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How To Make Your Game Development Portfolio Catch A Hiring Manager’s Eye

04/01/2022

If you want to land your dream job, you’ll need to do everything you can to make your application stand out — especially in a booming industry like game development where you might be weighed against other strong candidates. That means your resume and portfolio need to be finely tuned to showcase your experience and accomplishments.

How do you make your portfolio stand out? We’ll show you. First, you’ll learn how to build a technical portfolio from scratch in the video below. Then, we’ll go over the key sections you’ll want to include in your game development portfolio and how to start building projects that’ll catch a recruiter’s eye.

Bio

Your bio is your chance to offer details about yourself that might not fit in your resume. It’s where you highlight your professional and educational background, experience, and achievements, as well as any additional information you want to cover about your current role.

You can also include a few personal details, like your hobbies, passions, and/or an interesting fact about yourself. This helps recruiters better understand who you are as a person and can help you make a good impression.

Contact information and resume

You’ll want to include contact information, like your name and professional email address, at the top of your portfolio so the hiring manager can find it easily. You can also include a link to your Linkedin account here, and any other professional social media accounts and/or a blog, if you want.

Your resume, whether it’s a PDF download or a link to another page, is another piece of information you should make available and easy to find. Not sure how to craft a Game Developer resume? Check out our tips here.

Projects and experience

Along with your professional experience, you’ll have the chance to pick and choose which games/projects you want to highlight in this section. And it’s a good idea to include games that showcase your range of skills.

Pro tip: Consider reading through the job descriptions of the roles you’re applying for and taking note of the technologies listed as “required” or “preferred.” Then make sure they’re reflected in your portfolio to show hiring managers that you’re equipped with the skills you’ll need to hit the ground running in your new role.

And keep in mind that games are used for more than just fun, and companies hire Game Developers for all sorts of reasons: to help generate revenue, increase customer engagement, establish the brand, and reach new target markets, to name a few. So when you’re deciding which games to include in your portfolio, it helps to include ones that show you can build games that meet a range of goals, on top of ones that are simply fun and engaging.

Looking for more options to include in your portfolio? Check out our Create Video Games with Phaser.js skill path, which includes a final project that you might want to use for your portfolio.

For each game you include in your portfolio, make sure you give some background details about how and why you developed the game. This helps the hiring manager understand the project and learn more about you as a developer. Also, don’t be afraid to discuss any challenges or issues you faced while working on a game. This is part of game development and hiring managers like to see how you work through problems, since they’ll definitely come up on the job.

Should you include games you’re currently working on?

For many games, coding is one of the last steps. Creating the world of the game, the characters, each person’s story in the game, and the origin story takes tons of work and creativity. Showing your thinking process behind a game you’re still working on gives you a chance to showcase those skills. So if you want to include a game that you’re still working on that shows your skills in a positive way, go for it.

Also, throwing in a side project or two shows how passionate you are about game development. Game Developers often have side projects they’re chipping away at, so don’t hesitate to include these, especially if they show off a specific skill that you want to highlight.

Skills

Even though your skills will be listed on your resume, you’ll also want to pick out some of your strongest skills to include in your portfolio, or ones that make you stand out as a Game Developer. This might include a list of all the programming languages and gaming engines you know, or your math and physics background. When you’re applying for a job, you can update this list so it aligns with the specific job requirements.

Curious about what other skills you could list in your portfolio? Learn more about what a Game Developer does and the skills they typically have.

Awards/recognition

Don’t hesitate to include a section for awards and recognition. For example, if you were quoted in an industry article or won an award for a game you created, that’s something that’ll likely catch the hiring manager’s eye.

You can also include links to any articles you’ve written in this section. While you might feel like this is bragging, just remember that your goal is to land a job that likely has a bunch of other highly qualified developers applying to it, so you’ll need to show off all your accomplishments to stand out in that crowd.

Looking for ways to beef up your game development portfolio?

If you’re new to game development and looking for ways to add to your portfolio, check out our game development courses. A great place to start is our free course Introduction to Game Development, which will give you an overview of the field and teach you about some of the most popular tools and languages used in the industry. While you can build games knowing just one programming language, you might find that many companies are looking for people who are proficient in multiple languages. If you want to get started with languages that are popular in game development, try Learn Python, Learn C#, and Learn JavaScript.

In our Learn Game Development with Phaser.js course, you’ll build eight games that you can use in your portfolio — and Create Video Games with Phaser.js will teach you how to build games from scratch. You can also check out Build Basic Android Apps with Java, Build iOS Apps with SwiftUI, and Build Connect Four Using Python.

And if you still need help finding games to include in your portfolio, take a look through our game development projects.


Game Development Courses & Tutorials | Codecademy
There’s a gamer in all of us — whether you play on your phone, a console, a computer, or a virtual reality rig. And it takes people, either individually or in large teams, to bring these great experiences to life. Learn the foundations of Game Development and create your very own video game.

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