Two CVs for an Art Director

It took eight months to sign this retainer.

Eight months of conversations, terms and revisions before any money changed hands. That reflects well on both sides. A retainer is a studio saying it trusts you with a role it cannot afford to get wrong, and that is not trust anyone should hand over quickly. We would rather work with a client who takes the decision seriously.

When it was signed, the agreement committed us to five CVs for the Art Director position.

We sent two.

Senior art leadership is one of the hardest hires in games. The pool is small, most of it is employed and content, and a portfolio that is outstanding in isolation can still be wrong for a particular studio's visual direction. This studio had a clear and demanding sense of what they wanted, which narrows the field considerably , and rightly so, because an art director sets the look of everything that follows.

What made two enough was the eleven months of work that preceded the search. We already knew the studio, its people and its bar, so we were not learning any of that on the client's time. When the search opened we gave their team direct login access to our applicant tracking system, so they could see every candidate in full and move them through stages themselves. And when their talent lead set out the studio's intake standard, reason for job change, total experience, a defined set of inputs on every profile , we adopted their format the same day rather than asking them to work around ours. It was a good standard. It made our screening sharper.

The second CV was an art director with a master's from a US university and more than a decade of experience. He was hired.

"A shortlist is not a long list with fewer names on it. It is a different piece of work."