Interview

How to get a job with King

Newly-appointed Chief People Officer Mark Taylor shares insights

How to get a job with King

We covered the news that Mark Taylor, formerly of Burberry, was appointed as King's new Chief People Officer earlier in September.

One of his duties is to oversee recruitment.

As such, we were keen to get in touch with Taylor as he settles into his new role at King's London office to get some insight into company culture, benefits, and ultimately how to land a job at one of the world's leading mobile studios.

PocketGamer.biz: Could you give us some background on King's London office and what you're working on?

Mark Taylor: King was originally founded in London and Stockhom and now, nearly thirteen years on, we have games studios and offices across Europe, Asia and North America.

King’s London Studio is home to teams of developers, artists, designers and data scientists who are continually working to develop new games that our players will love.

A shot of the working environment for employees of King's London office

This studio is also home to one of our most popular game franchises, Farm Heroes Saga, which has a core team dedicated to developing and launching new content and levels for our players every few weeks.

We believe that the best learning happens in your daily work.
Mark Taylor

King’s corporate functions such as marketing, legal and HR are also based in London.

Are there any specific areas/disciplines you're currently hiring in?

We’re growing across the company in areas including the games studios, technology and corporate functions (such as marketing, legal and HR).

Around the world, we operate small studios that are self sufficient to develop and launch games. It’s a very exciting and fast paced company to work for!

We hire all year round and anyone interested in working for King will find all our open jobs here

As you're overseeing recruitment at King as Chief People Officer, what do you look for in candidates?

Cultural fit is very important for King along with the technical capability for the role. We want to hire people who live the King values, have a passion for games and want to grow and develop in their careers.

The office is proudly adorned with art inspired by King's games

A good rule of thumb is to hire someone you could imagine working for - someone who aims to go very far and raises the bar. An agile approach is also common across all King employees.

Why do you think King is a good place to work? How will you be trying to encourage a strong company culture?

There are a whole lot of benefits and perks to working at King. As well as having established professional development programmes, we offer a huge range of learning opportunities via breakfast seminars, language courses, art classes and more.

King has a very humble and open culture.
Mark Taylor

We also believe that the best learning happens in your daily work, working on projects with colleagues.

Twice a year, we gather the whole company together for ‘Infomarket’ where we meet, workshop and get together with all of our colleagues from around the world.

On the daily benefits side of things, we offer lots of tasty and healthy snacks to keep you well-fuelled all day, have staff exercise classes such as yoga and boxing, and many of our studio locations have a gym or access to an off-site gym and lots more, which you can discover here.

King's London office has plenty of opportunities for employees to unwind

King also has a very humble and open culture where we encourage people to share ideas and collaborate to make great games for hundreds of millions of players around the world.

What advice would you have for someone trying to get into the games industry?

This is an exciting time to join the world of gaming. Whether you’re an intern or a graduate, there are a lot of events to attend that give a good insight into the industry and also offer great networking opportunities.

It’s definitely worth exploring campus events like tech talks and careers fairs, as well as industry meet ups, game jams and hackathons. Many gaming companies including King also run their own internship programmes - you’ll find full details of our “Kingternships” here.

A passion for games and an interest in technology is also really important so I’d also suggest keeping up with the latest trends by reading industry news and blogs.

Even follow your favourite games companies on social media (LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter) as well as their career sites as many jobs are exclusively advertised there.

To view all of King's London-based jobs, you can visit its jobs page.

Features Editor

Matt is really bad at playing games, but hopefully a little better at writing about them. He's Features Editor for PocketGamer.biz, and has also written for lesser publications such as IGN, VICE, and Paste Magazine.