BETA| RECRUITMENT SPECIAL
THE STUDIO LINE recruiting through social media
Datascope’s Julien Hofer and (below) Kim Adcock from OPM
Specialmove CEO Andy Campbell
channels are useful ways to communicate with your network,” says Ian Goodall, director of Aardvark Swift. “But they aren’t a stand alone solution. In my opinion a good recruiter should take the time to speak to candidates, explain the role fully and then to react accordingly.” So Twitter, Facebook and their contemporaries largely serve only to attract initial interest in vacancies. Part of the reason for that, say some observers, is that as a set of recruiting tools social media has its faults. “LinkedIn is being used extensively by agencies and companies who have the time and expertise to utilise it effectively,” says Kim Adcock, managing director of OPM Recruitment, adding: “However, it is enormous and finding the right candidates takes time and investment. Facebook is fun, but it’s not really the way to go about approaching people professionally.” Adcock’s point is a succinct one. Social media is not a specialised recruiting service, and the volume of people and information it collates makes it almost too big to manage. That is especially true for a studio with an internal hiring team with limited resources. “Social media is one tool, not an exclusive model,” states Julien Hofer, founder of recruiter Datascope. “They provide one means of accessing information, but the real challenge is to interpret, filter and add value to that information.” A CHANGE FOR THE SAME What games industry recruiters – be they either internal studio HR teams or external agencies – must be able to do is be dynamic,
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and to deftly juggle the traditional recruitment methods with the new tools available to them like social networks. “Recruitment is recruitment, it doesn’t ever change,” suggests Specialmove founder and CEO Andy Campbell. “What does change are the tools we use to search for, to identify and to attract the right candidate to the right role. In the end it all comes down to a good recruiter knowing the client and the role, selling those things effectively to the candidate, assessing the suitability of the candidates and progressing and managing the whole recruitment process efficiently.” “The process of recruitment is all about people,” adds Adcock. “How we find them or they find us may continue to change, but the process is as simple as you want to make it. We still hire only career recruiters because they have the experience, maturity, and have learned the life lessons that are invaluable in recruitment of any kind.” Clearly many believe that the games industry recruitment process need not be changed by social media. Put another way,
Social media does help, and in a technically-savvy market like games these channels are useful ways to communicate. Ian Goodall, Aardvark Swift the established recruitment model has always been the same one that has embraced the new techniques and methods available to it; change being the only constant theme. There are, though, those people who believe that recruitment is changing right now, and in part because of the rise of social media use. “Traditional recruitment is changing,” suggests Mgherbi. “We believe it is changing very quickly. At Avatar we use different methods of recruiting, we go to more events, we create bespoke packages to most studios and we fit in where we are needed. The days
How are the HR teams of studios and tech companies handling hiring in the changing recruitment landscape? It’s not only recruitment agencies that are turning to social media to bolster their human resource effort. Studios and tech companies are also looking to LinkedIn, Facebook and other personal networks to attract new staff. “They are a tool that gives a perception of an organisation and its people and although the games industry is large and diverging all the time it is still closely linked through contacts, networks and reputations,” says Sumo Digital’s development director Craig Duncan. “Future recruits are more likely to join organisations they feel are successful and work with companies and people that have good reputations.” Social media isn’t only about catching the attention of potential staff. For Crytek it’s also a powerful search tool for proactively sourcing staff. “We do use Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to seek out talent,” says the tech outfit’s Courtney Endecott. “It remains a great source for us, but certainly not our primary focus.” However, Endecott is quick to stress the importance of existing hiring methods: “Print, job fairs, web advertisement; they are all necessary and very important aspects of recruitment, each achieving its own goal. But the focus is changing and these sources often are more long-term employer branding and talent sourcing than they are an immediate fix. Social communities – on employer and employee side – will be the main source of recruitment in the coming years.” “We certainly use a blend of traditional methods and new, and assess the results continuously,” adds Duncan. “We try and keep most recruitment channels open but will cut something if we are not getting the right success. I think as people are more comfortable in using social media and professional networking and gain success by these methods they will ultimately become dominate, but the timing of that is driven by potential candidates as well as the companies recruiting.”
Cortney Endecott, Crytek
Criag Duncan, Sumo Digital