Learn about the companies you apply to, so that you can customize your resume and cover letter to highlight the most relevant of your skills.  You want to print small quantities of resumes at a time, and edit them to highlight game-related skills on an application to a game company, echo language from an advertised job description, or customize them for a situation such as adding your local contact information while you are at the SIGGRAPH conference.

If you are invited in for an interview, study everything you can about the company beforehand, so that you can ask intelligent questions at the interview, or mention specific examples of the company's work that you admire or feel that you could contribute to.

Find out as much about the industry as you can, so that you can find opportunities others might have overlooked.  It pays to apply to smaller and less well-known companies, instead of just the biggest and most famous companies that everyone applies to.  Read the credits of movies, TV shows, and video games to find out who is doing work on projects that you might be interested in.  Read magazines like Cinefex and Computer Graphics World, and go to conferences like SIGGRAPH and the Game Developers Conference, to meet more people in the industry.  Stay in touch with old friends and co-workers who can be the source of job tips.  Quite often, the key to getting a job is finding out about it. Next Page

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