Production

By Jonathan Hunter — Lead of Talent Acquisition, AAA video games. Nearly a decade hiring for major studios. Last updated: [August 2026]

You get hired as a games producer by showing ownership — the big calls you made, why you made them, and what shipped as a result. Recruiters are checking your CV against three to five attributes, and for production those are almost always scale, genre, and evidence of decision-making. A CV that lists the ceremonies you attended will not survive the two-second scan.

• Evidence next-level organisation and communication across all levels; from junior team members to directors

• Show the big calls you made and why: evidence of WHY you set things up a certain way, and what impact it had (including budgets where possible)

• Prove you’ve shipped: organised, structured production is what actually gets games out the door, and it’s the evidence recruiters want to see

Without producers, games don’t get made. You’re the one turning a director’s vision into a sprint plan a whole studio can actually execute, selling that plan to upper management, and making sure the people doing the work feel heard, organised and motivated.

Recruiters are trying to work out one thing: can you actually run a production, not just attend the meetings. Be ready to prove it more than once — production interview processes run to at least three stages, and at major AAA studios can stretch to eight or ten, including panels and practical tests.

What recruiters are matching your CV against

The hiring manager’s brief gets distilled into three to five key attributes before a single CV is opened. For production roles, they are usually trying to match:

• Scale & discipline (e.g. Associate, Line, or Executive Producer; team size and headcount managed; internal, co-dev, or publisher-side)

• Evidence of similar genres and project types — AAA production is wildly different to indie

• Evidence of ownership (can you show you made calls and set direction, not just tracked tasks)

When describing your experience

The best thing you can do to get hired is prove you drove outcomes, not just process. Anyone can say they ‘ran sprints’ or ‘managed a Jira board’. What makes a producer hireable is showing the decision you made, why you made it, and what the results were.

Context: always tie your production work back to what actually shipped. Show you understand how a scheduling call affected Design’s roadmap or Engineering’s sprint capacity, and how you kept upper management and the team aligned on the same plan. Also give examples of when you had to say something was wrong and change course.

And…

Always explicitly outline your tools and methodology. Don’t bury your Agile or Scrum experience, your project management software, or the size of the team you coordinated inside a dense paragraph — bold those keywords so they land in the initial scan.

My three CV rules

These are the same three rules I apply to every CV I review, whatever the discipline.

1. Make it easy to read. A recruiter spends roughly two seconds on the first scan of your CV, deciding whether to keep reading or reject. Use white space, bullet points, and bold text on the keywords that matter, and put the most relevant information at the top. Two pages is standard — the exact length matters far less than whether the page can be scanned quickly.

2. Be explicit. Never rely on the reader to infer anything. Use the formula: task + tool or technique + product or location + result. If it isn’t written down, the recruiter will not guess it, and they will not look it up.

3. Favour facts over descriptions. ‘Improved efficiency’ and ‘good team player’ are opinions, and they carry no weight. Objective, quantifiable facts are irrefutable. Back up statements with numbers wherever you can.

For producers, that means explaining exactly how you contributed: what you planned, WHY you did it that way, how many people and departments you coordinated, and what shipped as a result.

If you’ve been a Lead, Senior or Executive Producer

Say so explicitly — how many producers or departments you managed, how you structured milestones, and how you handled the moment a plan had to change. That’s a different, and more senior, story to simply running the day-to-day ceremonies.

ALWAYS be explicit, telling the reader exactly what you planned, decided, and shipped:

Implied

Managed production and coordinated teams using Jira.

Explicit

Production: Set up Agile production for a 40-person AA multiplayer live-service title, restructuring the sprint cadence after a missed alpha milestone to bring the project back on schedule for a successful early access launch.

Related guides

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•     How do you get hired as a Games Industry Engineer?

•     How do you get hired as a Games Industry Designer?

•     How do you get hired as a Games Industry QA Tester?