Last Glimpse at the Origin Hiring Process (January 17, 2017)

[ChrisReid]

Here's a really cool artifact for Origin fans out there. James was going through some old things and found this nifty postcard he received from OSI. It's an acknowledgement letter sent out to potential applicants who had submitted resumes. It was probably for the better that he didn't get the job, as this was postmarked in early February 2004. Just a couple weeks later, we shared the news that Origin Studios would be closing and its Austin-based employees would be laid off in the months that followed. So this is probably one of the last rejection letters to go out, since the company would have stopped accepting applications very soon thereafter!

I was digging through some old boxes of junk and found this postcard. (Header from front (without my address) & entire backside) You know you like/admire a place when you even keep their rejection postcard from 2004!

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Original update published on January 17, 2017

 

[Quarto]

Heh, that reminds me. In late 2003, I visited the Netherlands for the first major international games studies conference (DiGRA 2003). Apart from academics, there was also a few games developers presenting, and I talked to this young guy from EA, who was presenting about Spore (which I guess would have been in early stages back then). Among other things, I told him that I've always wanted to work at Origin. His answer was, I suppose, deeply euphemistic: Origin is not a good place to work right now. I can just imagine!

 

[Pedro]

That's a rejection letter? Now that I think about it the only time I've ever failed to get an interview on applying for a job was when I tried my luck applying for remote work with RSI - that mail was simply ignored, so I've never seen one of these. I hate to think of someone holding their breath waiting for a response.

 

[Quarto]

Well, strictly speaking, it seems to be just an acknowledgement letter - like an autoresponder, I guess. But presumably, if you didn't get any job, they would not contact you further, so it kinda doubles as a rejection letter in the "don't call us, we'll call you" sense.

I will say, the last time I searched for industry jobs on a large scale - which would have been in late 2005, when I sent my CV to something like twenty companies - I was more than a little bit miffed by the shoddy response rate. Honestly, I don't think most game developers get so many CVs every day, that they can justify failing to acknowledge receiving an email. And I think they lose out for it, because if you get a polite rejection, you might end up trying again under different circumstances in the future when you have more experience and the like. But if you never got a response, you're far less likely to try again in the future, no matter how good you become. On the other hand, ironically, I ultimately got a job for one of the companies that didn't respond to my email at all, and instead ended up cold-calling me a couple of months later.

 

[wcnut]

It is nice to get cold called. At least you are guaranteed an interview.

 

[ChrisReid]

That's a rejection letter? Now that I think about it the only time I've ever failed to get an interview on applying for a job was when I tried my luck applying for remote work with RSI - that mail was simply ignored, so I've never seen one of these. I hate to think of someone holding their breath waiting for a response.

Really? That seems like an extraordinarily opportune scenario you have there.

When I graduated college, I must've applied to well over a hundred positions. I only got several interviews (fewer than 5), and I only even heard back from maybe half of them. This type of acknowledgement/rejection is pretty common, and the vast majority of applicants would know that they have to keep applying to other places, because the chance of getting picked up at any one place was very low. Most places I've worked, the application->interview ratio is between 15:1 all the way to 100:1 (and then only a subset of that gets hired, hence applying to 200 jobs to actually end up with 1 offer...). Maybe different industries...

 

[Pedro]

Really? That seems like an extraordinarily opportune scenario you have there.

When I graduated college, I must've applied to well over a hundred positions. I only got several interviews (fewer than 5), and I only even heard back from maybe half of them. This type of acknowledgement/rejection is pretty common, and the vast majority of applicants would know that they have to keep applying to other places, because the chance of getting picked up at any one place was very low. Most places I've worked, the application->interview ratio is between 15:1 all the way to 100:1 (and then only a subset of that gets hired, hence applying to 200 jobs to actually end up with 1 offer...). Maybe different industries...

So if you got one of those acknowledgment letters you'd take it as a rejection - or do you still tend to get one of those first even if you're successful?
I guess I was lucky - my masters had a good repuation in the games industry, everyone was hired within months of graduating (several poached earlier and had to delay their dissertations) - it was also at least a year before the economy collapsed and people were switching to HD, everyone was expanding - probably the easiest time to break into games.
Shortly after when Free Radical went under I saw that had changed - those with 2 years experience were fine, but many recent graduates struggled to find new positions. Once you have some experience the recruiters find you and you don't find yourself applying directly. If your company goes under you get swarmed by them like locusts.
Still out here in Japan, games industry the way it is, language skills still somewhat lacking - I don't want to test my luck.

 

[Quarto]

Hmm. You know, it just occurred to me that the most unique thing about this letter is actually the fact that it is a letter. This is 2004 - by this point, especially in the games industry, it was common to submit job applications by email. I don't know if in this case the guy applied by letter or by email, but either way, what a great souvenir that response letter makes, ten years down the track. It's really unique!

 

[ChrisReid]

So if you got one of those acknowledgment letters you'd take it as a rejection - or do you still tend to get one of those first even if you're successful?

Right, one of those would go to everybody, so it wasn't an outright rejection necessarily - you were just very unlikely to hear anything else back afterwards.