Client Case Studies

Dambuster Studios

Helen Haynes – HR Manager

“We enjoy a close and collaborative working partnership with Aardvark Swift. Open and honest two-way dialogue has led to a greater understanding of the Studio’s needs and the candidate/industry landscape resulting in stronger candidate submissions across all roles. Aardvark Swift have an excellent team of consultants. In particular, Dan Hawkins was instrumental in assisting us to fill two difficult niche opportunities in our Animation team – Facial Animator and Lead Cinematic Animator. Thanks Dan!”

Our specialist recruitment consultant Daniel Hawkins, who heads up the UK side of our art and animation desk, worked closely with Deep Silver Dambuster’s internal recruitment function and HR department to find them a Facial Animator and Lead Cinematic Animator; two very difficult roles. The Lead Cinematic Animator was part of a big candidate marketing campaign undertaken by Dan. In terms of the Facial Animator position, Dambuster had been searching for a suitable person for some time and reached out to us to assist them. Daniel worked hard through our database and his contacts to find the perfect candidate for them. Both processes were smooth and efficient, with Deep Silver Dambuster thoroughly pleased with both developers.

nDreams

Kerry Rizzo – Senior Communications Manager

“We’ve worked with Aardvark Swift for many years now and we have always found them to be efficient, effective, and professional when it comes to helping us recruit. They are understanding and responsive to our specific needs, for example, earlier this year we had a particular requirement for several environment artists for short-term contracts. Aardvark managed to fill all the positions within a set timeframe which really supported us for the final push in the development of our recently launched title, Phantom: Covert Ops. As nDreams has continued to recruit and scale-up, Aardvark has provided a diverse range of high-quality candidates, several of whom have joined us across all levels of the business. These successful candidates have gone on to integrate well in to the studio and have provided invaluable support on both Phantom: Covert Ops and ongoing unannounced projects.”

Our work with nDreams demonstrates significant and sustained impact on the growth and structure of a partner studio. We have placed 12+ candidates within the last 12 months across the whole spectrum of game development roles. Our candidates include Junior Environment Artists, right the way up to Design Director. These candidates are across every development discipline, from art and design, to programming. This is a perfect example of our full recruitment service, where multiple desks and half a dozen recruiters have come together to fulfill the needs of a client. This has seen our graduate recruitment team, and our Grads in Games initiative, filter directly into the recruitment pipeline, future-proofing the industry by providing a route for young developers to move straight into a role after university. Our strength and unique selling point as a recruiter is our ability to bridge that gap between education and employment. As proven here, three Junior Environment Artists joined nDreams through us. These candidates came through our Get in the Game tour and our Search for a Star game dev challenge series.

We also implemented a unique account management system for this client to monitor and streamline talent acquisition from entry to director-level positions. It helped us to better understand the client’s needs and allowed for more fluid communication between both teams. This bespoke service allowed our specialist consultants to pool our full recruitment resources and expertise together across vacancies from a variety of disciplines.

Konami

Natalie Leighton – Head of HR (EMEA)

“We have been delighted to continue to develop our partnership with Aardvark Swift to support our recruitment needs. They have invested time to deeply understand our business structure and culture, allowing them to ensure the candidates presented are pre-qualified to an extremely high standard. This level of understanding and trust that we have built allows us to work quickly to secure the best talent available in the marketplace and enhance our team’s capability. They have proven time and time again their ability to successfully secure high calibre candidates across multiple commercial disciplines including Sales, Marketing, and our Licencing Department. The team at Aardvark Swift have been, and I am sure will remain, an important trusted partner of Konami in Europe.”

Our work with Konami illustrates how we work diligently to support every function within a studio, not just direct development opportunities, but support roles also. Over the last 12 months, we have made five key commercial placements within Konami, from Community and PR Assistant to Digital Marketing and Product Planning Manager. Headed up by our talented Senior Recruitment Consultant, Chris Mellor, the commercial desk is a cornerstone of our business and specialises in these specific roles, all the way up to exec search. These valuable members of staff go on to make a marked difference to the studios they join, and we have built several strong bonds with developers in this field.