When Giant Bomb was Hiring!

Repost, since my original title was potentially too misleading and broke the forum rules :( my bad!

Original heading: Giant Bomb is Hiring (sorry it was clickbaity...)

Well, Giant Bomb was hiring.

I'm not really an active member of this site, but I am a fan. I am also struggling with a career in the film and television business. As you might expect, struggling to find work isn't particularly enjoyable. I've worked couple things I'm proud of, and a reel that I believe actually shows my talents as in both production and post production, but not much else to my name. My resume was a mess and I had no confidence in my ability to write cover letters. I've never been a particularly strong writer. I wasn't in high school, and I failed college writing courses so miserably that my confidence in writing was completely shot.

"I don't need to write essays to be a video editor!" I often exclaimed in frustration, as I struggled to string together three paragraphs of why I was someone a company should hire. Unsurprisingly, I never heard back from these companies. It wasn't just enough that I couldn't write cover letters with any confidence, but I also couldn't write them quickly. It took applying for any position take a full day of anxiety and stress to put together something that I might be willing to send to an anonymous potential employer.

"Hey, we're hiring and stuff!" The headline of a forum post by @rorie.

I knew I was qualified for the Associate Producer position; I had to apply. I looked at my resume and sighed with frustration. It was in a bad way, poorly formatted, focusing on the wrong information and failing to highlight what I am actually good at doing. I started fresh. I rebuilt my resume from scratch and when I finished I looked at it and felt confident in its presentation in a way I'd never felt before.

Time for a cover letter. This was something I was dreading. I opened up a blank document and stared at the blinking cursor. I once wrote an essay about the blinking cursor, not because I wanted to, but because it was the only thing my brain could focus on to the point where I decided that it was better to write about that than turn in nothing for that assignment. I failed that class. Words started to flow from my fingers, a cover letter was growing before my eyes. It was glorious. It was the greatest cover letter I'd ever written. I had no idea I was capable of speaking about myself and my work in such a way.

The application I sent to Giant Bomb was the best package I'd ever put together for a company. I was not hired.

I often will buy lotto tickets if the jackpot gets over 250 million with megamillions or powerball. Not because I believe I am going to win, but it's fun to participate in the zeitgeist of the moment. But you cannot win if you don't play, and the minute chance of winning is what makes it fun. I did not expect to hear from CBSi, but I always would have regretted not sending in an application.

What the experience gave me however, was a resume I was proud of sending to potential employers, and the confidence I needed to write cover letters. I shit you not, the first job I applied for after Giant Bomb landed me an interview. I actually nearly got that job, and was down to the final 2 before they picked the other guy. It's been around 2 months since that all happened, and while I am still unemployed, I have 2 more interviews today. The opportunity to work at Giant Bomb would have been amazing, but the confidence it gave me to find work elsewhere is what I'm truly thankful for.

Keep up the great work Duders!

All the best,

Stephen

Nice to see that, while you did not get the job, it still helped you. Good luck, duder.

I know what you mean, I wrote a real resume last year for an opening at a few websites, including Polygon and GameSpot. Nothing worked out, and I ended up with a change of heart on what side of the industry I wanted to work in, about six months later I used that resume (with a few tweaks) to get my current job at Volition. I couldn't be happier about that.

Update:

I got a job! Thanks giant bomb!

Ah awesome! Congrats, duder!

I'm in the middle of a job hunt myself. Kind of lost motivation recently, but you are correct that you can't win, if you don't play. I guess I'll have to muster up the drive to get back at it soon.

Anyway, congratulations on your new job!

anything i can do to help! (i.e. absolutely nothing :) )

You're welcome. :|

Are you going to write about your new job, as well? I'm sure many would be curious to hear more.

gg

I really dislike having to do job interviews to get a job. The whole process is sort of dumb. It's about lying yourself up and being confident about it. The company will end up with the best applicant, not necessarily the best employee.

I hope I'll never have to do it again.

Great! Best of luck in your new job. It's always great when you take an opportunity that challenges you, and pushes you to do your best. Even if it doesn't work out in that particular instance, you take the lessons and the skills you learn and apply it in other areas.

Congratulations on the new job Duder!

Probably at some point! I'm just really excited about this opportunity. It's a video editing gig, and that's something I've been pursuing for a long time. It's both a great relief to finally get hired for this kind of work and incredibly scary because I don't want to mess it up!

Nicely done! Having worked in Web marketing (as HR) video editing gigs are sometimes tough to land!

Congrats duder! That's awesome! Glad to hear you got something positive out of this. Good luck on your new job.

Congrats on the new job. Sometimes all you need is the spark and then the flames will follow.

@hatking: Really? Awesome. What do you do there? I have a friend from college that's an Associate Producer at Volition.

Yeah, man! Congrats on the job! I can totally relate to what you're talking about. A while ago I applied for a job at Double Fine. I've had pretty good luck with getting jobs, but this was the first one I both REALLY wanted (c'mon, it's Double Fine!) and that I felt I had a pretty good chance of getting. I'm not saying I would have been a shoe in or anything egotistical like that. But I thought I would quality for the phone interview stage at least. I spent a lot of time getting my resume working. And it was great, because it was the first time I felt like I wasn't BS-ing on my resume, I really have done all this awesome stuff!

I did not get a callback. I was pretty bummed.

But I got so excited about making that career move that I didn't take it laying down. A few months later I quit my job and have been working on my own indie game project ever since. I probably would not have done that if it wasn't for the process of applying to DF. And I'm actually happy now that I didn't get it, it gave me the opportunity to pursue my own thing.

@wrighteous86: Nothing crazy, just QA. But it seems like everybody I talk to in the studio started there at one point or another. I've known people who've passed on jobs here because they didn't want to start in QA, felt it was below them. It's definitely not glamorous work, but it's the best job I've ever had. The environment is every bit as awesome as you'd think the place that put out Saints Row would be. I guess it helps that I loved the studio before I got the job here, and it's a weird coincidence that it just happened to be 45 minutes from my hometown. Fate kind of put me here in a weird way. I didn't even realize the place was hiring or that I had moved four blocks away.

@hatking: Do you have any tech or programming experience to transition out of QA? Any plan for that? Or just working hard in QA and hoping to get brought up to Production or something?

I focus-tested Saints Row IV back when it was "Enter the Dominatrix", and it was cool seeing some of my suggestions make it in (and some that didn't).

The transition from QA to Production or otherwise should be judged on a studio-by-studio basis, for the record. Obsidian was pretty good at promoting people out of it and training people to do things that they wanted to do after their QA time was over, and it sounds like Volition is too, but I know that there are plenty of studios that treat it like a human garbage disposal for people who they expect to do nothing but the most menial playtesting all day long. Not sure how you'll find that out without asking employees, though.