don't usually hire artists, which is a different thing.

This is too long. Whenever I post a job listing for games, I get hundred of resumes. I don't have the time to read them. I probably read three sentences of a resume before I sort it into the 'reject' or the 'maybe' pile.

When I am hiring I look for two things first: Work experience and education. Work experience that doesn't show a skill relevent to games is not important to me. I don't care that someone worked for a restaurant, but I might care that someone worked on newspaper (writing skills) or on a play (implies creativity, a knowledge of drama).

All I want to know about your eduction is where you went to school, what degree you got, and maybe the most impressive honor.

I am impressed if someone worked on a mod, or made a game themselves. But you just need to include a link and a brief description what you did on the game. That's all.

If you can't boil down why you should get hired for a job to a single page, you don't know enough about what the employer is looking for. Its a good idea to do different resumes for diffent jobs.

Definately shorten this resume. If a six page resume landed on my desk, it might get a glance before being "round" filed.

I've handed out a few bad resumes in my time, so I can give some advice on what to leave out.

Get rid of the marital status bit. This is not relevant and may be illegal in some areas due to anti-discrimination laws. The only time an employeer should be asking about that sort of thing is for insurance purposes after you've been hired.

Unless you figure to be helping out at company parties, your bar staff work experience is totally irrelavent for the position you are after.

The additional info and interests section should be deleted. Put the relevent stuff from it into a cover letter and leave out your personal interests, unless they have a direct bearing on the position you are after.

If the employeer wants to know your grades, he'll ask for a transcript, these don't belong in a resume.

I'd reccomend being a little less verbose in your work experience section, point form is good. And what ever you do, don't put in information on why you left the job, particulary if the reason was for being late for work / deadlines. This may come up in an interview, in which case you should give it a positive spin, but you'll never get that interview if you keep it in your resume.

Remember that a position may get hundreds of applications and only a handfull of those will be called in for an interview. The hundreds of resumes need to be culled down to a few, don't give the reviewer any reason to cull yours.

If you have an employment resource centre nearby, see if you can get them to review your resume with you. Bad resumes cost me a few jobs, so get as many people as you can to review it.

Good luck out there.

One page plus a cover letter (no more than one page also). While I once got a job with a rambling stream of thoguht resume, I wouldn't recommend it - I knew the people there IRL and knew they'd read anything I put on paper.

Yep, I have to agree with the above posters. A few thoughts/reiterations of what others have said:

1a) it's far too long - I've been developing software professionally for the past 10 years and my CV still fits on two pages.

1b) You should assume the person reading your CV is going to spend no longer than 30 seconds on it - get your most important information across in that time; if they get "hooked" by what they see in that 30 seconds, they'll read the rest/look closer.

1c) And that doesn't mean use a smaller font to try and get it all onto a single page! - my CV uses an 11 point font, more spacing, and proper headings and still fits.


2) specifying gender is very outdated, its totally irrelevent, and may even make the person reading wonder whether they're discrimitating in any way by knowing that informaton.


3a) likewise marital status doesn't really matter - it doesn't really convey any information that's useful to an employer.

3b) Once upon a time marital status was probably used to guess at things such as willingness to travel; whether you're likely to stay put at the company etc. If it matters to a company, they can ask you in the interview.


4) no need to specify the notice period - if they're interested, they'll ask you how soon you can start.


5) something you might wany to add is your nationality, or at very least something indicating whether you'll need a visa/work permit to work for that company. Once again for equal opportunities reasons, this shouldn't be "race" related since it's irrelevent.


6) References don't need to be specified - just put "references available upon request" in your cover letter. References are often only contacted after interview as a final "due dilligence" step. Your references should also be briefed that they'll be getting a call etc.


7a) list previous employment in reverse chronological order so that what you did most recently hits the readers eye. The only exception to this is if the last job you did wasn't really relevent.

7b) to highlight the above, I quickly skim read your CV as a tired HR manager would - on first pass I totally missed the work at Pivotal, real work at a real games company... the first skim only saw "bar work", and then "voluntary/hobbyist/mod" work.

7c) a glass collector/pot washer definately shouldn't be the first "employment history" someone sees! - in fact since you do have actual industry experience, however short, I'd probably leave that off or even condense to just "bar work" and the name of the place.


8) Don't put your educational grades - if they matter to the company, they'll ask at interview.


9a) I think what's taking most of the space is you're being far too "chatty" - the HR person has 30 seconds, save your "chat" for the interview, that's where it belongs! Stick to the facts, and try to keep the emotion out of the CV.

9b) These kinds of things: "but still skate quite a lot with my friends in the summer for a good laugh"..."however they like a different style of music to me so we don’t go to as many as we would like to"..."from small things such as general fitness cycling to and from work; up hill every day"..."afar as the public know and is actively acting as a front for the game secretly in development in its place with updates on the webpage to show we are still in development with this extremely high quality mod that is sure to please almost every mod community member out there" - either don't belong on a CV or could be stripped right down IMO.


