We all know, it can be hard to get into game audio, in all honesty, bloody hard. There are only a handful of jobs out there and a fair few hundred applications.
In my opinion, half the battle is standing out. You could have the most incredible showreel out there, but if no one is watching it, it doesn’t matter. So, I decided to write a blog on resumes (CVs).
I often see folks asking for advice about their resumes, and there are a few common questions that get asked. It pretty much boils down to one question, How do you stand out and be noticed in a sea of applications?
Let’s talk about some of the dos and don’t.
Firstly, some obvious ones but they still need to be said.
Send it as a .pdf not a word doc. as a .pdf.
Name it something unique not “CV-1” or “MyResume” more like “YourName_CV”.
Use hyperlink’s, to link to your portfolio and test all links to make sure they work!
And now for the big one. One page or two. Truth is there is no wrong answer. Well, that’s not true. Don’t have 6 pages (I swear, I have seen a 6 page resume). There’s no need to pad it out, if you can get all the information you want onto one page then one will do. If you need a second that’s fine. Trust me, you don’t need more than 2 pages.
Now for the content.
I got some great advice when I started out and that was to put the most relevant information first and to keep it simple.
What that translates to is, find the most relevant piece of information or the most impressive and put it first. Put it front and centre. When starting out that might only be a course you did so your education would go first with that course at the top or you might have worked on an indie game or a game jam. So experience would go first. The point is. Do what you can to help yourself, the first thing the recruiter sees should ideally be something that is related to the field.
If you’re struggling to break into the industry you might think you don’t have much you can put on your resume, but as you build your portfolio, not only do you get more experience, but you will also have more and more you can add to your resume!
Do you include every job you’ve ever had? Anything past the last 5 years is just padding. There’s nothing wrong with having the summer job you did listed, but it’s worth considering if it’s relevant. And if having it means you have more than two pages, I would drop it.
That goes for education too, keep it simple. Education doesn’t need to include your earliest exams, again, anything past the last 5 years of your education is just padding and not needed. If you have it, University and college will do.
Keep the skills section short and sweet, straight to the point. If you can, have keywords early on in the skills.
Presentation
Presentation is key and first impressions count for a lot. Don’t over crowd your resume and keep it to the point. There are more and more graphic design resumes out there now, totally fine if you are good at that sort of thing but it’s not a requirement . If you have a website, consider using the same fonts and colour schemes, if you have a logo make sure it is consistent across your portfolio and resume. You are selling yourself, so the more professional you look the better.
Some people choose to add a picture of themselves, now this is a totally subjective choice and I’m not going to say you should or shouldn’t. It’s a personal choice and can be a good opportunity to show your personality.
Should I create a new CV for each job I apply to? Depends on the job.
You will obviously have your master resume that will cover you in 99% of applications. Though, you may want to consider amending it to better suit the application. I have in the past changed my initial introduction to better suit the job requirements. Or moved my structure around to put the experience they required at the top. Something to consider for sure.
Something I did when starting out was to find the sites and then resumes of sound designers working in the industry. I would look at their resumes and see how I could evolve mine to be more like there’s. Yes, it can be depressing reading someone else’s resume as you can fall into the trap of comparing yourself to them, but there are also a lot of positives you can take away.
Some of the resumes I looked at in the past belonged to designers I now work with and call friends
It’s my hope that by writing this others may benefit from the mistakes I’ve made and lessons I’ve learned.
Pete
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