How Many Applicants Are "Completely Unprepared" for a Job at a Game Studio?

Ubisoft Annecy's lead prop artist Joe Hobbs has shared the results of the poll showing that the vast majority of junior applications come from graduates who are "completely unprepared" to work at a game studio.

Ubisoft Annecy's lead prop artist Joe Hobbs has recently conducted an interesting "survey" among his Twitter followers asking them to share what percentage of graduates who apply for a job at their studios are, in fact, "completely unprepared" to work at a studio.

Hobbs explained that he had had a chat with some educators which made him curious about other game dev managers' experience with looking at applicants' portfolios.

While Hobbs hasn't shared his own experience, according to the results of the poll he published, most of his audience believes that approximately 75% of all junior applications come from graduates who are totally inexperienced. A number of managers also replied that, in their opinion, this share reaches about 90%.

"I would say something between 75% and 90%. Application on Character Artist job ranging from only only drawings???, to only ZBrush sculpt to some few candidates showing actually full character pipeline... Of those only 2-3 at proper level," commented Senior Character Artist at Behaviour Interactive Sophie-Amélie Martel.

Many of those game dev managers who left comments on Hobbs' tweet also noted that this share can easily reach 90% and more.

"During our last hiring round, I reviewed nearly 500 applications, most of which were juniors, and I'd say 4 stood out as being very attractive and prepared," 3D Lead at Vertex Solutions Jordan Cain shared.

    

"I voted 90% because, like, 99 was not there," Lead Game and Narrative Designer at Antimatter Games joked.

A number of developers complained about the poor quality of the majority of applicants' portfolios and a lack of sufficient skill level that would make studios hire them. Some also drew attention to the fact that, probably, it is educators who do not set the right expectations for their students or that the education system doesn’t prepare students for real-world conditions.

It is worth noting that prior to teams' managers, in bigger companies, applications first go through companies' HR departments that prescreen them, so, as noted by Alexis Argyriou, COO of Stealth Startup who previously worked at Ubisoft, managers basically only get to see "the top of the crop." So the share of junior applications of poor quality is probably even higher than the 75% that the majority of Hobbs' respondents cited.

Don't forget to join our Reddit page and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.

Published 05 December 2022
Ana Kessler