As the gaming industry is growing exponentially and the average turnover rate for gaming professionals is 2 to 5 years, gaming companies may have roles to fill now and likely in the future. When you want to hire talent in gaming, there’s a lot of competition. In-demand, highly skilled candidates may receive multiple offers when they land on the market. Speed matters, as hiring processes that are too long and drawn-out can turn off top candidates.
Use the following tips to streamline your hiring process in gaming and hire better candidates, more quickly.
Create Informative Job Descriptions
Save time when hiring by creating informative, detailed job descriptions that tell candidates what they want to know about the job. This includes:
- A clear view of daily responsibilities
- Realistic salary range or precise salary offered
- Benefits included with the position
- “Absolutely necessary” qualifications, with the addition of “nice to have” skills if you want to add those
- Description of the company culture and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts
Listing the above details can help you find candidates who better match the role. You also want to be inclusive and widen the talent pool when possible, so feature neutral copy that includes all genders, abilities and backgrounds.
Another way to streamline hiring is to rethink job requirements. For example, is a 4-year degree really necessary? Would 2 years of experience work instead of 3 years? Being more flexible in your requirements can attract a wider candidate pool.
Ask Job-Specific Questions Instead of Requiring Cover Letters
If you want to get to know a candidate, ditch cover letter requirements and use a more strategic approach. A 2022 study of 632 gaming professionals found 84.4% of candidates prefer answering job-specific questions over submitting a cover letter.
Providing job-specific questions offers an advantage to you as an employer, as you can learn how candidates would react in situations they’d face in the role you’re offering. You can include some questions that touch on personality, but know that gaming candidates prefer structured questions rather than having to write a cover letter themselves from scratch.
Shorten the Interview Process
The same study mentioned above found 42% of candidates feel comfortable doing two interviews at the most, while 40.3% named three interviews as their upper limit. Before you begin the hiring process, strategize your candidate interviews and hiring timeline, including a decision on how many interview rounds the process will involve.
Gaming candidates appreciate knowing how many interviews they can expect to go through and how long the hiring process will take. When you prepare the interview process ahead of time, you can offer transparency candidates crave and keep them engaged as they move through the process.
Eliminate Testing Requirements
As we detailed in our post on alternatives to whiteboard testing, testing requirements frequently disengage otherwise talented and qualified professionals. Whiteboard coding sessions produce similar results to stress-inducing tests. They can result in a misrepresentation of a candidate’s talent and cause companies that require them to narrow their candidate pool and prevent it from being as diverse as it could be.
Alternatives to whiteboard testing include:
- Looking at a gaming portfolio and online coding experience
- Offering a private evaluation
- Presenting a programming problem that’s similar to a work task
Offering these alternatives to testing can give you a better understanding of the candidate’s talent and how capable they are at exceling for your company. You can also speed up the time-to-hire, since you’ll be able to retain a wider candidate pool with these alternatives.
Keep Candidates Engaged
You’ll increase time-to-hire when talented candidates drop out of the process. To retain interest with your top candidates, make sure to:
- Provide prompt feedback and updates on next steps
- Give candidates access to a hiring automation tool, so they can check in on where they are in the process
- Offer a reliable resource for support and answers to questions when needed
When a company doesn’t respond to a candidate or doesn’t offer transparency in the hiring process, the employer risks a candidate taking a job elsewhere or simply disengaging from proceeding with the company. Treat candidates how you’d expect to be treated, by offering clear expectations and reliable communication throughout the hiring process.
Work with a Gaming Recruiter
Finally, a surefire way to streamline your hiring process is to partner with a gaming recruiter. The benefits of working with a recruiter to hire positions in gaming include:
- Immediate access to a qualified talent pipeline
- Leads for the exact type of talent you need
- Always-on support for candidates to keep them engaged
ggLocators can assist with direct hire, contract and contract-to-hire staffing for gaming companies. Contact us for a free consultation.
