How to Write a Game Development CV That Gets You Hired

A recruiter-written guide from the team that reviews hundreds of gamedev CVs a year – covering myths, layout, keywords, portfolio platforms, and what to do when your best work is under NDA.

A strong game developer CV does two things simultaneously: it passes a recruiter’s scan by putting the right keywords in the right places, and it gives the hiring manager enough specific, verifiable evidence to shortlist you over the next candidate. Most CVs that cross 8Bit’s desk fail at least one of those two requirements. The silver lining? Both failures are fixable.

Where This CV Revamp Advice Comes From? 8Bit Recruitment Team

8Bit Recruitment has operated exclusively within the games industry since 2015, working with 120+ studios worldwide across indie, AA, and AAA productions. 8Bit’s specialist recruiters review hundreds of game developer CVs every year – for programming, art, design, production, QA, and audio roles (basically, for any type of gamedev jobs) – and run CV workshops and portfolio review sessions at industry events including DevGAMM or Games Ground Berlin.

This guide is built directly from that sourcing experience. It is written by people who have screened candidates for real roles at real studios, and who know precisely which CV decisions lose candidates opportunities they should have had. While it is not a general career-advice template adapted for games, but very much gamedev-oriented, we believe professionals from other industries will also find it a beneficial read.

Five CV Myths Gamedev Professionals Still Believe

Before the practical rules: five persistent myths that come up in almost every workshop 8Bit runs. Each one is presented as a flat statement because that’s how these myths tend to circulate as confident, passed-on advice that sounds reasonable and is either wrong or more nuanced than the confident version suggests.

Myth 1: “Your CV must be no longer than one page”

Myth 2: “Including a photo is good practice”

Myth 3: “Unreleased projects don’t belong in your CV”

Myth 4: “A flashy CV with animations or background music makes you stand out”

Myth 5: “Any file format is fine, as long as it looks good”

What Not to Include in Your CV: The Deadweight List

Every item on a CV is a decision about what to show a recruiter in a limited amount of time. Anything that does not directly support your case for the role you’re applying to is deadweight, and is actively harmful because it pushes relevant information down the page.

The following categories should not appear on a game developer CV:

CV Layout: The Structure That Makes Recruiters’ Lives Easier

A recruiter scanning a CV for a specific role is essentially pattern-matching: looking for the engine, the platform, the discipline, and the seniority level in as few seconds as possible. A layout that makes that pattern-matching easy gets more time; a layout that requires work to decode gets skipped.

The structure that consistently performs well across games-industry hiring is straightforward:

How to Write Your Experience Section

The experience section is where most gamedev CVs either earn their shortlist or lose it. The most common failure mode is describing responsibilities rather than contributions, that is writing what your role was supposed to do rather than what you specifically did.

A strong experience entry for a gamedev role includes: the most recent role listed first; the platform, engine, and genre of the game you worked on; your specific contribution rather than a general job description; and short-term roles explained with brief context.

The second version is shorter, plainer, and significantly more useful to a recruiter. It immediately answers the questions that matter: what platform, what engine, what kind of game, what specific systems, and it doesn’t waste words on things every developer does (“communicating with other departments,” “managing time”). If a bullet point describes something that is assumed to be part of any professional role, remove it.

For roles lasting under 12 months, you may add a brief parenthetical explanation: “(contract),” “(redundancy),” “(studio closure),” or “(freelance).” Short tenures without context read as red flags; short tenures with honest context read as normal industry experience, which they almost always are.

Include Game Context, Not Just Role Context

One piece of information that game developer CVs consistently omit, and that recruiters consistently need, is game context: what the actual game was. A recruiter filling a role for a mobile hypercasual programmer needs to know you’ve worked on mobile hypercasual games, not just that you’ve worked in Unity – because Unity is used across mobile, console, PC, and VR. Platform, engine, and genre are the three context signals that make your Unity experience relevant or not relevant to a specific role.

