CV and Cover Letter – How to Improve

For the week 9 presentation, we were given another talk on employability, this time focusing entirely on the CV and Cover letter whilst the last talk focused of generally getting us out there and finding the job market.

Straight off the bat, we were told that young applicants lacks greatly in both the skills and experience to find employment in their work sectors. Experience would pose the greatest problem as it’s required to get almost any job as a 3D artist but at the same, time no one is willing to give you the opportunity. Of course I could attempt to contact a game company close to home in the Derbyshire area and ask for work experience but this would be a huge financial drain and would force me to live with my parents until my experience had built up enough to find paid employment. 

On the other hand, I could attempt to find a part time job, attempting to take low-paying freelance work (we’ll get on to this in detail later on) or even join a dedicated modding team. With engines such as Unreal Engine 4 being free to publish on and already owning legitimate copies of my software packages, there would be direct financial risk here. I could even pursue modelling/ map making contests in hopes of gaining experience, making connections and the possibility of attracting future employers as I have mentioned before but let us get back on topic.

Lets start with the top 10 skill shortages amongst graduates;

Commercial Awareness – 67% 

Basically, do you know the company you’re applying for, are you aware of what would be expected of you, what would you would be given and the general business side of the company you wish to work. How did you put yourself out there? How do you make yourself a favourable candidate. With some individuals, commercial awareness becomes second nature, especially with the more curious people but others simply wish to develop their skillset, become good artists and sit at a desk, completing their day to day task. How are you going to show yourself off to the employer?

Communication Skills – 64% 

It may seem quite self-explanatory at first but do you truly know how to put your ideas and opinions forward in a way that is easily understood by all those in the room? Communication skills are the backbone of all leadership, team work and social activities. The better people can get along with you, the easier it would be to make friends and even break the ice in interviews. If you suffer from anxiousness or are very easily feel the effects of stress, this may be an incredibly awkward point to get past but I personally found video recording and editing to be a great way to build self-confidence. Without self-confidence, even the best employee could trip up before they get their opportunity to shine.

Leadership – 33% 

This is quite an awkward one as it simply involves proving you are a personal capable of leading a team. This experience could be anything from a part time job from your past that gave you an authority position, a breakdown of events where you successfully took charge in a mature and constructive fashion or even evidence of team building exercises from your youth. For many, attending cadets gave them this experience very early in life and if you do not currently have team building experience, it’s important to gain this before the course has finished. 

Ability to work in a team – 33% 

This one is quite self-explanatory. How well do you work with other people? Very reliant on your social skills, can you get past any personal feelings in a worktime environment for the benefit of the project? Can you be polite, courteous, share your skills and take any action that would help improve the team, involving even time management? It’s a small world in the game industry, so try to make friends otherwise it could come back at you when you begin to seek employment. 

Problem Solving – 32%

Do you have the ability to solve problems? Personally I find it quite enjoyable and do not like to back away from a challenge. This is the same reason I hate taking the easy way out if I wish to accomplish something but don’t posses the ability. As we’re still in a learning environment, if I cannot get something to work, I’ll find documentation, tutorials or generally keep trying until the issue is fixed. It may seem like a waste in some people’s eyes but every small victory adds up, permanently improving your workflow for the future. I can see many people avoiding this mentality as it is highly stressful and impossible to create time estimates especially when the problem could simply be down to the software itself.

Conceptual ability – 21%

Can you think creatively about a problem or even just think outside the box to find an obvious solution. Can you look at a piece of work or abstract idea and create an understanding of it or even develop these creative ideas yourself. Practically, can you open your mind to new ideas and learn from them to benefit the workplace/ your job placement/ the company as a whole.

Subject Knowledge & Competence – 19%

Can you understand the work given to you, the subject matter and work independently if required? This is incredibly important for any job otherwise many man hours would be spent simply child-minding. Of course if it’s a new job, you will require guidance but it will hit a stage where not only will you be left to work yourself, you may then be put in charge of other employees. Having adequate subject knowledge and competence either way will be built with time but a strong foundation should be present, especially in something as demanding as the games industry.

Foreign languages – 12%

With only 12% of applicants having foreign language skills, its an incredibly lacking point. Everyone will have studied foreign language at GCSE but very few actually continue onwards with it. It may seem useless when applying to join the game industry but bear in mind that many larger companies are not just based in America and England, many game companies branch out to areas such as India, Germany, and France etc… It’s an impossible task to learn a second language alongside university but it’s a good point to bear in mind for the future.  

Numeracy – 19%

How are you basic mathematics? We’re not looking to go in to industry as programmers where this would really shine but when working with game engines, having basic maths skills could help save a lot of time in anything from asset management to UI. For all we know, we could join a game company and be provided with an in-house engine that relies on command lines. Even something as simple as ensuring props are scaled properly across a level would be much faster if you could perform basic equations in your mind whilst working.  

Good General Education – 15%

Of course your education is important for any job application so having good GCSE’s and A levels/ College degrees can benefit you greatly in the long run although when applying for an artist roll for the game industry, will they be just as important? They can be a good indicator for the individuals work ability but when our employability is based almost solely on the skills showcased on our portfolios/ showreels, it makes past qualifications seem a little useless.

With all these key areas covered, what have we learnt so far?

-Without covering the same area twice-

From Real Time Environment Development;

-Modularity

-Time management

-Communicating Ideas

-Presentation Skills

-Industry Workflow

-Independent Work

3D Rigging Systems;

-Ability to learn new software techniques

-Minor Programming

-Competence

-How to prep work for an animator

3D Digital Sculpture

-Mature working attitude

-New software suites

-Basics of anatomy

-Zbrush based workflow

Specialist 3D Project

-Ability to plan

-Work entirely independent

-Plan and showcase ideas

-Respond to feedback/ criticism

-Creativity

Applied Game Art Production

-Team building

- Leadership skills

-Group time management

3D Animation for Games

-Team leadership

-Inter-personnel training

With all these areas covered, we were told that 87% of companies have at least 1 unfilled graduate roll, 67% of applications have been of “insufficient quality” and warned to avoid overwhelming our CVs with content as it could put off possible future employers. The next step covered were the different types of CV; starting with chronological, the CV format orders achievements chronologically which is still desired for almost every roll although it provides very little to no room for creativity which could make your CV stand out from other applicants. Above all else, do not put “references can be supplied on demand” as this is seen on almost every CV. Personally, I have to do this as I don’t currently have too wide a range of references available. 

An alternative would be to format it as a “contemporary” cv, ordering achievements according to skills instead of date, providing a little more reference for the interviewer which could make a world of difference and give you much more creative freedom as well as allowing you to organise the CV based on the job role. For an internship/ placement or graduate roll, this could be perfect. My current CV format follows the Chronological pattern so this will need to be edited before I can start applying for any game related job position.

The Housekeeping/ rough boundaries to follow;

-No more than 2 sides of A4 (less is more

-Do not include pictures

-Ensure your contact details are readily available

-Use a professional font

-A font size between 10-12 seem to work the best

-Keep all language and vocabulary professional.

-Avoid large blocks of text as it can be hard to read.

-Bullet points are key

-Put your best possible points straight up first, sell yourself.

For the skills section, look at what is most relevant for the roll and list these with examples. For example, the huge list of skills we learnt across the past two years. These are invaluable and have been drilled in enough that we have plenty of justified examples of each.

Last of all, we should be writing a cover letter for each job applied for. Make sure a lot of research is done in to the company first, what they would be looking for and try to sell them what they want with a candidate. At this stage, a bit of self-confidence and a lot of research in to the job roll could go a long way.