How RPGs Helped Me Land My New Job

It’s an unfortunate fact, but being a game designer doesn’t always pay the bills. In fact, it doesn’t pay many bills other than the dinner bill a few times per month, in some cases. With a brand new baby and mounting monthly expenses, I recently found myself in need of a day job. I found a position at a cal center for a major American bank, and with reluctance submitted my first resume in several years.

Three weeks later, I showed up for my first day of training.

I couldn’t believe how smooth this process went compared to the last day job I took, starting about seven years ago. Back then, I was nervous, with sweaty palms and flush cheeks, and I took my job offer to mean that the company would hire pretty much anyone with a pulse. I didn’t interview well in the past, and I couldn’t help but wonder what changed this time.

I was still nervous this time, but before the interview I kept reminding myself that I just needed to improvise. My only goal was to respond to my interviewers’ questions with all of the confidence of a GM being interrogated by his players. When the interview began, I did just that. Every time the interviewers asked a question, I put on my GM hat and pulled something out of thin air. It was like magic.

Seven years ago, my GMing experience was limited. I had run only a few games for a small group of players. Since then, I’ve designed multiple games and run many successful campaigns. And every time I act as GM, I improvise.

I’m one of those GMs who doesn’t like to spend a lot of time prepping for his sessions. I even wrote a series about Off the Cuff GMing on my own blog. Over time, I’ve learned that I developed a real skill for coming up with answers to questions and solutions to problems without much prep time. The way I see it, if my players have to respond to my lead without time to prep, I can respond to theirs. Who would have known Off the Cuff GMing was a transferable skill?

The funny thing is, it wasn’t this skill that I expected to come in so handy during the interview process. The position I applied for was a customer service position wit a pretty strong focus on sales, so I expected some of my recent RPG work to come in more handy. On my resume, I proudly listed “Marketing Manager, Third Eye Games” and “Sole Proprietor, Accessible Games” among my job history. I tried to talk up the fact that I’ve been into marketing various pieces of work–my own and other peoples–and that I interact with customers regularly.

None of that mattered much to these interviewers. Because neither of these jobs had structured sales goals, these call center-focused managers didn’t care to hear about them; if I didn’t have someone else setting measurable goals for me, they didn’t want to hear about it.

Thankfully, I was able to improvise. My previous customer service job from seven years ago came in handy. It gave me all of the experience they were looking for, but it was my ability to think on the fly and come up with examples from that job which really saved my bacon. I truthfully had prepared (inasmuch as I do prepare) to answer questions about my recent work, but I wound up having to improvis with responses about my past, less impressive qualifications.

The point being, it’s these last several years of GMing RPGs that gave me the confidence in my ability to improvise which helped me land the job. Without those skills, this interview would have been a total bust.

So the next time you find yourself looking for work and dreading the interview process, just remember to stay cool and try to wing it. You can’t prepare for every situation, so you might as well prepare to improvise. And if that’s not a talent you have just yet, then get out there and GM a few games. Your future self will thank you.