Create the ultimate gaming & esports resume (with examples)

A solid resume (or CV) remains an integral part of the hiring process, even in 2024 (and even in gaming).

That’s why it’s so important to give yourself an edge over the competition by having the best possible document for your applications.

Luckily for you, Hitmarker is here to help you make sure that your resume is buffed to the max by explaining why it’s so important and breaking it down section-by-section to make it easy to fill out.

The reason we’re doing this is that employers, hiring managers, and recruiters in video games and esports all have very defined expectations about what the resume of their ideal candidate looks like. We know this because we deal with them every single day (and we’re also employers, hiring managers, AND recruiters ourselves!)

We’ve also helped countless people with their resumes one-on-one, with a bunch of these great folks going on to get awesome jobs. This is no exaggeration either, we’re talking some truly top-level companies, including some of the Overwatch League teams.

Now, we’re going to use our experience of esports, gaming, and recruitment to show you a proven path to success, beginning with the fundamentals of a resume...

1. Fundamentals

Before we get into the look and “feel” of your resume, we need to set some ground rules:

Thou shalt be professional - if your email address is something ridiculous like [email protected], please change it now. Ideally to something like [email protected].
Thou shalt not lie - there is no reason to lie on your resume because even if it DOES pay off and land you the job you want, there’s a high probability you’ll get found out once you’re in the role.
Thou shalt proofread, proofread and proofread again - the tiniest grammatical error or typing mistake could be the difference between you moving to the next stage of an application process or not (especially in roles related to writing or communicating!)
Thou shalt show personality - whether it’s in the colors and font you choose for your resume or in the way you present yourself in the text, it’s important that the person reading your application gets a good flavor of the person you really are.
Thou shalt be brief - we don’t believe that there’s ever a case for a gaming or esports resume to be longer than two pages, even for the most experienced candidates. Esports and gaming jobs can receive upwards of 100 applicants and hiring managers are very busy people, so keep things concise!
Thou shalt not save as .doc - unless you’re sending your resume to a recruiter or a website like ours for help/feedback, save it as a PDF unless advised to do otherwise. PDFs can be opened easily on multiple devices and look much, much neater.
Thou shalt name thy file correctly - don’t be one of the 50% of people who save their resume as “resume.pdf”. This is an easy way to get lost in the shuffle! Use “full name - resume.pdf” as your filename. Sear your name into the hiring manager’s brain!
Thou shalt update thy resume regularly - the best among you will update your resume EVERY TIME YOU APPLY FOR A JOB and for this reason, you probably won’t be applying for very long. Always tailor your resume to fit what a job description asks of you!
Thou shalt use hyperlinks - if you’re posting your email address, a link to your social media profiles, a personal website, or a way to view your previous work, make sure that it’s set up as a hyperlink to encourage immediate clicks!

You can consider those to be Hitmarker's “golden rules” of a gaming or esports resume and if you follow them all, you’ll be off to a great start.

Now let’s get to the good part…

2. Examples

Here are two images of two different examples of a gaming and esports resume:

These are resume designs we send to people to help them get an idea of how their document could look.

The first ("Two Column") is intended to fit as much information and personality onto one or two pages as possible.

The left column is utilized for personal information, such as a headshot image, name, profession, and contact details. The right column is utilized for more professional information, such as prior work experience, education undertaken, and a personal summary.

The example directly above is a one-column resume, which is a more standard design. You can see that, by being very conscious of how much space each section takes up, you can fit equal amounts of information on either layout. Resume design is subjective, and different hiring managers will prefer different styles. That's why we don't want to suggest if one would be better for you than the other, but we hope they can give you some inspiration if you're wondering how to lay your document out.

3. Content

Now that you have an idea of how things can be made to look, let’s talk content.

We’re going to walk you through every section that could be put on an esports and gaming resume and give you instructions on how to fill them out:

3a. Headshot

The most controversial section of all! Should you include a photograph of yourself on your resume, or not?

We always say you should, and here’s why...

Hiring is a pretty impersonal process, even in an industry as laid back as video games. When you break it down it’s essentially one person (or a group of people) advertising a job, waiting for applications to come and then reading thousands of words to try and create a shortlist of people to put through to stage two.

One of the main jobs of your resume is to make you stand out and to make you more easily remembered. What could add more personality to a resume than a nice, smiling headshot photograph? It doesn’t need to be professionally shot (though it certainly shouldn't be a grainy selfie either!), but it should show a true reflection of the person you are.

Obviously a photograph is less necessary for certain roles that aren’t as personality-centric, but if you’re applying for marketing or social media roles WITHOUT a photograph attached then you’re definitely missing a trick!

Employers will hunt you out on social media if they’re serious about hiring you anyway, so satisfy their curiosity early (especially if you don’t want them stumbling upon your late night Twitter rants just yet!)

