Job hunting is miserable. In fact, perhaps the only thing keeping the motor of modern capitalism chugging is that it's marginally more miserable than working, and even games industry paragons have had to undergo the humiliating ritual of sifting through stacks of rejection letters from jobs they didn't really want in the first place. Like Hideo Kojima, for instance.
Kojima discussed his experience as a young upstart on the job market for An-an Web back in February, but the essay was just recently picked up and translated by the folks at Automaton. In it, the Metal Gear and Death Stranding creator says we all just narrowly avoided a world in which 'Hideo Kojima' was some guy no one knows working away quietly and tediously at a pharmaceutical company, and it's all thanks to the advice of a single HR person.
In the '80s, Kojima had an unemployable humanities degree (haha, um, imagine) from what he calls a "second-rate" university. His dream, unsurprisingly, was some sort of creative work, perhaps going to art school, but the death of his father when he was 13 years old pretty much put the kibosh on that. So in a very familiar turn of events, Kojima began applying to jobs he may not even really have wanted.
"My job hunting made me feel like I was a Showa-era detective trying to solve a murder case," writes Kojima, in the most Hideo Kojima way of describing this phase of his life possible. "Endless phone calls, mails, roaming around until the soles on my shoes wore down."
Relatable! Except these days we go through fewer shoes and more website forms that make you upload your CV and then fill in all the details from that exact CV on subsequent pages. Kojima hated it, of course, and hated it all the more because he felt like both he and all his interviewers were just trapped in a big game of lying. "Everybody was hiding their true selves; we could only act like chameleons trying to change our colors to adapt to each of the companies we were applying for. Those days of playing pretend felt far detached from job hunting one would do to chase their dreams."
But after chipping away for so long, Kojima finally got an offer… from a pharmaceutical company. Rather than graciously accept it, our Hideo sort of, well, snapped. He let it all out to the HR director who sent him the offer, telling them that he actually wanted to work in a more creative field. That director—possibly just trying to get a slightly emotional man out of their office—sympathised: "The HR director encouraged me: 'Kojima, I feel like you're more fit for a creative job—so go for it.'"
Apparently, that did it for Kojima, and rather than take the pharma gig, he promptly narrowed his job search to focus on industries he actually wanted to work in. "I didn't have to lie anymore. I talked honestly about the novels I wrote, about what I had created." As you almost certainly don't need me to tell you, he ended up at Konami.
"Two years after becoming a working adult," reflects Kojima, "I became the one sitting at the interviewer's desk, listening to the students' lies. By the way, those who conduct interviews also lie—they're representing the company, not their personal alignment. A place where lies meet lies, that's what interviews actually are."
Unless, of course, you're interviewing at Kojima Productions. "I'm not somebody who lies," says Kojima. "And it's not because I'm the representative of my company. I sincerely face each of the students who come to me. I even give advice to those who aren't suited for the job. Just like that HR director who changed my life, whose name I've already forgotten."
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