I’ve been spending a great deal of time looking for and interviewing artists lately.
A few points I’ve learned:
- Posting an ad on Gamasutra is expensive and not effective. It’s much more effective to browse resumes and contact people directly.
- People tend to come as a whole package. You don’t get too many idiot savants who can’t spell but are great artists, or who can’t keep a schedule but are great programmers. If an application email or portfolio looks bad, or has bad spelling, capitalization, or punctuation, it’s not worth responding.
- Older people are more reliable.
- You get what you pay for. Someone asking for a ridiculously low salary based on their experience and location is a sure sign of someone nobody else wants to hire.
- If someone doesn’t exhibit desired qualities in an interview, they aren’t going to exhibit them after you hire them, whether you try to coach them to do so or not.
- If you hired the right person, they will impress you within the first hour. If they don’t impress you in the first hour, you hired the wrong person.
- Positive management skills can polish a lump of gold, but can’t turn coal into a diamond.
- The world is filled with bad workers and the vast majority of people that apply to you are such. The good ones are rare and hard to find. Hold onto them if you find them.