Hiring in game development. How we built a process for attracting strong specialists

What the talk is about

Ihor Kopiov describes how he built a game division team from scratch over a year and a half in a company that was not seen as having game development expertise. His core idea is that the right people in the right roles matter more than anything else, so you should hire personalities rather than man-hours. He urges thinking like a candidate: find out what matters to each person (an interesting project, the team, growth prospects, money) and avoid template messages. He walks through his process: the manager personally runs interviews, the test task is presented as an attractive landing page (nearly doubling completion), remote hires get extra stages, an independent interview comes from an outside team, and references are checked. He also advises training juniors, giving lectures, running game jams, and spending a lot of time on hiring. Useful for managers and recruiters.