As the game industry expands, the audience that plays games becomes broader and the craft of making games becomes more sophisticated, developers and publishers have found the task of attracting new talent a growing challenge.

In fact, many industry leaders have recognised that game production is facing a recruitment crisis, with too few skilled graduate programmers coming out of UK universities to satisfy demand. As a result, recruiters are having to look outside the traditional avenues of computer science students that only ever wanted to make games, to women that might never have considered a career in the field, and into other industries, from film to financial services.

As its global head of talent brand, Matthew Jeffery is in charge of promoting the idea of working at Electronic Arts, and in videogames in general, to these fresh pools of potential employees. But he faces a big challenge – perceptions of working in the  game industry range from overwork and bad management, as epitomised by 2004’s infamous EA Spouse blog, to stereotypes of companies purely staffed by introverted and awkward young males.

We sat down with him to discuss EA’s recruitment strategy, the effects of anti-EA chatter on the internet, and the possibilities newcomers to the industry can bring to games.