Finally I got some much needed time to update my blog. First of all: I got myself a fancy new job at ticking-bomb-games. So I’ve moved (more or less) to Hamburg. Quite a nice city I have to say but well a city none the less. I’ll have to find me a sweet apartment still and I’ll make sure it’ll be in the suburbs. The company is amazing and the people are amazing so everything is amazing… now. There is however something I always wanted to talk about and now it seems to be the right time and place to do it (it’s got nothing to do with my current job. That much I can tell you): applications. Everyone has to do them (except for people with very rich parents perhaps), everybody hates them. But what was really pissing me of during my application time wasn’t the writing of applications. It wasn’t the job interviews or the rejections. It was the company’s.

So.. I do understand company’s get a lot of applications (especially game company’s). And I do understand that it takes time to go through all of them and to evaluate the best candidates. But the general behaviour of most (game?) company’s when it comes to applications is just RUDE! Most company’s don’t even take the time to write a note that they have received your application. Let alone ANSWER to it. Form more than 30 applications I got a “we-heard-you” notice from perhaps 10 (which is already a lot). Out of those ~30 applications perhaps 5 send me a rejection! Another 5 asked me to do a test and/or a job interview. And now after 3-4 month I got a few requests for job interviews. So lets sum this up shall we:

Out of 30 applications:

• ~70% didn’t response AT ALL.
• ~10% took more than 3 month to reply.
• ~20% cared enough to reply.

I might be a bit sensitive, but I find that to be an embarrassing result for the German job market. For every single one of those applications I spend at least half an hour to polish it and write a cover letter. That would sum up to ~15 hours of work. If all applications those company’s receive are stored in a database or an excel sheet it takes them about 10 minutes to mark the ones to reject and generate an automated rejection e-mail. But obviously that’s to much to ask. Furthermore if a company asks you for a job interview after having sent NOTHING for 3 month how can that NOT be embarrassing for them? All the company’s are crying all the time that they lack trained personnel and that they treat all their employees good.. well what about your future employees? Think about it.. and if you ask me.. think hard… because you’ve got a lot to learn!

I’ll be attending GamesCom this year again (on Sunday). I hope to get some insights and also perhaps get some contacts and maybe a chance to find my next Job ;o). Last years GamesCom was more or less disappointing as there where most continuations of game series and a lot of browser and casual game stuff. I hope that it will be a bit better this year but I don’t have a lot of hope. For us hardcore games it more and more looks like our favorite part of the industry is falling into the hands of console gaming and ever repeating of the same stuff. Soon enough the old days of new genres and ideas around every corner will be nothing more than a distant memory. Something we will be telling story’s about to children with tears in our eyes :-P. Its sad to be living in this times. But we have to make the best of it and work towards making the industry realize that we won’t accept it and buy their crappy ever-same-stuff.