Miyamoto: I wouldn't get a job here now

By Tom Bramwell Published 23 November, 2009

Competition for Nintendo jobs "fierce".

Shigeru Miyamoto has said that if he were applying for a job at Nintendo these days with his original qualifications, he probably wouldn't get in.

"Nintendo has become one of those companies that graduates from colleges and good universities really want to work for," Miyamoto told Edge in its latest issue.

"Because of that, the competition's really become so fierce for positions. And that means that a lot of the recent recruits for Nintendo have tended to have the higher degree from the prestigious colleges and universities and whatnot.

"I often say to Mr Iwata: 'If I was applying for a job here today, I, with my actual college degree, would probably not have been employed by Nintendo!'"

Mindful that qualifications don't always mean the world, apparently Miyamoto has taken to getting involved in the interview process himself to make sure Nintendo's multi-stage recruitment process isn't missing anything.

"I might pick up on them," he said of applicants, "and try to find out something really different within them which you can't judge just by a college degree. That's one of the special little jobs I set myself."

The full interview can be found in Edge's Christmas issue.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (21) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • ZuluHero #1 2 years ago

    Wow, i'm glad that even the greats think this. I too sometimes think the same thing in my line of work when i see new people coming into the company (after being here for 8 years myself) and the skills, talents and qualifications they bring. Its comforting :)

  • andywilkie35 #2 2 years ago

    Fuck sake, why couldn't he have said this before the frankly excellent New Super Mario Bros Wii came out?! I/99% of EGers could have said it was because he doesn't make games anymore and just absolute dross like Wii Music, but now that he's redeemed himself slightly I feel harsh.

  • butler` #3 2 years ago

    it's not really a unique situation

    there's thousands of director level £100k+ p/a type people in the corporate world with no degrees that worked up the hard way. Yet to work at their company even at the lowest end you need about four Oxbridge degrees.

  • kangarootoo #4 2 years ago

    When you have a lot of applicants, a degree is just a reasonable way of clearing down some of the numbers. Of course it doesn't mean that people without a degree can't do the job, and equally there are plenty of graduates who might not be up to the task.

    Hopefully a good company will have decent systems for finding the right employees regardless of academic record, but if you are dealing with hundreds of CVs you have to reduce that number somehow in the first instance. And requiring a degree is at least at the right end of the scale (which is of little consolation to the talented people without degrees that miss out I'm sure).

  • Vin #5 2 years ago

    Good on him. You can't fake genuine enthusiasm - despite what the snobbish degree masters say.

  • Toothball #6 2 years ago

    Since I got my job I've interviewed people with better qualifications than me and we've had to turn them down in many cases. I'm well aware that I started when the company was a bit desperate for staff and no one else was applying. I guess this case is an amusing one because we've all seen what happened as a result of Miyamoto joining Nintendo.

  • gjgjg #7 2 years ago

    does anybody cross check degrees etc? Im old enough now that id take a gamble and say i have some arts bachl. in the hope that they wouldnt bother checking, especially over my great (mundane)experience :)

  • kangarootoo #8 2 years ago

    @gjgjg

    That sort of thing is very easy to check. If you have plenty of experience, it hardly seems worth the risk.

    Degrees only really matter for more junior roles or graduate recruitment schemes (and those sorts of recruitment are far more likely to check your recent history).

  • Tonka #9 2 years ago

    That right there pinpoints the problem of our society.
    Get the best of the rest, not the best of the best.

  • Toothball #10 2 years ago

    Oh, having said that, the last person I interviewed who we then hired had started work on a degree but had decided it didn't suit him. After a year of that he left and went for some more practical experience in the real world. From the interview it quickly became apparent that he was much more suited for the job than the other candidates with degrees. He's been working here for nearly a year now and comes up with solutions for things that I've never even imagined existed. So sometimes the interview process does succeed.

  • penhalion #11 2 years ago

    I hire people based on fit and realworld skill. I'm of the opinion that those coming into the industry with degrees are actually getting dumber!

  • Genji #12 2 years ago

    I think in Japan especially it's amazingly hard to get a company job without a degree. There's a reason why students work themselves to death to get into the best universities. I mean, sure, it's possible to open your own business or be a carpenter or something without a degree, but I think that is nowhere near as acceptable in Japan as it is in other countries.

    Hope that it changes, though.

  • leftlion #13 2 years ago

    It really pisses me off, even in the UK, when job adverts say that you must have attended one of the top universities in the UK. The one I went to is probably no where near the top, but I had more than enough UCAS points to go somewhere better. Did I want to go to oxford or cambridge? no. could i afford to go to london? no. I chose my uni based on the sound of the course and where in the country I wanted to go. And I think i'm a pretty good programmer. Companies shouldn't be allowed to descriminate on grounds of race, sexuality (etc), or where you went to uni!

  • butler` #14 2 years ago

    @leftlion: my uni (Notts Trent) was/is shit and some of our top programmers went to ibm, microsoft, big investment banks...

    but i suppose a lot of that stems from how hard the uni work on your behalf (with placements etc)

  • Zomeguy #15 2 years ago

    If you have the professional experience, but no higher degree, you could profit from APEL (Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning). If you really have the professional knowledge (and you care), there is no excuse today for not having at least a bachelor.

  • penhalion #16 2 years ago

    Anyone who has worked in the industry for a while knows that a degree is no guarantee of anything, least of all skills. It's ironic that the greats like Miyamoto wouldn't have been in the industry at all if they had tried to some into it today. The likes of Mario and Donkey Kong would then have stayed on a drawing board or in his imagination and never seen the light of day.

    While I have a degree and even did a masters I am the first to admit that they teach you squat about how to make a great game level or come up with an amazing character design. Degrees can only give you technical not creative skills. Even an art degree only teaches painting techniques. It's the artist themselves that create the masterpiece using those techniques.

  • owl #17 2 years ago

    didn't he supposedly get hired because they were impressed with some toys he had made which he brought to the interview? that's pretty fascinating.
    the world just doesn't work that way anymore : (

  • smelly #18 2 years ago

    "but it does guarantee that supermarkets won't touch you with a bargepole while you're struggling to get a job you actually want."

    When i went through that period of my life - i dumbed down my cv to get those types of jobs.

  • Sharzam #19 2 years ago

    Where i work we tend to bring people in at the very bottom with no special qualifications and pay for them to do part time and distance learning education once they have proven themselves so by time get to higher levels in the company you have the extra qualifications. The main reason for this is the specalised nature of the work however its a good model i think for many businesses.

  • Nithron #20 2 years ago

    If he says it that often, the conversations must get pretty boring.

  • Lamb #21 2 years ago

    *Calls Devry* :p :D
    Edited by 1 at 24/11/09 @ 16:48