RECRUITMENT
Recruiter Hotseat Splash Damage is hiring! Head of recruitment Alex Wright-Manning tells us more about life at the studio What differentiates your studio from other developers? This may sound clichéd, but without a doubt it’s our people. I’ve been in the industry for many years, working with scores of studios in my career both internally and externally, and biases aside, I’m yet to experience another developer with the breadth of talent, passion, resilience and all round friendliness that I experience every day at Splash Damage. Despite having numerous game teams working on an array of wildly varied projects, there’s very few silos, consistently transparent communication, and an overarching feeling that everyone is pulling in the same direction. That’s not something that can be forced, and it’s a brilliant indictment of who we are as a collective. Our recent Best Companies awards in both the ‘Best 75 London Companies’ and national ‘Best 100 Large Companies to Work For’ aligned with their 3-star ‘World Class’ accreditation – which are all awarded from anonymous employee feedback – is testament to that. How many staff are you currently looking to take on? Our recent acquisition by Tencent has seen significant investment in the studio, broadening our portfolio with further top-tier projects and putting the foundations for future success in place. As such we’re experiencing a period of unprecedented growth, with over 140 new ‘Splashers’ already joining us during the pandemic period, and as many more new positions earmarked for hiring this year – with around 15-20 per cent of those to be entry level roles. It’s a very exciting time for the studio.
How has the pandemic affected recruitment at your studio? Given the sudden shift to remote working and how quickly we transitioned to this model it was certainly a challenge – especially given the huge hiring ramp it coincided with! The main downside is not being able to bring potential recruits into the studio in-person to meet with our teams face-to-face, but we’ve adapted tremendously with a more flexible approach to interview scheduling and an increased focus on our cultural and values assessments. These are structured ‘deep-dive’ interviews, delivered in an open and conversational manner so they’re very well received by candidates. There has been a welcome silver lining in that we have been able to interview significantly more prospective Splashers than our studio capacity would normally allow. No fighting over meeting rooms when everyone has a room in the comfort of their own homes! What processes do you have for onboarding staff remotely? For a studio for whom ‘culture is king’, ensuring that new team members feel at home from day one is imperative, so I’m proud of how we’ve adapted. Obviously, a large part of our face-toface onboarding can be shifted directly to video conferencing, but it’s more than that – it’s about making people feel like they’re a part of the whole, even if they’ve never actually seen inside of the studio building. Our developers have excelled in this regard; changing the way that they mentor and connect with their team members and overcommunicating to place even greater focus on the integration and well-being of new Splashers.
Alex Wright-Manning, Splash Damage
There are some unsung heroes to thank as well. None of this would have been possible without the efforts of our operations teams and they’ve been instrumental in making this such a success. What is the culture like at your studio? Our company culture or ‘values’ have been codified and refined over many years and these are core to everything we do. They inform our development practices, staff appraisals, career progression, learning & development, benefits, internal comms and recruitment. • We put the team first • We trust in each other • We find solutions • We decide and deliver • We always learn, always improve Whilst we absolutely want to avoid becoming some weird, homogeneous hive-mind, we’re very keen to ensure that our ethos of everyone pulling together is supported. Having an established framework of what the company’s culture and values ‘look like’ is key to this. Beyond our values, it’s important for us that the make-up of our teams reflects those who play our games. The industry has traditionally struggled with this, and we’ve put a lot of effort into diversity and inclusion over the past few years.
If you’d like to feature your recruitment team on this page then contact Alex Boucher – alex.boucher@biz-media.co.uk 18 | MCV/DEVELOP June 2021
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