For each experience entry, aim to include all three where they apply: the platform (PC, console, mobile, VR, browser), the engine (Unity, Unreal Engine 5, proprietary, Godot), and the genre or game type (shooter, RPG, strategy, hypercasual, simulation). A recruiter looking for a hypercasual Unity developer on Android is running a very specific search, and a CV that answers that search explicitly will get the call.

Keywords: How Recruiters Actually Search Through CVs

Game development recruiters do not read CVs linearly, at least not on the first pass. The first pass is a keyword scan, looking for the specific terms that match the role. A CV that buries its most relevant keywords in paragraph text, uses non-standard terminology, or omits the terms that appear in the job description itself will fail this scan even if the underlying experience is exactly right.

A CV that describes several years of mobile Unity work without including the words “hypercasual” or “mobile games” in the experience section is effectively invisible to a recruiter searching for those terms. The keywords need to appear in the text of the document, not just implied by context, because the search is literal, not semantic.

How to Find and Apply the Right Keywords

The most reliable keyword source is the job description itself. Before tailoring a CV for a specific application, read the job description and identify the terms the studio is using: the role title they’ve chosen, the engine they’ve named, the platform, the genre, and the required skills. Use those exact terms in your CV, particularly in the experience section of the role most relevant to that application, and in any summary section at the top.

Bold text for the most important keywords is an acceptable technique. It doesn’t trick any system, but it does make the first-pass scan faster for a human recruiter working through a large pile. Use it sparingly, three to five bolded terms per role at most – or the emphasis becomes noise.

If You Don’t Have Games Industry Experience Yet

A CV without games industry credits is not disqualifying, provided it demonstrates active, genuine interest in the industry rather than just a desire to work in it. Games studios, particularly for junior roles, are evaluating whether someone is likely to grow into the role, not just whether they already fit it perfectly.

What Makes a Gamedev Portfolio Actually Work

A portfolio exists to answer one question before a recruiter has to ask it: “What does this person’s work look like?” A portfolio that requires a recruiter to infer the answer because it is password protected, structured as a downloadable file, or full of group work with no indication of individual contribution, does not answer that question, which means it does not do its job.

The five properties that make a gamedev portfolio useful to a recruiter are:

Portfolio format: always a clickable link. Never a downloadable file, a PDF attachment, or a document shared via Google Drive. A hyperlink in the body of a CV is acceptable on the surface, but may not be parsed correctly by ATS tools. Put the full URL in plain text in the contact section as well as linking it in the experience entry where it’s most relevant.

Portfolio Platforms, Matched to Discipline

The right hosting platform depends on the discipline. Using the wrong one for your work type isn’t catastrophic, but using the right one signals industry familiarity and makes the recruiter’s job easier. ArtStation is the platform games art directors check first, not Behance.

What to Do When Your Best Work Is Under NDA?

Working under NDA on an unannounced or unreleased title is one of the most common portfolio dilemmas in the games industry, and the answer is not to leave your portfolio stagnant while waiting for the announcement. The answer is to make new work.

A personal project, a game jam contribution, a self-directed environment piece, a technical demo – any of these demonstrates current skills and current output in a way that an NDA-covered project simply cannot. A portfolio that stops updating during NDA periods effectively signals that a developer’s only creative output is work they can’t show, which is not the story anyone wants to tell in a job application.

When noting NDA work in the experience section of a CV, the right approach is to describe what you built without revealing what was being built: “Shipped a combat system for an unannounced PC/console title using UE5” is accurate, honest, and informative without breaching any disclosure obligations. The platform, engine, and type of system you built are rarely covered by NDA – the game’s title and story usually are.

What a Recruiter Notices in the First 30 Seconds

Recruiter screening at volume is not a sequential process. It is a pattern-matching exercise under time pressure. Understanding what gets noticed in the first ten seconds of a CV scan is as useful as any of the detailed rules above, because the first ten seconds determine whether the detailed rules ever get a chance to matter.

