Recruiting

(Music playing) Male Speaker: I am a student at the University of Cincinnati. We have an internship program, and Big Spaceship takes interns every quarter. We have to go through an interview process, just like anyone else would. We come on and they pretty much throw us right into projects. Zander Brimijoin: Well, in terms of the way we recruit people and look for job applicants, we don't have to do a whole lot, because we do get a lot of applicants. But every once in a while we do - we've started to go to certain schools to talk about Big Spaceship and to interview students. Joshua Hirsch: We don't hire to meet - like, let's say we need somebody really specific, we're not just going to hire the first person, or know that we need somebody. So, if we get a batch of applicants, but none of them really fit or have what we are looking for, then we will just make do until we find the right people. At the same time, if we are not necessarily looking for somebody specific, and somebody comes along who has what it takes, or has, is one of us, or has the right talents, then we will definitely bring him on. We are mostly just looking for those kind of special people who fit here, who have the talent and desire and the enthusiasm. And it's hard, really, really hard to find good people. Zander: Good people that are also the right blend of relaxed and easy to work with, in order to kind of survive in this environment. Joshua: I mean, the education programs are kind of just now catching up, because education in this field, kind of new media, design, whatever you want to call it, is so new and it's so far behind the industry. So, we are making an effort to kind of talk to schools, and talk to industry companies, like Adobe, see how they can influence the curriculum and change it, and ensure that the kids are learning the right skills and the right tools to come into an environment like this and really thrive. We find that a lot of young applicants and kids in school in these kind of programs think they have to know everything. And they come up to us and say, "Oh!" Like in these career days, they come up and say, "I do motion graphics. Well, but "I also know how to do ActionScript, I also know how to code," like, we are going to be looking for that. Like "Oh! "You are just a Motion graphics guy? "We don't want you unless you can do everything." It's completely the opposite. We want, we'd rather have somebody who says, "I am really into After Effects "and Flash animation and that's what I love and I can do a little bit of -" and having kind of overall knowledge of how things are put together is important, but you don't have to be a programmer to do animations. If you want to animate, do that. And the kind of scale of the projects we working on, we want people to have specialties like that. And that's better than somebody saying, "Oh! "I do kind of little bit of everything. Just give me something to do," because then we are dictating where they go, rather than them really picking what they like to do. Sometimes, everything is a risk, but we have managed to put together the greatest team on earth, I think.