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Putting Raiding on Your Resume: Well? What do you think?
By Cameron Sorden | May 12, 2008
My latest post over at Massively is on the topic of including your in-game guild experiences as a resume item for first-time job hunters without much other experience, just like you would include participation in a club or team of another sort. In my opinion, looking at it from a purely practical rather than social standpoint, it’s even better — there are tons of things you pick up in raiding that you wouldn’t being a member of a more social club: discipline, familiarity with technology, problem-solving in a changing environment. Just because it’s in the context of a game doesn’t mean that you can’t apply those same skills to the real world. This is something I’ve been thinking about for years, and by and large, people disagree with me emphatically.
Not everyone does, thankfully (I plan to pick up that book when it gets published), and the people who do disagree with me seem to be chiefly arguing that they would disqualify the person because they find the activity itself to be of little value. However, I’m going to repeat here what I said there:
If you agree with me that a gamer can take their experience in game and figure out how to apply it to the real world, how is knowing that they have experience working on a team, familiarity with technology, and practice following complicated instructions to complete a shared goal a bad thing?
The only way it could be is if there was a social stigma surrounding the activity itself (which there obviously is, or we wouldn’t be arguing about it).
What do you think, oh readers? Is gaming a waste of time as far as developing key skills are concerned, or is the problem in the mainstream perception of games and gamers?
Obviously, the negative response tells me that we’re nowhere near a time when sticking this stuff on the resume is a good idea, but I personally think it has a lot more to do with people’s prejudices against videogames and a lack of understanding of how the skills could possibly relate to the real world than being an indication that games can’t teach you stuff.
Topics: business, community, mmorpg |
May 12th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Whether or not gaming itself has any redeeming qualities is largely irrelevant on a resume, unless the work you’re going for is itself related to gaming. Oh sure, you’ll come across the occasional enlightened individual or fellow gamer, but realize that most of the time, you’re just as likely (if not more so) to be turned down due to that prejudice you mentioned.
Realize firstly that I’ve directly received not just one, but two promotions/raises in part because of my online gaming…but I still do not put my gaming experiences down as part of my resume, nor do I recommend first time (or veteran) job hunters do the same. Though it’s conceivably possible that you’ll come across a hiring manager who would love to strike up a conversation with you regarding your guild’s progression in World of Warcraft, chances are greater still that putting down your information may actually color your CV in a dimmer light.
May 12th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Mentioning video games on any resume for a job that isn’t pertaining to the game industry is a horrible idea. Regardless how mainstream we feel that MMO gaming has gotten - it isn’t *that* mainstream.
Having said that, writing a resume for the game industry is fun as hell. Nothing like getting to gloat for all your MMO experience ^_^
May 12th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Then I guess it’s my job to keep making noise about it and start working to change that preconception.
May 12th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Resume coaches will tell you not to list leisure time activities unless it has a direct bearing on your job.
Presumably, almost everything you do makes you a better person, but would you put “always keeps room tidy”, even if you think the ability to keep everything in its proper place and do daily maintenance on it instead of waiting for things to get out of hand is a valuable skill?
Probably the greatest reason not to include ephemeral things like that is because you could be totally lying. Who would know? It’s impossible to check up on you. Including things which cannot be checked by a HR department on your resume won’t do you any good. And there’s the good possibility that including the rather dubious benefits of guild leadership in a resume would carry about as much weight as saying your elite skill with Super Mario Kart proves you’ll be a safe and speedy panel truck driver.
Hey, it might even be true. But on your resume?
May 12th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
The key isn’t so much having it on the resume as being able to talk about how you translated the experience to actual, applicable business skills, in my opinion.
Keeping your room tidy doesn’t help you much unless you’re applying to be a maid.
But if you’re applying with a company who requires you to collaborate as a member of an online team with people in diverse locations (increasingly common), there’s a direct parallel with gaming.
May 12th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Something else to consider alongside the above mentioned points is that, I’d say almost by default, putting raiding in your resume will either end up being superfluous or practically unverifiable.
When you get down to it, your resume will be reviewed by a non-gamer, or by a gamer. To the non-gamer, he’ll essentially ignore it. Doesn’t know what it is. Doesn’t know why he would care about it. So that’s superfluous information.
And even to the gamer, that’s pretty much unverifiable information. Saying “I raided with Kazzak’s Cawk Riders for over a year, we hit such and such place, etc” means nothing. It tells nothing to the gamer-reviewer. Presumable you’re mentioning raiding because you want to highlight the (good) qualities raiding is usually associated with; organization, following instructions, teamwork, a grasp on logistics and planning, etc. But ‘raiding’ doesn’t say anything about that as it applies to you. The reviewer won’t know if you were any good at it anyway. Won’t know if you were just an afk dead weight most of the time who was carried by default because you knew the GL/RL. Won’t know if you got tangled into loot disputes. Won’t know your performance unless you put it in there. And has no way to verify anything. Do you really think a resume reviewer, even if he was a hardcore gamer, will track down your RL/GL and ask for your raiding references?
