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Could WoW help you get a job?
Conventional wisdom will tell you that you should generally keep your online gaming hobbies off your resume, unless perhaps you're going for a job in the gaming industry. However, Symantec COO Stephen Gillett tells a different story. For him, including his accomplishments in World of Warcraft was an important facet of his ability to get an executive position at Starbucks as Chief Information Officer, back in 2008. Gillett argues that his time as a guild master in WoW indicates leadership skills, recruitment abilities, and an understanding of the way people interact with electronic media--giving him tools to better guide companies into the digital age. I feel that WoW can very much teach a person leadership skills, particularly those who take the plunge as guild masters and officers, or raid leaders. Coordinating a group of 10 or more people to complete a task is not easy to do.The ability to motivate and organize groups is something that you can take with you wherever you go, and it doesn't really matter where you learned how to do it. Perhaps most of us won't ever put "World of Warcraft Guild Master" on our job applications, but I would be very remiss if I didn't admit that my time in WoW has helped me in the professional world--it was a key factor in my landing this job, for example. For our readers, has WoW contributed to any of your professional successes, either directly or indirectly? Would you ever put your time in WoW down on a resume? Tell us about it in the comments!
Symantec's COO credits his WoW credentials with boosting his resume
Symantec COO Stephen Gillett is proud of his past accomplishments, including high-ranking positions at Starbucks, CNET, and Best Buy. But it may be his level 70 Paladin and Priest in World of Warcraft that got him in the door and up that ladder. Gillett believes that adding his World of Warcraft guild leadership stats to his resume has helped him land these tops jobs. "Here's my guild. Here's my ranking. Here's my biggest online achievement," Gillett said in a CNN interview. "Some people look at it and say, 'What the hell is this?' And others will be like, 'That's exactly what I'm looking for.'" "I think gamification and the way of thinking about it is applicable to any industry," Gillett continued. "Right now we get really good information on malware -- what it does, how it acts. But we have no telemetry on the human part of it -- what people were doing, thinking and believing when they encountered that particular threat."
WoW guild master apparently a really good qualification for running Best Buy
Normally, when electronics retailer Best Buy chooses a new executive vice president and president for Best Buy Digital and Global Business Services, WoW Insider doesn't cover the event. Still, one little tidbit in the Best Buy press release announcing the promotion of Stephen Gillett caught our eagle eyes: Gillett, an avid gamer, is widely considered one of the most innovative Guild Masters in World of Warcraft, the massive multi-player online role-playing game where millions of gamers enter a virtual world creating guilds, engaging socially, questing and celebrating achievements. I'm not sure I've ever heard of the guild that Gillett leads, but it's probably a really awesome one. And I bet that Lisa Poisso will be grabbing him for a 15 Minutes of Fame column soon. Still, it's cool to see a press release actually treat World of Warcraft as something to be proud of, rather than a really embarrassing thing you have to hide from your date because you're afraid she'll think you're a nerd.