3b. Name

Now for the easy one. Put your name on your resume in BOLD CAPS and give it some size.

You don’t want to give the employer, hiring manager or recruiter any reason to forget who you are (sear your name into their brain, remember!)

3c. Profession

This could also be called “specialty” if you don’t have a set profession already, but it should describe who you are in a few words.

The great thing about this is that it can be adapted to fit every role you apply to because you’ll undoubtedly have more than one specialty.

Obviously you can’t lie here, but it’s perfectly reasonable to be a Social Media Manager, Content Creator, and Graphic Designer at the same time. Look at the skills you have, and put down the profession that most closely matches the role you’re applying to in bold letters underneath your name.

That way, when a hiring manager opens your resume, your profession (which should be relevant to the job they're hiring for) will jump out at them and let them know they're onto someone qualified.

3d. Summary

This is your first big chance to sell yourself and impress the company you’re applying to, so don’t let it slip!

There are a bunch of ways you can go about this, but the key is to keep it brief and to hit on all of the key things that will follow in your broader resume.

To us this means you have some key objectives to nail in your summary:

Start strong. Tell the hiring manager a bit about your personality, professional approach, and love for/involvement with video games and/or esports.
Follow up. You’ve got their interest now, so tell them that you have the required level of education or experience to do what they want you to do.
Finish with purpose. Explain why you’re on the hunt for a new opportunity and what you hope to bring to your new company.

You can mix this order up a little bit, but you’ve basically got 100 words to get whoever is reading your resume on your side, so don’t waste them!

Finally, please keep it first-person and use “I”. Everyone knows this is your resume, written by you, so it just looks weird to make this part third-person.

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3e. Contact

Now you’ve set out your stall, it’s time to provide a number of different contact options to make you as easily reachable as possible.

Traditionally this would mean your email address, telephone number and home address (or general location).

However, this is video games and the 21st century. So why not throw a Discord name on there?

If you’re feeling particularly brave, we always think it’s great to see a direct link to a LinkedIn page, X (formerly Twitter) account, or even an Instagram page for you more creative types. Active and well-maintained social accounts can often be a good way to sell yourself, so if you have them, use them!

You want to give the employer every chance to contact you. Don’t make it difficult! Most will just use email if they're going to contact you, but some will go for the more personal touch.

Finally, DON’T FORGET TO HYPERLINK! People hate copying and pasting, so make sure they can click once to contact you where possible!

3f. Skills

The content of this section will depend on whether you go for a one-page or two-page approach.

If one-page, then your skills section is the place to talk about your professional skills (expertise). You have limited space, so sell the skills that will benefit the company most greatly (e.g. Digital Marketing, Business Development, or Motion Design) rather than soft skills (e.g. Enthusiastic, hard-working, motivated).

We always recommend a list of four to six skills, with the most important/relevant put at the top and the least important/relevant at the bottom.

HINT: Take a look at the job description and pick out the top three to five requirements and base your Skills section around that. If a job is asking for deep experience in sales and you have experience in that area, it ought to be at the top of your skills section!

3g. Achievements

We would usually only advise inclusion of this section in a two-page resume, as your experience should be used to effectively demonstrate your achievements in education or your prior employment.

However, in the extra space offered by a two-page resume, it’s a nice way to pull out some of the key things you’ve done in your life to show off a little to the hiring manager.

Remember that you’re trying to sell yourself as a person here - not just as a professional - so don’t be afraid to list some things that aren’t directly related to the role. You want to build an impression of an impressive person who achieves things and is exceptional, and this section helps you to do that.

Again we’d limit this to six items at the very most, but it may serve you better to pick out three and expand on them (rather than just using bullet points).

3h. Expertise

Again for use on a two-page resume, this is essentially an expansion of your existing Skills section but is more focused on your technical/professional skills.

By this we mean listing out any software you can use, or any business-specific skills such as deal-making or negotiation.

By the time the employer gets to it they should already be pretty sold that your personality is a good fit for their role, so now you get to show them that you’ve also got the hands-on skills you’ll need to be great at the job.

Much like with the Skills section, you want to list four to six items, with the most important/relevant to the role at the top. The majority of people can use Microsoft Office, so if you’re opening up with that currently then maybe have a rethink - especially if you’ve got other more impressive software abilities in your locker!

3i. Interests

Another slightly controversial section here, but one that we think can add real value if you have the space to include it (which you will on a two-page resume).

Interests, by their very nature, are not related to work and so some people don’t see the relevance of them on a resume. However, it goes back to selling yourself as a multidimensional person of substance, rather than a list of day-to-day responsibilities and work experience.

If you have what you believe to be cool interests outside of work and you’d like the hiring manager to know more about the person behind the resume, then you should consider adding an Interests section.