In the first 30 seconds, a gamedev recruiter typically registers: whether there is a working portfolio link in an immediately visible location; whether the job title at the top is a real, recognizable title or a made-up one; whether the most recent role includes any recognizable game title, platform, or engine name; and whether the document is easy to read or requires effort. A CV that clears all four of those checks in the first 30 seconds gets more time. A CV that fails any of them frequently doesn’t.

The single most common way strong candidates lose the first scan is burying their most important credential – a shipped title, an engine specialization, a platform – below a dense summary paragraph, a long education section, or a list of skills in a sidebar. The most important information should be the first thing a recruiter can see, before they scroll, before they read a full sentence.

Questions Candidates Ask at Every Workshop

Should a game developer CV be one page?

Not necessarily. One page works well for developers early in their career or with limited experience. Two pages are appropriate and common for mid-level and senior professionals. The real rule is not to pad a CV to fill pages, or to cram experience into one page in a font size that becomes unreadable. Relevance and readability matter more than page count.

Should I include a photo in my game developer CV?

No. Including a profile photo takes up valuable space that should go to your experience and skills, and many studios flag photos because of anti-discrimination compliance rules. A photo on a CV does not help your application and can actively hurt it.

Should I include unreleased game projects in my CV or portfolio?

Yes, if the work demonstrates relevant skills. An unreleased project that shows a system you built, a mechanic you designed, or art at a professional standard is more useful to a recruiter than leaving that experience invisible. Clearly label it as in development or cancelled, and describe your specific contribution.

What file format should a game developer CV be sent in?

Always PDF. A .docx file can be reformatted or rendered incorrectly by a recruiter’s system, and a .jpeg or image-format CV cannot be indexed by ATS tools at all. PDF preserves your formatting across every device and hiring system.

How do game development recruiters read CVs?

Recruiters scan CVs for keywords first, not narrative. They are looking for specific terms that match the role they are filling: the engine, the platform, the genre, the discipline, and the seniority level. A CV that buries its most relevant keywords in paragraph text, or that uses non-standard job title language like “Code Wizard” or “Unity Ninja,” will fail the first scan even if the underlying experience is strong.

What portfolio platform should a game developer use?

It depends on discipline. ArtStation is the standard for all 2D and 3D art roles. Behance suits UI and UX work. YouTube and Vimeo both work for animators, VFX artists, and cinematic artists, though Vimeo is blocked in several Asian countries. Programmers and technical artists typically use GitHub for code and YouTube for tech demos. A personal website is the most flexible option and works across all disciplines.

What can I show in my portfolio if my recent work is under NDA?

Create new work. Build a personal project, contribute to a game jam, produce a self-directed art piece, or write a technical blog post about a system you designed. In the experience section of your CV, describe what you built without naming the unannounced title – platform, engine, and system type are rarely covered by NDA, and that information is exactly what a recruiter needs.

Should I include a cover letter with my game developer CV?

Only if the studio specifically requires one. A cover letter that is not requested is rarely read, and writing a generic one adds no value. If a studio does ask for one, write it directly to that studio and role. Generic cover letters are worse than none.

How do I show graphic design skill bars or proficiency levels on a CV?

Don’t. A graphic bar showing “80% proficiency in Photoshop” is measured against no defined baseline, communicates nothing verifiable, and wastes space that should go to describing what you’ve actually built with the tool. Replace skill bars with descriptions of real work: what you created, in what engine or tool, for what kind of project.

Review Your Game Development CV with 8Bit Recruitment Team

Fixing your resume on your own can be tough when you are too close to your own work. If you would like an expert, professional recruiter’s perspective on your layout, formatting, and project positioning, 8Bit offers personalized, 1:1 career consultation sessions.

Visit CV Review section to book a live review session. We will look at your current game development CV together and tell you honestly what is working, what is missing, and exactly what you need to change to land your dream role.