10) Something that doesn't jump out of the page is your core proficiences/skills - the HR person/agent (in a medium-large company) will have been given a list of basic "skills required" by the development team who need you, they'll try to match/reject as quickly as possible based on that list (imagine you've got a pile of 600 CVs for one entry level job - the quicker you put them into yes/no piles the better).

Personally I list my core skills right after my name and address! - it lets the person reading see immediately whether I have the skills they want; if I do, they'll continue reading.


11a) Don't mention any negative things on your CV!! -:
"whenever I can afford it", "however not to good at it", "however they like a different style of music to me so we don’t go to as many as we would like to", "lack of work available", "do and also being on-time for both work and deadlines which was the reason behind my dismissal at ******* *****, if anything that was the biggest lesson and from that I am sure never to fall ill fated to it again."

11b) Don't mention reason for leaving either.

11c) If there's something crap in your past which would cause a gap, just leave that gap; or a trick is to just put the year instead of the month.

11c) If the company is interested, then they will ask you at the interview "so why did you leave company X?", "that was a short time at company Y, why?", "what are your weaknesses and how are you addressing them?"


12) To me, it looks like you've used the descriptions of what you've done on mods in an attempt to bulk out the CV - don't - while keenness and experience in the "mod" scene is definately a good thing, it shouldn't take more of the CV than the rest of the information about you and other experience.


13) For each section, or major chronological event, pick out all the best points and sort them into order of relevence for the job. Reword/restructure your sentences and paragraphs to make the most of those key points so they're more likely to be picked up during a skim read.


14) Always remember, if your CV gets more than 30 seconds, you're lucky - make the most of that time!

thanks guys for all the feedback :) ive gone through and writen a 1, 1/2 page of notes and ill start making the changes soon, then ill update this thread (and the topic with the date updated) and if you could giv any other feedback, that would be great :)

thanks again, its been a greeat help

Just to add one more thing to everything else - please check it over for grammatical errors, not just spelling. This was definitely a case of "less is more"; the more I read, the more (as a manager) I was turned off by your writing skills.

"...wanted to be a level designer but until recently have had the resources to live out this dream."

This is just one example, but I found a few of these. Also: repetition is bad in a resume; if I saw the word "learnt" one more time I thought I'd scream. Synonyms are your friend :) I learned, I grew, I was educated, It taught me, et cetera.

One last suggestion: accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative. As an employer I do not want to see that you got Cs and Ds in your subjects, I don't care if they're technically unrelated. Don't disclose what isn't necessary to you GETTING the job (don't hide the necessary either!)

ahh thanks for that (yea my writing skills are far from desirable), should really work on improving them after the ton of other stuff i have to do at the moment. the next version will definatly be an improvment

thanks again

In addition:

Probably worth noted that different countries have different ideas about CVs - I know a guy from the UK that sent his CV to many companies in Canada without response. He show it to a friend out there and after dropping some sections and restructuring he walked straight into the next job.

Remove personal qualities - these are 'ghost themes'. (Meaning they should be obvious from the rest of the text you write, eg 'you enjoy a challenge' can be demonstrated through the projects you worked on).

UK employers are definately interested in your 'out of work time' activities - they have the ability to show dedication (playing a music instrument), team work (eg football) etc. Leave them in, but be brief (short sharp focuesed sentences, noting particularly achievements). As mentioned above don't admit to the bad bits!

A further note on this section - show clear thinking. Here you start with playing music, wandering into cars, skating and then bikes, before returning to music.

Work experience - keep it on target. Highlight major themes, skills and responsibilities. You must show continuous world (or where its true - eg you may have gone travelling, but that should be brought out in the interests section). Employers will worrying if you weren't working, and won't invite you to interview to explain.

The CV screen process might be somewhat automated. There are many companies that recieve so many CVs that they scan them first, and downselect/filter on word combinations. For example CVs that don't contain the words 'knowledge', 'experience', 'understanding', 'C++', etc would be instantly dropped.

However we aware that the next stage of the filter will be a 'jargon buster' so don't cram in useless phrases like 'I worked within a dynamic cohesive environment leveraging knowledge to develop innovative solutions'.

Unless you are applying to the marketing dept of course....

Final word - your CV should be elegant, professional and, above all, readable. I won't employ a coder with an unstructured CV, nor would I employ a artist who didn't display style and creativity (and usability) on their CV.

Quote: Original post by EricTrickster
Just to add one more thing to everything else - please check it over for grammatical errors, not just spelling.

Definately!!! I once sent out a resume that stated that I had mayored in computer science. Spell checkers don't account for context. My worst error was transposing 2 digits of my phone number in my contact information. The depressing thing is I got no calls even after I fixed it.