more frustration... Have you ever applied for a job, let's say they are looking for some: *C/C++ guy with *OpenGL or *DirectX *no experience necessary (industry)... and you are: *a C/C++ guy with *OpenGL AND *DirectX AND *Industry experience... and more... and they reply to you saying: "Sorry but your profile does not match with what we're looking for, we'll keep your data for the future"??? I mean, maybe having industry experience is the mismatch to the job offer. In any case I replied saying that I have all what they ask for but I guess the job add was in automatic and I'll wait for future opportunities

They might be thinking that they could pay someone less if they have no experience, and thus are hoping to find someone with no experience..

....they'll get what they pay for!

sounds like a struggling-economy strategy

Sounds like the generic rejection letter. There are countless causes.



Perhaps as radioteeth suggests, they were fishing for a different salary range.

Perhaps something happened in the company, and the decided to not hire somebody and politely decline all applicants.

Perhaps they put the ad out for policy reasons, then hired somebody from within or hired somebody that they already had their eye on.

Perhaps you had more of an emphasis on technology x and they wanted an emphasis on technology y.

Or the most likely reason: Perhaps due to the recent layoffs of thousands of game programmers, they received many applications that seemed a bitter fit to their needs than your application.


Recall that these people have a stack of 50+ applications, or for big companies 100+ applications. They cut them out, and exclude, and remove, until they get down to the 2-3 people they want to interview.


Whatever the reason, you didn't make the cut.



>>In any case I replied saying that I have all what they ask for but I guess the job add was in automatic and I'll wait for future opportunities

Many places have laws that they are required to keep your resume on file. They will tell you it is kept on file and will be reviewed mostly for legal reasons, and partly because it softens the emotional blow to you.

Get over it and move on.

Don't expect them to ever call you back from that application. If they have another job opening, apply to that new one directly in the future.

Or perhaps they've already filled the position from someone in need of a H1B and simply doing what is required of them by the law by trying to not find a qualified American employee :P It's fairly standard practice for senior roles where you already have someone in mind but need the actual paperwork to prove that no qualified American can be found. Not sure how common it is within game development though but I imagine senior talent can be even harder to find in that sector.

Most likely though you simply didn't fit what they were looking for, perhaps you were too young, too old, too tall, too expensive, too experienced, not experienced enough or something else. You can always write them and talk to them but it sounds like you got excluded extremely early in the process so the reason will probably be extremely arbitrary and uninteresting.

Use force: "These are not the profiles you are looking for" [smile].

Welcome to the job market, make nothing of it and move on to the next possible employer.

Time for me to vent [lol].

I recently applied to a "C++ Game Development" position here in Costa Rica, which is very, very, very rare, after scoring 97% on a MFC online test, they called me in for an interview.

Apparently console development was involved, they didn't say which one, but they started asking me a LOT of questions regarding ASP.NET and SQL, as well as some other stuff more in the business application side of things, not one single game development question at all, not even mention of DirectX or OpenGL they said they'd consider me and all that.

A week later they called me to tell me I didn't made it, just to have them call me again a week after that to arrange a new interview as if they never did contacted me before, I told them I had already gone and they rejected me already so there was no second interview... I asked the guy what made them discard me as a candidate, he said I wasn't too strong on ASP.NET, and that my terminology wasn't too good, well duh! I was applying for a "C++ Game Development" position.

I still see their add for a "Game Developer" pop up, so I guess there hasn't been much luck.

Anyway, just wanted to vent a little, I actually just came from a much better and satisfactory interview than those in which they expect you to recite the entire MSDN help.

Best of luck in your job hunt!

[Edited by - Kwizatz on July 10, 2009 9:43:35 PM]

Quote:Original post by frob
Or the most likely reason: Perhaps due to the recent layoffs of thousands of game programmers, they received many applications that seemed a bitter fit to their needs than your application.

Was that deliberate? :)

Quote:Recall that these people have a stack of 50+ applications, or for big companies 100+ applications. They cut them out, and exclude, and remove, until they get down to the 2-3 people they want to interview.

I would hope that a company would interview more than 2-3 people per position. Especially where technical expertise is required. The place where I just accepted a job had me do a normal-ish (BS-detection) interview, followed by a technical interview (test, really), followed by checking references.

Quote:Anyway, just wanted to vent a little, I actually just came from a much better and satisfactory interview than those in which they expect you to recite the entire MSDN help.

Oh you tell me!, I know about those interviews... once, the BIG India IT company called me to "recite" the ASP.NET book and 1 hour later, called me another guy asking for the same thing... I told him "don't you know? you already called me 1 hour ago" duh, nevertheless he asked me to answer again! After a week they called me again for the excact same thing... I answered, that time, a little bit tired of that crap. I didn't get any offer or anything.

Quote:Original post by Zahlman

Quote:Original post by frob
Or the most likely reason: Perhaps due to the recent layoffs of thousands of game programmers, they received many applications that seemed a bitter fit to their needs than your application.

Was that deliberate? :)

No, it was a typo.

Quote:

Quote:Recall that these people have a stack of 50+ applications, or for big companies 100+ applications. They cut them out, and exclude, and remove, until they get down to the 2-3 people they want to interview.

I would hope that a company would interview more than 2-3 people per position. Especially where technical expertise is required. The place where I just accepted a job had me do a normal-ish (BS-detection) interview, followed by a technical interview (test, really), followed by checking references.

Perhaps it seems that way, but really once you've weeded it down to a very small stack, pretty much any of them will be able to do the job.

There are a *lot* of qualified people out there. It is fairly easy to find either (1) candidates with real-world experience similar to your desired skill set, or (2) eager candidates who demonstrate the skills needed to fill the desired skill set with very little effort.

The problem is often the opposite of what you suggest. Usually there are several people nicely qualified for the job, and you must choose between them. There is a very good chance that all of the final candidates would be a great fit for the job, and usually it is a shame to see the others get turned down.

When you can narrow it down to 2 people who have a long trail of work experience at a studio that recently closed shop, further interviews are rarely needed.

Quote:Original post by Kwizatz
Use force: "These are not the profiles you are looking for" [smile].

Welcome to the job market, make nothing of it and move on to the next possible employer.

Time for me to vent [lol].

I recently applied to a "C++ Game Development" position here in Costa Rica, which is very, very, very rare, after scoring 97% on a MFC online test, they called me in for an interview.

Apparently console development was involved, they didn't say which one, but they started asking me a LOT of questions regarding ASP.NET and SQL, as well as some other stuff more in the business application side of things, not one single game development question at all, not even mention of DirectX or OpenGL they said they'd consider me and all that.

A week later they called me to tell me I didn't made it, just to have them call me again a week after that to arrange a new interview as if they never did contacted me before, I told them I had already gone and they rejected me already so there was no second interview... I asked the guy what made them discard me as a candidate, he said I wasn't too strong on ASP.NET, and that my terminology wasn't too good, well duh! I was applying for a "C++ Game Development" position.

I still see their add for a "Game Developer" pop up, so I guess there hasn't been much luck.

Anyway, just wanted to vent a little, I actually just came from a much better and satisfactory interview than those in which they expect you to recite the entire MSDN help.

Best of luck in your job hunt!

Sounds like a bunch of businessmen running on buzz words to me. Typical

...

[Edited by - Awoken on September 15, 2009 7:34:34 PM]