A letter to our fans.

You may have noticed the little drop down banner that appeared on our website a while ago that announced we were hiring. We still are! New faces are always popping up in all the Playfish studios and becoming part of our fish tank. Ken Ward is the “Go-To” guy for all things recruitment at Playfish and here’s what he wanted to say to all of our readers. Enjoy. 🙂

Hi everyone,

When I heard that our company blog was looking for people to write for it, I  couldn’t wait to jump in there and tell you all about how exciting it is that we’re hiring. My name is Ken Ward and I lead the recruiting team at Playfish.  Officially they call what I do ‘Talent Acquisition’ – and that’s not too far from the truth.

We have a great team spread over four studios – London, San Francisco, Norway and Beijing – on three continents, dedicated to hiring the best and brightest talent to join our fishbowl. If you’re wondering how many people we’re hiring, let me put it this way: sometimes I come in on a Monday and think I have walked into the wrong office because there are so many new faces! I know we have found the right people to work for Playfish though when I look around and see everyone huddling together and talking about new ideas and the things they love. What’s even more amazing is that we truly are representative of the United Nations, with staff at all of our offices coming from every corner of the world, all of them working together enthusiastically.

I’ve recruited in many different environments in my career, including banking (it’s on the CV and that’s where it’s staying), and Playfish is a joy to recruit for and by far the most enjoyable. It’s a truly creative and fun environment and, as we expand, it’s super important to maintain that essence as we grow… and it’s a real challenge I enjoy squaring up to.

We focus on giving Playfishers all the tools they need to do their jobs – from providing great equipment and talented colleagues to work with, to an excellent office environment that is inviting to walk into every morning – though I’m still not quite sure where the huge orange space hopper appeared from…!

We’ve got a great variety of positions open at Playfish right now. We’re focused on getting technically gifted Java programmers, super creative game developers, talented artists and excellent product managers, amongst a variety of other positions. It’s really important that people looking to join us have a passion for what we (and ultimately, they) do. At Playfish, we all feel part of the creative process, which is just one of the things that makes it such an awesome place to work. Absolutely everyone in our company is actively encouraged  to make suggestions for new games, new features… and of course everyone has to play our games – a very important part of the gaming development process! 😉

So we’re looking for creative, fun people, dedicated to changing the way people play and enjoy games. Easy, huh? People like that do exist! I should know – I work with them every day. 🙂

I’ve been so impressed with how we connect the offices in such a global environment. The vision is consistent from office to office and it was so cool last year to meet colleagues from all around the world at our annual meeting, Fishbowl 2009, sharing ideas and helping to drive the company forward. Our leadership team (that’s Kristian Segerstrale, Sebastian de Halleux and company to you and me) are instrumental in driving and supporting this connectivity, and our people, regardless of location, really feel at the heart of things. We share videos from each office at our monthly meetings which is a great way of keeping in touch but we also use a whole myriad of communication tools like instant messaging, VOIP calls as well as other more traditional forms such as email and just huddling together over a coffee in our office breakout areas to talk about exciting new possibilities.

Playfish really is a play hard, work hard culture (in that order!), and we’re focused on helping Playfishers achieve their best by maintaining a fun environment for them to create in. It’s evident in the way the office is made as comfortable for staff as possible – simple things like our Monday Brekkies where everyone has breakfast together the first morning back to the office to catch up after the weekend, to those monthly video diaries I mentioned earlier, where we all get together toward the end of every month and enjoy a party with everyone in the office for no reason other than to have fun and enjoy each other’s company! That’s the focus of our day: to create games that our players can enjoy, and to have as much fun as possible doing it! You could say that we hold ‘creativity’ and ‘fun’ as sacred at Playfish. 🙂

I feel very lucky to be here and to be one of the people helping Playfish to grow, not only in size, but in its ability to do what it does – for you, our players – better. And if after reading this you think you can help us to make great social games, too, I’m inviting you to jump right into the tank and let us know!

If you daydream about working at Playfish, check out our careers page or email careers@playfish.com.

Tags: careers, casual games, channel, facebook, london, office, online games, social games