We’re not quite there yet.
May 12th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I’ve led a pickup raid on Agnarr in EQ1 Planes of Power. Set up and organized many a Fear and Hate raid back when they were hard. Coordinated a cleric team on the various elemental plane encounters. They were rewarding and a lot of fun and I had a good time. I tell you this only so that you will know that, if I wanted, I could say with honesty that I was a raid leader in a MMORPG.
And none of that taught me anything about how to collaborate online in a team environment. In fact, my job was to micromanage everything that happened so that everything was very clear and simple and nobody would face anything unexpected.
These skills have definitely carried over to the EQ1 Nostalgia guild. But beyond that? People in the real world act far differently and with far different motivations — and with far more at risk — than in game.
If someone wanted to try out their raid-leading skills in the real world, than they should certainly try to apply these in the real world before they assume they add anything to their usable skillset. Say, organizing a job search program, or setting up a job fair. Those use real-world leadership skills. Sitting on a couch and making sure everyone has the correct mods up while following a well-known and publicized scripted encounter means nothing. It really doesn’t.
If you can’t demonstrably apply them to real world situations, it doesn’t count. If you can prove you can apply those skills to real world situations, then list those real world situations.
May 12th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Speaking as both a gamer and a hiring manager who has reviewed countless resumes and interviewed hundreds of people – this is a very bad idea.
To your point, one of the things that you look for in a candidate is their ability to perform the work. In short, can they do the job? It’s arguable whether or not these experiences do add skills, but let’s presume for a moment that people DO learn in-game skills that are applicable to a real life job.
As a potential employer, how do I assess your in-game accomplishments to determine what skills you do and do not have? Do I feel qualified to distinguish between a casual Guild Leader and a hardcore Guild Leader? What benchmarks can I use to measure your in-game success? What was your contribution relative to the other members in your Guild?
The reality is that unless the hiring manager was in your guild or had substantial knowledge about the game, they would have no way to determine whether you do or do not have these skills. It’s like putting Problem Solver on your resume without proving WHY or HOW you are a Problem Solver. The hiring manager is provided with little to no valuable information about your qualifications. In fact, most hiring managers wouldn’t even know to ask any of the questions in my last paragraph to get a sense of your worth.
However – here is what they DO know: 1) You place a heavy emphasis in your life on video games and 2) you plainly exercised poor judgment in writing your resume.
You see, it’s not just “can they do the job?” but also “can I trust them to do the job?” The fundamental difference is that one requires that I have confidence in your abilities and skills. The other is that I have confidence in your MOTIVATION and JUDGMENT. I need to feel good about both to make a hiring decision.
As an employer, it is far more difficult to weigh motivation and judgment than it is to measure skills sets. A common interview technique is to start an interview with the question, “Tell me a bit about yourself..” and wait for an answer. This serves an obvious purpose to allow the candidate to talk about themselves and a less obvious purpose that tells you what they value and think is important. Highlighting your Warcraft raiding career in your resume automatically tells me that you value video games. This would (rightly or wrongly) immediately raise the question in my mind about whether or not you planned to play games or visit internet sites during work hours.
Secondly, when someone exercises judgment that defies common sense, then you need to question whether or not that person will act similarly in your employment. It’s much like seeing a grammatical error in a resume and questioning whether or not the person can pay attention to detail. Not all jobs require attention to detail, but most will require good judgment.
May 12th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
@ Everyone who thinks it’s a bad idea to put gaming experience on your resume:
Do you think it’s better or worse than having nothing at all, especially if you don’t have much other work experience to talk about?
Also, what if instead of putting it on a resume, a potential applicant brought it up during an interview as an example of a time when they resolved a dispute or overcame a personal challenge?
May 12th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Yes, it is worse than nothing at all. It’s like saying you played flute in the school marching band. Nobody cares.
If you have truly done nothing outside of school besides play video games, perhaps its time to take all that experience playing video games and put it to work in the real world, and then list what real things you did.
Everyone knows resume padding when they see it.
May 12th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Cameron, I’m one of the most hardcore gamers you know. I spend 20-30 hours a week actually playing games, AND I lead a guild, AND I raid, AND I write about gaming, AND I attend gaming conventions. I’ve actually received raises twice based, in part, on my online exploits as a guild leader (but only because my bosses both were gamers that I’d also worked for quite a while, who both understood that I was also very good at my job).
All of that said, I’ve hired more than a few people in my career, and I’ve asked people to list out examples of how they resolved disputes or overcame personal challenges…and I can assure you that I would have been mortified to hear anyone respond with an online gaming example. When I ask about resolving differences in the workplace, I’d accept classroom experiences (if you have little to no experience), but I don’t want to hear about how you handled a loot dispute in World of Warcraft. While we’re on the subject, I don’t want to hear about your Facebook drama, your MySpace issues, or anything related to your personal blog…unless you coded it yourself and that relates to the job I’m hiring for.
