Hitmarker survey reveals ‘out of date’ hiring processes in the esports and games industry plus other trends: 84% of applicants would rather answer job-specific questions than submit a cover letter, 40% deem gender-neutral job descriptions to be ‘very important’

Hitmarker, the UK-based esports and gaming job platform, has today announced the findings of its first ever industry report – and Esports News UK has pulled 9 key stats from it.

With a focus on candidate preferences when job seeking, Hitmarker says this report will serve as a publicly-available resource on what candidates find value in, what they don’t and how companies in the games industry can use this to improve their own recruitment processes.

The report was produced from 632 candidates, who spent a total of 191 hours answering Hitmarker’s questions about recruitment in the games industry and how it can be improved. 23.4% of respondents were based in the UK.

Hitmarker analysed how the responses changed between different demographics, genders and experience levels.

This information was analysed across the groups who participated in the survey to understand how candidate preferences change among different demographics, genders and experience levels.

Hitmarker’s hope is that hiring managers and key decision-makers in the industry will use this information to make their processes more inclusive and transparent for everyone.

9 key findings from the Hitmarker esports/gaming jobs report

1. 84.4% of candidates would prefer answering job-specific questions to submitting a traditional cover letter.
2. Automated interview rounds are largely disliked by candidates, with underrepresented groups feeling the most uncomfortable in these settings.
3. 70.9% of candidates with at least three years of experience describe salary information as very important. This rises to 84% among underrepresented groups in the same category.
4. Around half of respondents are comfortable with first-stage automated video or test interviews, and half aren’t
5. 40.8% of all candidates view gender-neutral job descriptions as very important, with this number rising dramatically among underrepresented groups and non-binary people in particular. Gender-neutral job descriptions are especially welcomed by nonbinary individuals, people with disabilities, and cisgender women. Hitmarker advised business to use gender decoders on job descriptions to make language as inclusive as possible.
6. 42% of candidates felt comfortable doing two interviews at most, with 40.3% answering that three was their upper limit.
7. The number one challenge that candidates face when job seeking is a lack of feedback, followed by a lack of entry-level jobs, and then by a lack of salary information.
8. Only 33.7% of cisgender men said that defining a company’s culture in a job description was very important, compared to 45.9% of BIPOC candidates, 43.1% of candidates with disabilities, and 41.7% of cisgender women.
9. Over 70% of all candidates indicated that progression information is at least important to them, with 34.5% finding it very important

‘We can’t solve bias in recruitment without removing the processes that contribute towards it’

Sara Machado, head of recruitment at Hitmarker, comments on the survey

“We conducted this survey because it was important to show, through data, the discrepancies between candidates’ expectations and companies’ recruitment processes.

“Hiring practices are out of date and we want to give companies in games, where we have the chance to be forward-thinking as an industry, the tools they need to rethink them.

“84.4% of candidates would rather answer job-specific questions than submit a traditional cover letter, which is just one example of how desperately recruitment practices need to be rehauled. While other areas of work have evolved rapidly over the years, recruitment has been slow to catch up.

“When we look at game developers and the people working in the games industry, they aren’t representative of the audience they create for. According to the 2020 UKIE census of the UK games industry, 70% of all staff members were male, 28% were female and only 2% were non-binary. Their ethnicity split was 90% white, 6% Asian, 2% black, and 2% mixed race.

“So another core motivator behind this report was to map the barriers that underrepresented groups in the games industry face. We can’t solve bias in recruitment without removing the processes that contribute towards it, so we want companies to use this report to make their hiring practices more accessible. Ultimately, we’re trying to take the guesswork out of building an inclusive recruitment process.”

What’s next for Hitmarker and links to the full report

While this first report focuses on candidate preferences when job seeking, Hitmarker says future studies will focus on the role of company feedback, tests, recruiters and bias within recruitment.

A few months ago, Hitmarker removed the option for companies to list unpaid roles on the platform.

Highlights from Hitmarker’s candidate report can be viewed here and the full Hitmarker esports/gaming jobs hiring process report can be downloaded here.

Dom Sacco

Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.

As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.