Visit with Gearbox

Today I drove 263 miles to Frisco, TX to visit one of Gearbox's HR Recruiter's Rachel Begovic. She had agreed to let me interview her to get a better insight on the video game industry as whole and grasp a true understanding of what i'll need to show what i'm capable of if I am to land a job within the industry or even Gearbox.

Within the last year Gearbox went from being in an old decrepit bank building to building a brand new building to have all to themselves, all five stories. They're located in a new business park. The drive there wasn't as bad as it was on the way out due to traffic about three and half hours there. Once I was there I found a parking garage, open with no fee for two hour parking on the very first floor, which I found super convenient. At first, once walked out of the parking ramp I wasn't sure which building it was since the number aren't too visible. Fortunately though I took one look down and saw a giant 12 x 12 maybe image of Gearbox's logo imprinted in the cement making it easy to figure out. The first two floors are still under construction so I went straight to the topp 5th floor as instructed. Until then, there were no locked doors or security measures giving it an open feel. Upon exiting the elevator there are two glass walls on either side of the two glass doors that were swung open. Once I signed into their only apple product in the building being the iPad, I was aloud to take pictures but only in the lobby. Once I met with Rachel she gave me a brief tour of the 5th and 4th floor. They were renovating a stage and stairway area between the to floors with looked kinda neat, and I noticed that each floor had its own kitchen stocked full of snacks, sodas, drinks, donuts etc. no special occasion just the everyday thing. As we walked through the hallways I saw all the room's walls were glass so you could see what productive things were going on in each. Although the building appeared to be quit quite, and only half of the rooms were in use. Some of them were meeting rooms, some were game testing rooms and some were random like the video game lounge, arcade room full with old arcade like "joust" ping pong tables, and pinball machines. Others were for productive use like Mocap and the people actually working on their giant Wacoms or animating stuff etc. Once we can to a stop in glass corner room we began our discussion.

As we spoke, she had said that Rachel had been in the position for almost a year. That she actually started out recruiting by accident which initially was for IT, and then she got really good at it. She thought, well you can recruit anywhere, so why don’t I work for a company that I would love to work for. So she reached out to her now current boss on LinkedIn a year before because she thought about working at gearbox allot. Turns out they were hiring and she lucked out. She said it was originally her husbands idea to work at Gearbox and she's loved working there ever since.

We talked about some other professional organization she was part of. She used to part of the Women who code, but later realized she had more benefit from local networking actually. She suggested joining a user group to get into the industry that you’d want to work in.

Some of the pros and cons about working within this industry. One thing she said she enjoys is seeing what people are passionate about, and getting to the studio and seeing that this is where they want to be. She gets so excited when the underdog gets the job. For example there's this one guy who won a contest for level design online and had no formal education. They really believed in him, and he turned out to be one of our their designers. Now some of the pros she said would have to be when there are allot of passionate people involved in the hiring process because there’s not just one person deciding who gets hired, there's allot of time spent reviewing candidate’s but things take forever. When sometimes with other companies candidates are used to faster hiring so they think were just wasting their time. Then sometimes for the final candidates, we ask them to take a test, but they don’t understand that we won’t ask them to test unless we’re actually interested. We don’t want to waste peoples times. We know what it's like not to have time. It was nice to see that not only they are human, but realize that we are too.

My next burning inquiry was about their hardware and software. I asked if they used mac, pc, or both? She said Pc's and only because macs are more expensive. Although we have a level up bonus up to 1k to get a reimbursement for a console or computer. Anything PC is 100%. Gym memberships etc. but to answer your question mostly PC. Now about the software she said they use 3DS Max to model and Maya for animating or at least that's my understanding.

So now I wanted to know what she thought a beginning designer such as myself should know? She says the diversity of their portfolio is really important. No school projects. Side projects!! Show what you’re passionate about. Show what industry you want to be in. We want to see low poly, high poly, show concept art and how it came to be. Whenever I send a portfolio to the crew here they’re really good about providing detailed feedback so I know what they’re really looking for.

Great now i'll know what I should really include. Now for job searching in general, I was curious about what kind of job search idea Rachel had. She said, Linken! The number one tool to find candidate’s make sure your portfolio is on your Linken, and to always look for the HR recruiter

Awesome now speaking of such portfolio I asked more specifically the type of passionate thing she would recommend I have in there? She says variety, examples of practical stuff, or crazy stuff. If your super creative make sure to have really accurate representations. Have enough stuff. Some schools only tell their students to only put school stuff in there. Hell no, they want Diversity! Before we wrapped up I asked if she had any addition advice. Rachel says to switch photo placement on portfolio depending on what is presented and what you’re looking for. It’s all about presentation. If you’re showing it to EA for cars, show a car, but you don’t want an animation recruiter to just see the same static cars for example. The recruiter sees everything first for resume presentation. Also don’t harass, but build connections. Don’t be negative. One time a person sent a really weird story about Game of Thrones in all of GOT text and style because I guess they were Facebook stalking and heard that I like GOT, but first of all, I don’t even like GOT that much, second of all where did you hear that and third of all that’s really creepy stalkerish. Don’t give up, it’s really competitive, find a way to stand out be persistent, find a contact and be respectful. Don’t be afraid to ask or approach. It’s a numbers game. Just because it’s not posted doesn’t mean they’re not hiring. Like internships, they’re an unannounced talent pool and sometimes timing is everything.

That about wrapped things up, we agreed that i'd be a great idea to come back for a mock interview at a later point once I have things together. I'm looking forward to it.