You’re probably hands-on with your knowledge of what works and doesn’t work in the fantasy world of developing games. Your intuition combined with your experience is unmatched, not even legends can match it. You’ve been pining for that one job as a gaming developer in the gaming company of your dreams…and yet, you are not landing shortlists.

Where did you go wrong?

The answer lies in your gaming resume. You may be a legend at developing games, but it all boils down to nothing if you can’t replicate the same expertise in a resume.

Given below are the top 5 essentials of a gaming resume that you should know if you want to take home the gaming job of your dreams.

1. Your gaming resume should be relevant

Does this seem too obvious?

If it does, it’s because it is. And yet, most people end up flooding their gaming resumes with trivial information that does not lead anywhere.

Instead of providing relevant information in their resume, most gaming developers tend to make an absolute blunder of their resumes by focusing on the wrong aspects of their career, or in some cases, by providing too much information.

Most recruiters don’t spend more than a handful of seconds evaluating a resume. In fact, according to Ladders, a recruiter spends an average of 6 seconds on a resume. So play it smart and make sure that your gaming resume is relevant and to-the-point.

2. Make the most of the professional experience section

A gaming developer with extensive work experience is more likely to land a job in a top gaming company vis-à-vis a professional with negligible work experience. However, there are rare cases where the latter takes the coveted job home.

How does this happen?

It happens when the gaming professional with less work experience than the highly experienced professional is able to better champion their professional expertise in a resume through a clever manipulation of their work experience.

Knowing and implementing simple resume hacks can revolutionize your gaming resume.

So, here are some tricks to composing the professional experience section:

  • A simple one-liner point is more effective than a bulky paragraph when it comes to communicating your professional expertise in a resume. So do yourselves a favor and stick to crisp one-line points to document the details of your roles & responsibilities.
  • Another trick that has helped time and again is the practice of grouping similar points under unique subheadings. Doing this communicates your key roles & responsibilities to a recruiter in one glance.
  • Use numbers wherever possible. In other words, quantify your achievements. Doing this makes your resume more relevant as it shows your contributions in a more practical, less dramatic manner.

For example, you can compose your work experience details in the following manner:

  • Developed 5+ video games leading to 80% increase in company sales
  • Designed virtual games on depression to raise social awareness on mental health
  • Modified the UX of existing games to enhance gaming experience & retain customers

3. Your skills should be sufficiently endorsed in your gaming resume

Who are you without your skills in a professional world?

Nobody.

Your job here is to ensure that you don’t end up looking like a nobody in your gaming resume.

Your skills will open more doors than you can imagine, so make it a point to endorse the skills that you have picked up in the longevity of your career and make a shiny representation of these skills in your gaming industry.

A pro-tip that works is to make a separate section that is exclusively devoted to your skills. Divide them into two parts:

  • Key Skills” where you represent your game development skills in 2-3 words.
  • Technical Skills” where you make a list of the tools that you have mastered as a gaming developer.

4. Your certifications matter and so does your education

Your educational background and the relevant certifications you have pursued are the bedrocks of your career. They can be fittingly described as the must-have sections of your gaming resume.

They should feature in your gaming resume as it helps you showcase that at least you have the theoretical knowledge and basic skill sets needed to thrive as a gaming developer.

If you don’t have any work experience just yet, but your interest lies in joining the gaming industry as a developer, endorsing the details of your education and relevant certifications or projects in your resume can help boost up your shortlist chances.

Either way, experience or no experience, it is often considered a best industry practice to include these details in your gaming resume as they are an important identification marker of your professional identity.

If you have not illustrated your education or certifications details in your gaming resume just yet, it’s probably best to undo your mistakes and include them in your resume now.

 

Here’s an example of what the education & certifications sections should look like in your gaming resume:

 

5. Your resume should be keyword optimized

You must be wondering; “What does THAT mean?

And you’re justified in thinking along these lines.

So, here’s a quick explanation of what a keyword means in this context.

Keywords are those job-specific or industry-specific skill sets, qualifications, or specific requirements that a particular organization looks for in the ideal candidate for the job vacancy that they are trying to fill.

Moreover, it has the added advantage of being ATS friendly too.

The ATS i.e. the applicant tracking system, which most companies have started using to simplify their recruitment needs, looks for these keywords in a resume. So if your gaming resume has these keywords, it is more likely to pass the ATS test, which means you have more chances of getting shortlisted for the gaming job that you’re after.

Now that you know it’s importance, here’s how you can make the most of these keywords:

  • Identify the keywords in the job description of the jobs that you are targeting.
  • After identifying these keywords, organically incorporate them in your gaming resume.
  • Don’t just blatantly replicate these keywords. Use only those keywords that you can justify using in your resume. In other words, if you have relevant experience in these skill sets, only then should you incorporate them in your gaming industry.

A company can either explicitly list down these keywords, or these keywords could be generously spread out throughout the job description.

Here’s an example of what keywords look like in a job description for a Game Developer job:

Source of image: LinkedIN

Conclusion:

Here’s a quick overview of the key takeaways of this article:

  • Relevance is key.
  • Use one-liner words to describe your roles & responsibilities.
  • Endorse your skills in your gaming resume.
  • Endorse your educational and certifications details.
  • Use relevant keywords in your gaming resume.

Author’s Bio:

Aditya Sharma

On a quest to help professionals across the world land their dream jobs, Aditya lives and breathes Hiration — an AI-powered online resume builder and platform to help job-seekers find their way in the treacherous job market — where he’s a Co-Founder and the unofficial CPO (Chief Problem-solving Officer). He likes to code away his days and nights when he’s not busy disrupting the career space.

 

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