Our hiring process, step by step

Hiring at a small studio can be vague, and vagueness wastes everyone's time. So we run a short, structured process with clear stages and honest timings, and we tell candidates where they are at every step. This article describes how an application moves at Dytbaat, so that someone preparing one knows what to expect and can spend their effort on the parts that matter.

Why we keep it short

Long hiring processes flatter nobody. A drawn-out sequence of interviews tests a candidate's patience more than their skill, and it drives away the people with the most options, who are often the people you most want. We keep the process to a handful of stages because we would rather decide on real work than on endurance.

A short process also protects our own time as a small team. Every hour we spend interviewing is an hour not spent on a game, so the stages we keep have to earn their place by teaching us something a conversation or a task would not.

The stages

The table below lays out the stages of an application at Dytbaat, what each one is for and how long it usually takes. Timings are approximate, because a small team cannot always hold a schedule to the day, and we would rather be honest about that than pretend to a precision we do not have.

The application

We read applications properly rather than scanning them, which is why the review takes a few days. What helps most is a clear account of what you have built and what you decided along the way. A portfolio that shows the reasoning behind two projects is far more useful to us than a list of ten with no explanation.

Write to be understood rather than to impress. We are more interested in how you think about a problem than in the vocabulary you use to describe it, and plain writing is a strong signal in a studio where clear thinking is the main currency.

The first conversation

The first call is a two-way conversation, not an interrogation. We explain what the studio is, what the role involves and what we genuinely cannot offer, and we ask about how you like to work. The aim is for both sides to leave with a clearer sense of whether the fit is right, including the right to decide it is not.

• What you have made, and what you learned from it.
• How you like to receive and give feedback.
• What kind of work you want more of.
• What an honest working week looks like for you.

We ask direct questions and we invite direct ones back. A candidate who asks us hard things about how the studio really works is showing exactly the kind of curiosity we value once they are here.

The test task

The task is where the process earns its keep. It is a small, realistic piece of work, paid in time rather than money, and scoped so it fits comfortably into a few hours. We are not looking for the perfect answer; we are looking for how you approach an ambiguous problem and what you choose to prioritise when you cannot do everything.

We explain what the task is for before you start, and we never use a candidate's work for anything other than assessing their application. Talking through your own task afterwards is often the most informative part of the whole process, for us and for you.

Feedback and honesty

Whatever the outcome, we tell you why. A rejected candidate deserves a real reason, and an accepted one deserves to know what convinced us. Silence after an application is the most common failure of small studios, and it costs them the goodwill of people they may want to hire a year later.

We also tell candidates what would make an application stronger if they plan to try again, because we would rather help someone improve than simply close a door. Some of the strongest people we have worked with were ones we did not hire the first time and were glad to meet again.

What slows us down

We are honest that a small team cannot always move quickly. A project deadline or a launch can push a hiring decision back by a week, and when that happens we say so rather than let the silence grow. A candidate who knows why a process is moving slowly is far more patient than one who is left guessing.

If a search takes longer than expected, we keep candidates informed at every stage and never leave an application in limbo without an update. The process is short by design, and the only thing that should ever slow it down is the honest pace of a small studio doing real work at the same time.