Game development is fun to put your artistic talent and technical skills to work. But apart from the fun side, it allows you to earn a living working as a professional game developer. However, the best way to kickstart your game developer career is to create a strong resume/CV. That’s the first step to getting hired.
Several pieces of information are necessary to help you create a CV that gets you a job. First, you have to decide if you’re writing your work experience by relevance or chronological order? Are you using resume help in a creative or formal format? Companies tend to look out for employees with passion and the relevant skills and experience for the gaming industry. This article provides some resume help with tips for creating a professional game developer CV and what you need to be successful in this career.
Tips for formatting your resume
Your resume format is important as it ensures that your relevant experience and skills stand out. For a game developer, this is the common format to use:
- Contact information
- Resume objective or summary
- Skills
- Work experience
- Education
- Projects
Contact information and Header
This includes your full name written in large font followed by your job title. This section also includes other personal information such as phone number, professional email address and address or location (although this isn’t always necessary). You can also include links to your LinkedIn profile or portfolio.
Resume objective or summary
This resume section allows you to pitch yourself to the manager and grab their attention. You’re expected to state your goals and how the company may benefit from hiring you. Include some of the phrases or skills listed in the job description post. For example:
Game developer with 5+ years of experience and proficiency in C++, C# and TypeScript. Working knowledge of JavaScript and Python. Experienced in the design and implementation of solutions and looking to take up a similar role within a progressive organization.
Skills
This section succeeds your objective statement and is where you show all the relevant skills for this job. You’re allowed to mention some of the relevant skills in the job description, increasing your chances of getting hired into the job. Make sure you start with the most relevant skills and list as much as possible but ensure you aren’t blatantly lying on your resume.
Work experience
The work experience section allows you to elaborate on the previous organizations you worked at, your role, and how they’re similar to the position you’re applying for. Use the reverse-chronological order when listing your work experience and the period you worked for the employers.
Also, summarize your responsibilities in each role and your achievements and accomplishments. It’s best to start each line with an action word such as developed, led, created, wrote, etc. This allows you to lay more emphasis on your achievements. Remember to use past tense only for previous jobs and present tense for a current position.
This is also the right section to mention your soft skills such as communication, collaboration, problem-solving, leadership, time management, and creativity.
Education
In this section, you’re expected to mention your education status and degree, if you’ve got any, even if it doesn’t relate directly to game development. However, if you have a more general degree like computer science or engineering, you can add bullet points to mention the course’s parts related to game development.
Also, if you’ve completed any professional courses before or earned other certificates, this is the part of your CV where you mention them. Mention the degrees first, but in reverse chronological order if you attended multiple schools. Your professional development work can come after this.
Projects
If you have loads of experience in this career, this section may not be necessary to write. However, if you’re an entry-level professional just starting this career, your best bet is to include this section and highlight a couple of your recent projects. You may also add a link to your portfolio so they can see more samples.
Ten tips game developers need to know for a successful career
- Understand the difference between a game developer and a game designer.
- Learn computer programming.
- Know the different game design patterns.
- Learn more about 3D graphics
- Be purposeful when playing games
- Have good time management skills
- Have problem-solving skills
- Improve your communication skills
- Be active in the gaming community
- Start with smaller targets
Conclusion
The resume writing tips in this article will help you develop a solid game developer resume. However, you can improve it by sending it to a CV editing service to go through it and work on it.
