An article I just wrote. A quite general one and focuses only on "where to find good offers" rather than "what does it take to get an interview", but hey - that's an important step too Only posting a teaser here, as it gets better formatting and is easier to read on my blog.

How to search for a job in gamedev

Read more on gamesmakingnoob.com...

All you have to do is google 'game dev jobs', and in the next three pages of results you'll find the majority of relevant boards with fairly up to date postings.

Mystery solved!

Here is what I do. I go to http://www.gamedevmap.com/, then search or click on the city where I want a job at, click on every single company website, look for the "Careers" or "Jobs" section, then apply. After that, pray and wait for a response. :)

^ Also sound advice. I've used that myself before, though that only works if you have specific parts of the world in mind :)

@ambershee if you took time to read the whole thing you could find out that "fairly up to date" isn't that relevant and just googling for vacancies is most probably the least effective way of searching for the job.

@zee_ola05 yup, gamedevmap is a very nice tool and certainly a much better approach than just googling. I actually placed the link to it in the article.

@ambershee if you took time to read the whole thing you could find out that "fairly up to date" isn't that relevant and just googling for vacancies is most probably the least effective way of searching for the job.

Except that it is quite effective. I know this because I do this, and have been employed in the industry for a number of years (and made redundant twice).

Yes, Monster or CareerBuilder are largely useless, but there are major job posting boards frequented by studios and relevant agencies where, you can see the date posted, and you can filter out the recruiters if so desired. Googling for 'game dev jobs' returns you:

Gamasutra's job board, Games Jobs Direct, GamesIndustry.Biz's job board, Career Powerups and Games Recruit in just the first page. Of those, only Games Recruit is lacking in up to date postings.

At the time of posting this, Career Powerups has nearly 120 postings from studios this month (three within the last 12 hours), and over 150 postings from agencies as an example.

GameDev.net is a hopeless place to look for work, and Linkedin is not that great either, mostly being full of agency spam or turning up irrelevant and difficult to appropriately filter results. A well directed google search and some patience turns up much better results than your recommendations.

Networking is also important, but that means more than just randomly e-mailing people who work at various companies. One of the more important ways to network is to attend events in your local area and actually meet people. Monthly or even weekly socials happen in most game development hubs, and they are open to everyone - just remember that people are there to socialise and not to get you a job. If you attend regularly, you rapidly build a network of friends, and they will look out for your best interests (game development is a small and woefully unstable industry, so people tend to stick together and help one another out). The other way, and for me the most important, is to get involved with game development communities online (less GameDev.net, use more specialist sites that suit your interests) - I've landed jobs just because I've spent time hanging out at important development websites like Polycount and the official UDK forums.