The best resume is the one that gets you hired. But what does that look like in the gaming world? Is it formal or creative? Chronological order or by relevance? What keywords are best for the gaming industry? If you’re putting together a Game Developer resume — and hoping to land a job that could earn you a six-figure salary — it’s likely that at least one of these questions has crossed your mind.
Game development is a competitive field, and a solid resume will help you catch a recruiter’s eye and land an interview. Ahead, we’ll go over what you’ll want to include in your Game Developer resume and how to prepare for the hiring process.
How to format a Game Developer resume
Formatting is an important part of a resume. Hiring managers go through tons of applications, and you’ll want to ensure your resume is easy to scan through.
Most resumes follow a standard format:
- Header and contact information
- Objective statement or summary
- Skills/core competencies
- Experience
- Education and courses
- Projects
Here’s what to include in these sections:
Header and contact Information
Your full name should appear in large print at the top of your resume, and you can follow it with your job title — for example, “Kirsten S. Roberts, Game Developer.” If you’re applying for your first role in the industry, you could still list your title as “Game Developer” or you could do something creative, like nodding to any niche expertise, your former work experience, or your current education status (e.g. “Kirsten S. Roberts, Computer Science College Senior with a Passion for Gaming”) to catch the hiring manager’s eye.
Your contact information should also be at the top of the page. Include your name, phone number, and professional email address. While it’s not necessarily required to put your physical address, it’s often helpful for recruiters if you put your city and state (and/or country/territory). If you have a portfolio or LinkedIn profile, add those links here as well.
Objective statement or summary
An objective statement or summary is like a pitch to the hiring manager, and it should grab their attention. When writing your objective statement, imagine you’re answering the question, “what is your goal?” If possible, try to include a phrase that’s used in the job post or specific skills that are listed. Here’s an example:
Game Programmer with five years of experience and proficiency in TypeScript, C++, and C#. Working knowledge of Python and JavaScript. Experience in designing and implementing solutions and looking for a similar role in a progressive organization.
Skills and core competencies
After your objective statement, you’ll want a section that highlights the skills you have that are relevant to the job. Again, you can pull these directly from the job description — literally copy and paste the exact phrasing used in the post if you have that skill. (This will also help you make it past resume-screening software, if the employer is using it.)
So if the job post lists experience with the PS4 and Xbox One platforms, you should have “PS4 and Xbox One platforms” listed under your skills.
Another example: Let’s say you’re applying for a position with the NBA and they want someone with familiarity with basketball and basketball simulations/games, then put “basketball simulations” under your skills section.
Adding relevant skills is helpful, but you don’t want to go overboard. Try to home in on the most relevant skills and aim for 10-15 skills in your list.
Experience
The experience section is where you can elaborate on your past roles and the tasks you performed that helped prepare you for this new position. List your work experience in reverse chronological order (starting with the most recent), including the time period when you worked for each company.
Summarize your responsibilities for each role, and don’t forget to highlight your accomplishments and achievements. Tip: Use a verb to start each line in your work experience section. This will put emphasis on your accomplishments. Words like “developed,” “created,” “wrote,” or “led” are good ones to use here. (Bonus tip: Make sure that the tense of the verbs makes sense. So if you’re talking about a previous job, use past-tense. If you’re talking about your current job, use present tense.)
The experience section is a good place to showcase your soft skills. Problem-solving, collaboration, communication, time management, leadership, and creativity are all examples of soft skills that you can include when discussing your prior roles.
Education and courses
In the education section, include your degree if you have one, even if it’s not directly related to game development. If your degree was more general, like engineering or computer science, you can use bullet points to highlight aspects of your coursework that relate to game development.
If you’ve earned a certificate or taken any courses (including online courses, like Codecademy’s), be sure to include those here. List your degrees first and in reverse chronological order if you attended multiple schools, and then list your professional development work after.
If you don’t have a formal degree, don’t sweat it. Thankfully, many tech companies are getting rid of degree requirements and focusing on whether or not individual candidates have the skills needed to do the jobs at hand. So how do you show them that when you’re applying? That’s where your portfolio projects come in.
Projects
If you’re further along in your career, a projects section might not be necessary. But it can be great for entry-level professionals or people looking to change careers. You can pick one or two recent projects that showcase the full extent of your skills and highlight them here, along with a link to your portfolio for more samples of your work.
More Game Developer resume tips
If you’re getting hung up on phrasing or how to list a specific skill, pull up LinkedIn and search for a Game Developer in a similar role to the one you’re applying for or someone who has a background comparable to yours. You can check out how they listed their skills to get some ideas for your own resume.
If you need more ideas on how to organize your resume, you can find templates on sites like Rezi and Google Drive. And remember: Always save your resume as a PDF (unless the job description has different instructions) so your formatting is preserved. You never want to send a potential employer an editable document like a Google Doc or a Microsoft Word file.
Prepare for a Game Developer job
If you’re looking for ways to boost your credentials or fill in gaps in your experience, check out our game development courses, which include both beginner and intermediate options.
Our free course Introduction to Game Development walks you through the entire development process and covers everything from popular industry tools to the different careers in the field. We’ll also show you how to use the programming languages used for game development, like C++ and JavaScript. And if you want to learn how to build a game from scratch, try Learn Game Development with Phaser.js.
And once you’ve landed an interview, read our tips on how to prepare for the interview process, which will include both technical and behavioral questions. And if you need more help preparing for the hiring process, check out our Career Center.