May 12th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Oh, I don’t want to harp on this, but here’s the killer:
Raiding in WoW teaches you as much about leadership and teamwork in a real-world setting, as playing Rock Band teaches you about musicianship, promotion and entertaining a crowd.
Anyone who says different is just trying to justify the 10-20 hours a week they spend sitting in front of their computer screen waiting for CTRaid to tell them what to do.
May 12th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Do you think it’s better or worse than having nothing at all, especially if you don’t have much other work experience to talk about?
Worse. As I pointed out in my comment, it has little to no value and only serves to tell the hiring manager things that you don’t want them thinking about you.
The best advice I can give to all job seekers is to write about your accomplishments. Preferably, you want these to be “on-the-job” accomplishments but if you don’t have any then you can selectively choose ones from your life that can be applicable. The best ones would be related to school, extra-curricular activities, professional affiliations or associations, or organized charities. As Tipa pointed out, you want to avoid leisure time activities since this conveys that you are not serious about work and leads an employer to question your work ethic.
You may not realize it, but school (and particularly school projects) actually offers a wealth of accomplishments that someone with little job experience can leverage. A college graduate, in particular, likely faced a lot of adversity and challenge in his college career and can point out the most notable or relevant moments. For example: Led a Research Project to…, Achieved a 4.0 in… , Graduated with a …
You’ll notice that one thing these types of examples say about you is that what you felt you felt school was important and are proud of those accomplishments. The perception left in the mind of the hiring manager is that this is someone who works hard and cares about doing a good job even in something as mundane as school. Now contrast that to: Led a 40 player dungeon encounter in World of Warcraft.
May 12th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
After reading the comments from everyone, thinking about it for the afternoon, and reading most of Everything Good is Bad for You, I chatted with Kendricke for a while about the topic over the phone. I think I probably erred in slanting my article towards placing raiding or gaming on your resume. I mean, I wouldn’t do it (for no reason other than the social stigma), so I probably shouldn’t be recommending it.
However, I think that the point I’m trying to communicate and the spirit of the article is not that playing online games is great resume fodder (since obviously your resume is a place to list skills and an interview is a place to make a good impression), but rather that games can facilitate the development and internalization of skills that businesses would find valuable.
As many people pointed out, discussing games in an interview shows poor judgment even if it does illustrate relevant skills — probably the biggest reason to avoid mentioning it. Will that be the case in 10, 20, 30 years? Maybe. Maybe not.
However, even if you shouldn’t bring it up in an interview or stick it on your resume (and my apologies to anyone who quickly added their guild position to their resume in the last 12 hours), I do stand by my assertion that being involved in an online social community of any sort can help you develop skills that will be beneficial to your long-term personal success and is not a waste of time, even if you have to find other ways to demonstrate those skills to an employer.
May 12th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
:%s/gaming/community
That is to say, for example ‘I have experience and am involved in running an online community of approximately 60 people, organising events blah blah blah’. Saying ‘online community’ instead of ‘raiding kara’ probably appears better, and if its in general terms in the first place, it presumably can be transfered.
Also, I think saying raiding in an MMO has no bearing on real life is deluding themselves. And I don’t raid to be biased in that direction (altitis ftw). If you can give a group of people a set of instructions and watch them be followed through, then you have some form of leadership skills, even if you’re reading the strat on a second screen. I wouldn’t put tanking 5-mans on my CV, but I suspect its making me better at making critical decisions, as I have to react RIGHT NOW to that extra pack some mob got feared into, not sit and dither about the best way to do it. Especially if my resources (cooldowns) are limited at the time.
May 12th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
@Changling Bob — if game skills have made you better at something in the real world, then you have that real world accomplishment to list. If you can’t demonstrate how it has helped via a real world accomplishment, then how can you be sure it has really helped? I can claim reading 1984 has made me better at crushing the nation beneath a totalitarian regime, but until I actually do it, what do I know?
May 12th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
What about some kind of tactical sport; the best example I can think of is American football, but I don’t know it very well.
From my knowledge, someone on the pitch has to make a decision about what to do pretty quickly, depending on what the other team does. I would suspect that improves the same skills as tanking (and healing) reactions do. I can’t qualify that I am better at snap decision making in xyz real life applications, but I know its there.
May 12th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Coaching and Raid Leadering have a lot in common, I think its not too far of a stretch to say it makes you a better sports coach for team sports.
May 13th, 2008 at 5:27 am
I feel ya bro, I love gaming … yet sadly, after 10 years in HR and having seen thousands of resumes cross my desk, “gaming” (except in a few niche job markets) is a kiss of death.