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Educator Edition Workshop Overview
Into Games · Ready-to-Run · Career Launchpad
‘The Hiring Room’Workshop Overview
An interactive workshop that combines video, roleplay and discussion to help learners understand hiring decisions from an employer's perspective.
Activities and takeaways tie into short episodes from the Career Launchpad course. To cover several topics, the workshop is split into three phases, which can run as a single full day or be spread across sessions.
Ways to Run It
Works in person or remote. Groups can use breakout rooms in place of tables, and printables can be shared as PDFs or a shared doc instead of paper.
⏰ Tight for time? Participants can always watch the videos before or after the workshop.
Studio Scenario
Groups roleplay as a small studio, working from a scenario with funding secured and a milestone locked. Within these constraints, they identify the pipeline need, then decide the role and skills needed to solve it.
Each group has understood the constraints and milestones, and decided their hiring need.
Understand that a job ad reflects a business need, not a random wish list.
- Lecturer intro, form groups10 min
- Brief the scenario5 min
- Activity30 min
- Discussion & sharing15 min
- Reveal the job ad, debrief10 min
- Buffer / break10 min
- Video, episodes 1 and 210 min
- Scenario brief, printed per group
- Studio sheet, printed per group
- Milestone mapping worksheet, A3 per group
- Job ad, printed and held back
- Phase 1 card, facilitator only
- Slides for the scenario and task
Make the Hire
Groups are given sample applications and tasks to narrow down their options quickly. Throughout the activity, facilitators introduce curveballs to help them reflect on their decisions and the realities of running a games business. The debrief covers rejections first and the hire second, because the rejection reasoning is where students recognise themselves. Budget and people-risk curveballs land after they've committed, to test whether their answer holds.
Two potential hires, and a visible list of rejection reasons captured on the board in the room's own words. That list becomes a checklist to reflect their own application against.
Participants discuss and articulate rejection criteria, and connect it to their own real-world application.
- Brief the task, hand out applications10 min
- Activity45 min
- Debrief, rejections first20 min
- Budget and people-risk curveballs15 min
- Buffer / break10 min
- Video, episodes 3, 4 and 520 min
- Four candidate application packs per group
- Cut sheet, printed per group
- Candidate key, facilitator only
- Curveball cards plus matching slides
- Phase 2 card, facilitator only
Close the Hire
Based on their chosen candidates, groups brainstorm the interview questions they'd ask their final two to feel confident hiring them. Finally, a tie-break scenario: the two finalists are level after interview, and using notes from the interviewer, they make their final hire decision.
Each group has a set of interview questions and an honest answer to why the known candidate wins.
They understand how communication, culture and relationships contribute to a valuable candidate.
- Intro10 min
- Activity30 min
- Discussion10 min
- Buffer / break10 min
- Video, episodes 6, 7 and 820 min
- Close10 min
- Interview question sheet, printed per group
- Candidates reused from Phase 2
- Tie-break prompt, card and slide
- Homework brief, printed per learner
- Phase 3 card, facilitator only