Employers Arent Playing Games with Talent: Video Gaming Jobs Are In Demand

New York, NY (PRWEB) September 12, 2012

In August, more than 2,900 jobs were advertised online for video gaming related careers in the United States, according to WANTED Analytics (http://www.wantedanalytics.com), the leading source of real-time business intelligence for the talent marketplace. As gamification grows as a business strategy and systems advance, hiring demand for specialists to develop and promote new games has grown significantly in 2012. The number of job ads increased 60% compared to August of 2011 and is now at all-time high levels.

The most commonly advertised job titles for game developers were Video Gaming User Specialist, Merchandiser Specialist, Video Game Sales Specialist, Video Game Demonstrator, and Game Advisor. Although technology jobs most often require gaming knowledge, other fields that increasingly require this experience included Marketing Managers, Retail Salespersons and Sales Managers, Multi-media Artists and Animators, Market Research Analysts, and Product Demonstrators.

Gaming jobs require many tools, technologies, and skill sets, especially for video game development and programming. Some of the most commonly required skills for these positions include:

1. JavaScript

2. Graphical User Interface Design (UI)

3. Quality Assurance (QA)

4. Software development

5. Product development/management

6. Project management

7. Oracle Java

8. Adobe Photoshop

9. Structured query language

10. Microsoft PowerPoint

Video gaming specialists are most frequently recruited for jobs located in Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose, and Chicago. While employers in Los Angeles placed the highest number of job ads for this talent pool, one of the highest year-over-year growth areas was actually seen in Chicago where demand grew more than 460% in August 2012 compared to August 2011. The second highest growth was seen in San Jose, up 156% versus last year.

As hiring demand continues, a limited talent supply of potential candidates with gaming experience will create challenges for employers. According to the Hiring Scale, employers across the United States spend an average of 6.5 weeks advertising jobs and sourcing candidates for positions that require video gaming skills. Each location will, however, experience a varying degree of difficulty when sourcing. Companies in Birmingham, Alabama and Nashville, Tennessee are currently experiencing some of the most challenging overall recruiting conditions. Fierce competition has emerged as more employers are looking to fill jobs in these areas than the local talent supply can support.

In comparison, the Hiring Scale also shows the locations experiencing the least difficulties recruiting this talent are Eugene, Oregon and Houston, Texas. Lower hiring demand in these areas, coupled with larger talent supply, means that Recruiters are likely to fill open gaming positions faster than average.

The Hiring Scale measures conditions in local job markets by comparing hiring demand and labor supply. The Hiring Scale is part of the WANTED Analytics platform that offers business intelligence for the talent marketplace.

To see additional charts and detail, please visit http://www.wantedanalytics.com/insight.

The Hiring Scale is available at http://www.hiringscale.com.

About WANTED Analytics

WANTED Analytics helps recruiting organizations make better decisions faster with real-time business intelligence on jobs, employers, and talent. Analytics brings together, for the first time, years of hiring demand and talent supply data to create a true talent intelligence platform for hard-to-fill positions.

Clients in the staffing, HR, RPO, media, and government sectors use WANTED Analytics to find sales leads, analyze employment trends, gather competitive intelligence, forecast economic conditions, and source hard-to-fill positions.

About WANTED Technologies Corporation

WANTED Technologies (TSX-V:WAN) provides real-time business intelligence for the talent marketplace. Founded in 1999, the companys headquarters are in Quebec City, Canada, and it maintains a US-based subsidiary with primary offices in New York City. WANTED began collecting detailed Hiring Demand data in June 2005, and currently maintains a database of more than 700 million unique job listings. For more information or to sample WANTEDs services, visit http://www.wantedanalytics.com.

WANTED is also the exclusive data provider for The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine Data Series

Employers Arent Playing Games with Talent: Video Gaming Jobs Are In Demand