And hey, seeing as we work in esports & gaming, interests sections hold a bit more value than usual. Listing some popular gaming titles, or that you follow esports, can go a long way for the hiring manager seeing that you'd be a fit for the office.

Four to six items should do the job in this area once again, with the most important placed at the top.

3j. Experience

This has all been pretty easy up to now, right? Well things might be about to change…

If you’re using a one-page resume in particular then your Experience section has absolutely no margin for error, because it’s going to have to achieve a lot of different things.

Yes, it’s fundamentally there to show a hiring manager what you’ve been doing for the past few years, but much more than that it’s there to show a hiring manager what you’ve ACHIEVED in the past few years.

First, make sure you start this list with your most recent experience at the top. This is the most relevant information, so give it pride of place.

Second, we see far too many resumes that are simply a laundry list of day-to-day responsibilities and that are sure to turn hiring managers off for that very reason.

In this section you need to think priorities with every single word you use, even going so far as to how you list out your roles. Put your job title FIRST and give it some impact. Make sure to include the time served in the role (we prefer to use month/year instead of just year) and then put the company name and location on there (even if that is "Remote").

Don’t forget to add a hyperlink to the company website if you can! The hiring manager may not be familiar with them or what they do, and it’s a great way for them to do some quick research on you.

Below this, instead of diving straight into a paragraph of text or a bunch of bullet points describing your time with the company, how about throwing in three to five bolded bullet points that clearly demonstrate what you’ve done?

Hiring managers are busy people and likely won’t have the time to read every single word on your resume, so anything you can do to make their evaluation of you faster is beneficial.

If this means providing them with the key headlines from your previous job roles, then do it! Revenue driven, follower growth, sales made, rebrands completed - these are a few examples of what you could list here, depending on your profession.

Now you CAN jump into the bullets talking about your time in the role, but limit it to five at the most and drop to a maximum of four for the next role, then three for the role after that, then two, and finally one. Scale it down as you go, because jobs that you did a while back are less relevant than your most recent position.

Our key advice here is to focus on ACHIEVEMENTS rather than RESPONSIBILITIES, but we appreciate it’s tough to do that for every single job you’ve ever had.

As such, whenever you have something you’ve been particularly proud of, be sure to put it at the top of your list of bullet points. If you’ve got achievements that are numerical (dollar amounts of sales made in a year, the percentage growth of a subscriber base or follower base, etc.) then be sure to put as many of these in as possible, too!

Other than that you should, again, be using the requirements from the description of the job you’re applying to for the content of these bullets.

Look for the keywords in the requirements (even down to the software knowledge they might ask for) and try to repeat them where possible, just in case the role you’re applying to is at the mercy of Applicant Tracking Software.

If you can cross off all of these guidelines then your Experience section will be about as ultimate as it can possibly be.

Finally, this advice is mainly geared towards those of you going for the one-page resume approach. However, if you’re going for a two-page approach and have experience both in and out of gaming and esports, consider using “Gaming Experience” and “Other Experience”.

3k. Education

Unless you’re fresh out of college and have very limited work experience, you should put the Education section below the Experience section.

However, we don’t want to see it missed off altogether, so put it below Experience and make sure to style it the exact same way. This means sorting it by most recent first (so college before high school, if you made it that far) and writing the name of your course, the years studied, and then adding the name and location of the institution. Keep the formatting consistent!

If you do have enough work experience to lean on, then your Education section can be fairly minimal, though it should at least show a summary of your final grades if you’ve completed it.

Finally, if you have space for it, then don’t miss the opportunity to talk about any extracurricular activities or achievements you had while studying that you may not have found a place for in any of the other sections. This goes back to presenting a vision of a well-rounded individual through your resume.

3l. References

Ah, another easy one to finish with and something that depends totally on the space you have left available.

If you’re struggling for space then all you need to do is put the References heading and write “These are available upon request.” underneath. That’s it.

However, if you have some space to work with then feel free to throw in the names of two strong references along with their job title, company name, and email address.

4. Conclusion

Of course, there’s never a true “one size fits all” solution for resumes, but we hope this has given you a great foundation for creating the ultimate gaming and esports resume.

Remember the real keys to success and you won’t go far wrong:

Your resume holds all of the content an employer, hiring manager, or recruiter would expect to see based on the role they have advertised.
Your resume gets across a very clear vision of who you are as a person and what you’ve done in your education or employment history to date.

People in video games want to hire talented men and women who they think would be easy to work with and be an asset to their organization. The resume is a huge part of that.

5. Ready to create your resume?

Now that we've told you all the things that go into a great resume, it's time for you to make your own.

Be unique, sell yourself, show personality, and make the hiring manager see clearly that you’re the person they’re looking for.

Now, best of luck out there! If you need some help creating an amazing cover letter to go with your shiny new resume, then check out our full cover letter guide for more step-by-step advice.

Hitmarker 🧡