I have education and 1 year of game industry experience. The studio where I worked recently went into administration and I got redundant. Now I have answered a couple of adds administrated by agencies. Several agents has returned to me, offering contact with specific companies. My question is, should I use the agencies help, or should I go to the companies directly? A friend of mine says that it's less chance to get a job if you're using an agency. Thanks

I see no harm in using an agency, as long as it's free for you. It might open up more opportunities.

However, if you apply for a job without going through an agency, the company won't have to pay a (often substantional) fee to the agency when they hire you, making you a less risky hire.

Quote: Original post by Rattenhirn
I see no harm in using an agency, as long as it's free for you. It might open up more opportunities.

However, if you apply for a job without going through an agency, the company won't have to pay a (often substantional) fee to the agency when they hire you, making you a less risky hire.

Yeah, that's my concern. If companies can chose between staff directly or through agencies. Would they ever chose the one from the agencies?

Quote: Original post by 51mon
Yeah, that's my concern. If companies can chose between staff directly or through agencies. Would they ever chose the one from the agencies?

All other things being equal, of course, they won't choose the one from the agencies. However, if the agencies wouldn't think they could place you somewhere, they wouldn't want you as clients, would they?

Also, nothing stops you from trying on your own first and then try an agency.

You can do both. Apply for job openings you know of. And when a headhunter says they know of an opening, ask them where it is. If it's someplace you hadn't already applied to, then let the headhunter submit you for that job... and that job only. Don't let them blitz the world with your resume. Pre-approve their submitting you, on a case-by-case basis.

Headhunters make money by presenting a set of *unique* potential candidates (usually 10) to an employer and often getting a cut from the salary the hire gets. By *unique*, I mean names the customer doesn't have already.

Hiring is an EXCLUSION process. I don't know how much I can emphacize this.

By going through the company's web site, you end up in the huge pile of resumes that gets sifted through each day. HR clerks will take less than 15 seconds to make a decision to put you in the REJECT bin. If you designed your resume to make it easy for the poor clerks to put you in the MAYBE pile, you just advanced to the next step in the process. And so on until HR comes up with a list of 10 potential recruits to interview.

Here's my question to you. Do you prefer starting with a huge big pile in HR or try making it to the top-10 list a paid headhunter will give to the same company directly?

> Also, nothing stops you from trying on your own first and then try an agency.

I'm proposing the exact opposite. Start with headhunters, then go through the normal HR channel if this fails.

-cb