I'm currently hiring for a few sound designer positions and have been dealing with a lot of applications, so I wanted to pass on some thoughts to make people's lives easier from both sides of the table. Apologies up front for the long post.
Firstly, some perspective. We receive around a thousand applications for lower level positions. That is insane. If you're looking for an entry level job and you wonder why you don't get the gig, that's why. This is also likely why people ask for experience for low level positions... as with THAT many applicants, you get to be insanely picky. There is a HUGE supply and demand issue at the bottom end of the career ladder. I don't think people appreciate how bad the situation is. You can likely blame all the educational institutions and organisations for spitting out thousands of graduates a year when they know full well there are only a handful of jobs.
On the flip side, applications drop off rapidly for higher level positions. There is an extreme lack of highly skilled and experienced seniors/leads/directors. At the director level you basically get to choose where and who you work for, but there are very few people that have the ability to handle the multifaceted nature of these roles.
However, let's focus on the lower level positions as that's likely what most people on here are focused on. The key thing is to remember that the person assessing you is going to spend VERY little time looking at your application.
Let's say 80 applicants make it past the HR filter, if they spend five minutes looking at each applicant, that's nearly 7 hours of non-stop reviewing, just for the first stage of hiring. Think 5 minutes isn't enough? It's more like 4 minutes as they'll spend a minute per application interacting with the HRIS interface. So you get at most four minutes to impress someone that knows nothing about you, and that includes them navigating your website and listening to example materials. On top of this, the audio people reviewing your applications are very busy, time is incredibly limited and if we're hiring the chances are we are already short staffed or will be soon. We are under immense pressure and need to get through this hiring slog quickly... while also recognising that hiring is one of the most important things you can do. In short, we're looking out for any red flags that allow us to reject people quickly.
The TLDR is; put your best foot firmly forward, quickly and make hiring managers lives easy or you may be overlooked. I've seen 20 page resumes/CVs, websites that require me to click through a ton of pages to find the reel and waaaaaay, WAAAAAAAAY too much music. There are a lot of time wasters out there and it makes hiring managers understandably impatient and a bit jaded.
On that last point about music, if a job is for a sound designer, makes no mention of music and (as is often the case) even explicitly says 'this is not a music position'... please don't waste your time or ours by applying if you're only interested in music. People devote their entire careers and lives to sound design, it is not something composers do when their music career doesn't take off. It's cool if sound designers can also make music, but it is NOT a fall back job. Sorry if this sounds like a rant, but I'd say at least HALF of the applicants are from composers or music people that have no interest or experience in sound design.
It's critical you make an amazing showreel that immediately shows off your sound design skills, even if it's a redesign of work that isn't yours, hiring managers want to be wow'ed, especially in light of that time pressure. Honestly, I'd be happy to receive redesigns even from experienced people, because even great people don't all get to work on AAA games or the really shiny parts of them. I just want to get a sense of your skills. If you've piqued my interest in the first minute, I'll investigate longer, keep reeling me in and I'll stick around. If you start badly, I'm already thinking of moving on because I've received 3 messages since I started looking at your application, have two meetings coming up and will be working late tonight because of that milestone.
Make sure the above reel is easily accessible, don't make me jump through a ton of hoops. Often I receive a youtube playlist with a ton of tiny videos in; where do I start to get an initial overview? You want me to watch all of them? No, I'll watch one or two and if you've not grabbed me by then I'm unlikely to keep digging in the hopes that there's some gold in here somewhere.
Another gotcha, please don't put up a website with only trailers of projects you worked on. I want to see YOUR work, not the marketing departments. These trailer lists are essentially just a credits list and they're not helping me to understand what you did.
Connected to this, make sure any material you show makes it clear what you did. Sometimes it can be very difficult to know what people were responsible for. It's super easy to make titles on videos to clarify but ideally you would solo your work.
Don't try to bend the truth as to your involvement on titles. If I smell a rat, I might go digging. I have caught people before and the game audio community is very small, especially with those that do the hiring. It's not worth it. Just be honest. The hiring people are human too, we also had to start from the bottom and have sympathy for folks trying to get in. If you try to oversell your involvement or flat out lie, you're playing a dangerous game.
Don't bother including stuff that is completely irrelevant. I don't care what high school you went to, how is that relevant to this job? Also, I wouldn't include your photo on your CV/Resume. We don't and shouldn't care what you look like. In some countries it is considered undesirable to include it for anti-discrimination reasons. By all means put it on your website if you like, but in the context of you doing sound stuff.
It feels gross to have to reject people that could be awesome because they didn't present themselves well enough and I often think about the amazing people that I rejected because they did a poor job of selling themselves. But another perspective on this is that understanding your audience is a key part of being a good team member and also being a good sound designer. So is the ability to clearly communicate to others. On top of this, there is only one job and I can only pick one person, so by poorly presenting yourself you're making it too easy for someone to reject you. Think about how the data you supply (CV/Resume, website and reel) will appear to someone that knows zero about you.
Anyway, apologies if this comes across as a rant... I'm just trying to pass on my experiences from someone that does the hiring in the hopes that it can be helpful in some way. I may add more to this later but I have to go enjoy my Sunday :)
