Interview with Laura Lashua: Expert Recruiter<\/strong>
\nLaura Lashua has 33 years of recruiting experience and 13 of those years have been solely for the game industry.\u00a0 She is the founder of Vertex Search & Consulting <\/a>based in Washington, a well-known and often used recruiting firm among the largest game publishers and developers in the world.\u00a0 With Laura\u2019s experience and reputation, any advice she has for students based on her \u201cinsider\u201d information should be seen as gold!\u00a0 After interviewing Laura, she provided some excellent information I thought students should know.\u00a0 Here it is paraphrased for your sponge-like minds to soak up and use so you don\u2019t make the same mistakes everyone else makes:<\/p>\n

Advice on Resumes<\/strong>
\nLaura says the biggest mistake a person can make when submitting a resume is delivering a resume that is unfocused.\u00a0 She says your resume needs custom tailoring towards the specific position for which you are applying.\u00a0 Laura recommends a \u00bd page cover letter that very specifically communicates how the candidate meets the needs for the job.\u00a0 She says, resumes should be concise, solely focusing on communicating the fit for the position.<\/p>\n

Advice on Interviews<\/strong>
\nLaura says that many candidates she works with do not think of the first interview as a sales pitch.\u00a0 Rather, candidates focus on what the employer can offer them and this is a huge mistake.\u00a0 When you are interviewing, your entire strategy and focus should be on persuasively communicating why you are the best candidate for the position.\u00a0 Laura says you should thoroughly research the company and know as much as humanly possible about their background, their products, their financials, press releases, etc. and that you should play their games so you can talk about them.\u00a0 She points out that employers will often ask questions such as, \u201cWhat would you have done differently?\u201d\u00a0 If you haven\u2019t actually done your research or played their products, you won\u2019t offer an intelligent response.\u00a0 Additionally, Laura says one of the most common mistakes candidates make is that they don\u2019t show enthusiasm.\u00a0 You need to show enthusiasm, smile, and be excited to interview for the opportunity.\u00a0 Employers want someone who wants the job.\u00a0 Laura also says that you must have a focused portfolio or you won\u2019t be considered.\u00a0 She says even if you\u2019re going for a position that doesn\u2019t traditionally require a portfolio such as a Producer or a marketing position, having a presentation, a proposal, or some other demonstrations of your work are great sales tools that will always help.<\/p>\n

Advice on How to Stand Out Among Competition<\/strong>
\nHaving recruited for the top game companies across the globe, Laura has witnessed what makes candidates stand out.\u00a0 Laura says the best candidates are always knowledgeable of the latest technologies and have experimented with them or used them.\u00a0 They constantly do research to stay in tune with the latest and greatest because this industry changes rapidly.\u00a0 She also says the best candidates are individuals who have a solid work history.\u00a0 Laura says she sees a lot of \u201cJob hoppers\u201d and that this reflects poorly on a candidate.\u00a0 She says this problem is most present among younger candidates who tend to \u201cjob hop\u201d more than older candidates.\u00a0 In the game industry, experience is so much of a requirement that Laura says if you get a job in the industry, even if it isn\u2019t your dream job, you should try to stay there for at least 2 years.\u00a0 Laura jokingly says \u201ccompanies want a candidate who will stay so long, they will die with them.\u201d\u00a0 Although she laughed when she said it, Laura was pointing out the importance of experience and how it demonstrates dependability and loyalty.\u00a0 A \u201cJob hopper\u201d is a risky choice for a company because it indicates the candidate could potentially leave at a moment\u2019s notice or that the candidate doesn\u2019t really know what they want; both are negative signs.<\/p>\n

Final Pieces of Advice from Laura<\/strong>
\nWhen I asked Laura where she sees most of the job opportunity for the game industry, from 13 years of observation, Laura says the hot spots for opportunity are in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Boston.\u00a0 Students need to know this because moving to one of these hot spots is likely necessary to find opportunity in the game industry.\u00a0 Laura says that candidates who don\u2019t have much experience in the game industry need to make the most of networking opportunities such as attending the Game Developer\u2019s Conference and maximizing the use of LinkedIn<\/a>.\u00a0 Another \u201cinside\u201d tip Laura suggested was that college graduates should use Google and type the name of the game company you\u2019re interested in and the words \u201cUniversity Recruiter\u201d after it to find the university recruiter for that company.\u00a0 The search will likely yield the recruiter\u2019s name.\u00a0 Why is this a good strategy?\u00a0 Because you will help them find you, the candidate, without them having to pay a fee to a staffing service to find a candidate.\u00a0 Laura also recommended learning as much as you can about social networking, and mobile games, not just focusing on console games.\u00a0 In fact, Laura says that mobile games and social networking applications are the future and currently represent very profitable areas for the game industry despite the struggling economy.\u00a0 This means candidates who focus in these areas will likely have more opportunity with the increased focus in these profitable areas.\u00a0 Lastly, Laura said it can take 6 months to find a job, even for the most experienced candidate who is highly active in their job search.\u00a0 What does that mean? It means you\u2019ll have to plan and start searching for a job, at least 6 months ahead of the time you\u2019ll want to have it.<\/p>\n

Finally, getting your foot in the door is more difficult with a Recruiter such as Laura.\u00a0 The reason is students typically don\u2019t have adequate experience and companies hire Recruiters like Laura to find niche experience.\u00a0 Recruiters must deliver candidates that fit the needs of the employer if they want to satisfy their customers and inexperienced recent graduates don\u2019t typically offer what Recruiters need to find for their clients.\u00a0 Often, however, Laura talks to new graduates, reviews their resumes and then 2 years later, she represents them after they have gained a couple years of experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interview with Laura Lashua: Expert Recruiter Laura Lashua has 33 years of recruiting experience and 13 of those years have been solely for the game industry.\u00a0 She is the founder of Vertex Search & Consulting based in Washington, a well-known and often used recruiting firm among the largest game publishers and developers in the world.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,58,60,61],"tags":[286,287,281,89,90,283,284,278,280,289,282,288,83,24,85,172,38,167,25,279,285],"class_list":["post-444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-careerdev","category-interviewadvice","category-jobsearch","category-resumeadvice","tag-advice-on-how-to-work-in-game-industry","tag-app-development","tag-breaking-into-game-development","tag-career-advice","tag-career-tips","tag-game-design","tag-game-design-industry","tag-game-industry","tag-how-to-break-into-the-video-game-industry","tag-how-to-stand-out","tag-how-to-work-in-the-game-industry","tag-how-to-write-a-resume","tag-interview-advice","tag-interviewing","tag-interviewing-tips","tag-job-advice","tag-job-search","tag-jobs","tag-resume-writing","tag-video-game-industry","tag-working-in-game-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/careertipster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/careertipster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/careertipster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/careertipster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/careertipster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/careertipster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2029,"href":"http:\/\/careertipster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions\/2029"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/careertipster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/careertipster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/careertipster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/careertipster.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}