Amir Satvat obtained the first-ever Sport Changers award as we speak from The Sport Awards for his working find jobs for folks within the recreation trade by way of his recreation job assets.
It’s effectively deserved recognition at a time when transparency and emotional help are wanted to assist these which have been affected by unprecedent job losses in gaming. Nobody has achieved extra to assist folks discover jobs effectively than Satvat. It’s good to see him get seen by Geoff Keighley, creator of The Sport Awards, with greater than 100 million avid gamers watching. Satvat is the first-ever Sport Changer for The Sport Awards.
When I interviewed Satvat for the primary time in August 2023, he had helped greater than 450 folks discover jobs by way of his do-it-yourself job itemizing service and assets on LinkedIn. Now, as the sport trade has seen 34,000 layoffs within the final 2.5 years, Satvat has helped practically 3,000 folks discover jobs. Making the most effective use of the folks gaming already has is the trail to balanced progress in gaming.
“You can’t make great games without great people,” Satvat stated as he accepted the award. To recreation builders, he stated, “I see you.”
A lot of the turmoil began in November 2022, as Meta and different big corporations laid off tens of hundreds of individuals. As Satvat was grieving for individuals who have been getting unhealthy information proper earlier than the vacations, he poured extra of his off-work time into making automated spreadsheets and information assortment to do one thing for these folks.
“I felt so bad because it had been before Thanksgiving, and it was really before the really heavy layoffs came,” Satvat stated in our first interview. “We were sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner. And I started hearing about friends getting laid off. And I said this was unacceptable to my wife. And that was kind of the genesis.”
He added, “We see the numbers and it’s tempting sometimes to forget that it’s real people. And eventually, as the numbers get bigger and bigger, you just can’t stop paying attention. My friends wished for something that made it easy to browse for jobs. I thought, ‘I’m pretty good at Excel macros, and web scraping. I could write something that does that.’”
Now, Satvat has produced a lot information concerning the gaming trade, aggregated from the individuals who have shared their job search efforts with him. He broke into video games himself in his late 30s, and by that point, he had actual abilities with information. He began his neighborhood with one useful resource.
Tens of hundreds of recreation job listings
Satvat places collectively lists that have been routinely up to date with the newest job openings at hundreds of recreation corporations all over the world. He “scraped” the job listings and embedded them in a simple to make use of Google Sheet and posted it on his LinkedIn web page. Quickly sufficient, he had a whole bunch of listings of recent jobs, and he rotated listings that have been a month previous. Satvat has been in a position to include information on ageism in video games, the time it takes folks to search out recreation jobs, and even predict when the job market may flip round.
In case you cease and take into consideration that, no one does this, besides skilled job recruiters who’re paid handsomely in good occasions to fill tons of jobs at fast-growing corporations. Throughout an financial downturn, no one does this out of the goodness of their hearts or without spending a dime. This work made Satvat right into a form of superstar on LinkedIn, and so they gave him the honour of being a “Top Voice” for contributions he made within the realm of video video games. He has grown from 4,000 or so followers and buddies to over 100,000.
He figured he may combination jobs for folks, making job searching simpler. It seems this labored.
“I’ve often thought that a lot of the things that can be the most powerful are things that are simple,” he stated. “People over-engineer things. I noticed there are a lot of sites to help people, but there are maybe 100 sign-ons that you do. Or you have to go to a portal and look at databases. I bet I could just put something like Google Sheets up and make it easy. People will use it. That ended up being true.”
In a publish, he celebrated, saying, “This is the pinnacle for me. My lifelong aspiration has been to become a trusted member of the video games community, to have a voice that resonates with people and garners and earns their time and respect.”
Breaking into video games
This labored tapped his abilities, but it surely was utterly exterior his work. He was within the startup division at Amazon, helping corporations with Amazon Net Providers within the cloud gross sales heart. He had been there 4 years and had a stint within the video games division. At Tencent, he’s beginning anew, tapping into his coaching in enterprise improvement and technique.
He received an MBA in grad faculty and levels in coverage and engineering. He labored as an funding banking analyst at Goldman Sachs. He was in his mid-30s earlier than he broke into video games. The brand new facet passion made him take into consideration his personal profession objectives, and he determined to maneuver again into video games.
As for the Sport Jobs Workbook, he added new items to it, like getting folks to enroll to be mentors and have 30-minute conversations with individuals who ask for the assistance. Recruiters and hiring managers are proactively getting in contact with Satvat to record jobs. And he has additionally added a separate community of many individuals who’ve volunteered to learn resumes and assist folks enhance them.
