Blizzard Resume
I am an intrinsically motivated person. Being intrinsically motivated poses certain challenges for employment.
When I was matriculating into college, I assumed that my only shot at getting a job and keeping it would be to get a degree in Computer Science and go work on Starcraft IV at Blizzard Entertainment.
When I was graduating from college, my prospects had expanded, but I still applied for a job at Blizzard. This is the resume that got me an interview.
It had occurred to me that I would need to be bold to get their attention, and that I could afford to be bold because they were not my only prospect. So, imagine them receiving this resume, the size of a poster, rolled and sealed with wax, having a weathered apperance, rough edges, and my distressed hand-inked calligraphy. This resume is organized like a Dungeons and Dragons character sheet, with proficiencies like “Keyboard (dual wield)”. In the Elvish Tengwar around the rim, it reads “In 2102, war was beginning… All your base are belong to us…”.
When I arrived for my interview, the recruiter asked, “Do you play World of Warcraft?”. I responded, “No, I intend to graduate.”. They understood.
Unfortunately, they didn’t have a requisition for a junior engineer at the time and they’d brought me in hoping that I was some sort of demigod. After I’d been working at Apple for six months, they called back because a role had opened up, but I declined on the grounds that it would be rude to leave my first job just as I was just getting up to speed.
And that’s how I narrowly avoided the blessing and curse of living your dreams… and a lot of Java, XSLT, Hibernate, and Struts.
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