The placement process is an area of opportunity for us. You need that kind of commitment and buy-in. We also had outside educators and internal executives from the gaming organization and a solid team of HR professionals focused on the program. We received many applications and were very selective for our first cohort. What worked was the advertising and the social media marketing about the opportunity. We needed to take leaders, who have traditionally thought one way about who we need to hire and what the job description and profile need to be, and showcase that we can teach these folks certain parts of the job if they come with the core skills. Why require that applicants have a basic programming background if you’re looking to diversify?Īs a pilot program, we needed to show our leaders that these folks could succeed. They’ve got significant education already, and they often say to us that they love gaming but haven’t had the opportunity to break into the industry. They’re engineers in aerospace or from nontraditional gaming companies. get direct gaming experience where they practice that engineering during the 12 weeks.Īpplicants come from very impressive backgrounds. I would describe this program as a rapid-growth solution to our engineering needs by offering skills-based training to folks. What exactly is this program, and what need does it meet? It doesn’t just provide opportunities for people who traditionally have a hard time getting into gaming it’s also a great career development opportunity for people in our organization who want to move into a field like engineering but have not had the support. We had 15 internal candidates in the program. The minute you open your aperture to include candidates who don’t have long-term experience in the gaming industry, you’re going to get more diversity by its very nature. We knew we would get “organic diversity” in our internal and external candidates.
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In the meantime, she and her team are strategizing how to expand Level Up U in the future. Hodges says the program is one of several initiatives Activision is launching to acquire and develop talent from diverse backgrounds. The program launched in July of this year, four months after the video game giant settled a lawsuit over gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and misconduct allegations. This week, Level Up U’s 104 participants graduated from the pilot program, 73% of whom are from non-majority backgrounds, including women, veterans, the differently abled, and people of color. Over 2,000 candidates applied to the 12-week program, which promises full-time employment at the company upon completion. But the interest from applicants exceeded Hodges’s expectations. The need for such a program at Activision was clear. As of 2021, women made up 24% of Activision’s workforce, while underrepresented employees made up 36%. The industry is notoriously insular and hard to break into for applicants without experience in the space. This year, the gaming company launched the Level Up U boot camp to train non-industry professionals from underrepresented backgrounds to become full-time engineers. Julie Hodges, chief people officer at Activision Blizzard, is working to fix the lack of representation, starting with engineers. Although African American teenagers reportedly play video games more than other demographics, Black Americans make up just 2% of the industry’s workforce, and women represent 24%. The gaming industry has a diversity problem.
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