Hitmarker has rocked the and gaming industries as the leading platform to go to for jobs. With the world facing hard times, Hitmarker focuses on helping peop🎶le stay afloat by promoting remote jobs and assisting companies to advertise their job listings. Subsequently, the platform is striving to add new things to the website.
TheGamer sat down with managing directo𓆉r, Richard Huggan to discuss Hitmarker's history𝐆, current state, and future.
The Strong Bond Of Brothers That Led To The Creation Of Hitmarker
Richard's journey into the gaming and esports industries started with his bꦿrother, Phil Huggan. Richard was always a gamer, but he only just got into esports and gaming professionally back in 2017, when he joined Hitmarker as the managing director.
Richard was in the traditional sports industry for seven years, but during t𒐪hat time, his brother, Phil, was focusing on otᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚher projects and companies.
Phil thought highly of the g🍷aming industry, mainly because it's all he ever knew. Richard knew all about it since they would talk regularly.
He (Phil) hasn't ever known anything other than working inside of the esports and gaming industry. That's all he's ever done from being a teenager. At one point in his life, Phil had a full-time job for six months but realized that he didn't ever wan꧙t to work for someone again. He re⛎alized that the esports and gaming industry was where he was meant to be. It was his life, and he wanted to lead it himself.
He's probably like the second generation of people that were heavily involved in competitive gaming. So, I was always very aware that this kind of coಞmmunity existed because I remember him traveling to all the even𝓰ts and talking about all the people he was meeting.
Phil m🙈anaged and founded multiple companies and projects in the industry. His first established company was EUeSports, which was a European Community Forum that he ev♎entually sold to Dexerto around the early 2010s. He later on used the money he earned from the Dexerto deal and founded Raven.GG, which is an esports jersey company that covers esports teams like Rogue and Excel.
After receiving a project to design a website centered around finding jobs in the traditional sports industry, he came up with the idea to do the same thing for ꦑthe esp🍌orts industry and told Richard about it.
Phil was talking to me regularly about it because the clie🌳nt he was building the sports jobs platform for was a friend of mine. He said, "look, Rich, I've had this idea for an esports jobs platform. It might not be anything that makes money for three, five, or even ten years, maybe, but I think it'll solve🌃 a big problem in esports. The potential is huge."
Phil launched Hitmarker, wh𝓡ich was a job finding platform for the esports and gaming industries. Phil started the p🎃latform with some of his friends from the old forum, and got results as early as one week, and he told his brother about Hitmarker's insane progress.
It was hard to visualize what he was talking about, and what truly existed behind his words, but as Hitmarker got started, he was telling me in week one they had McLaren sign up to advertise for some jobs in Formula One Esports. They had jobs from ESL on there within the first one or two weeks too. So, there were already companies I'd heard of and was familiar with who were siꦓgning up and to use Hitmarker from the earliest, earliest days. That said to me, "Yeah, this industry's definitely on its way to becoming a fully-fledged industry with significant revenues and a lot of jobs within it."
After acknowledging the hidden potential behind Hitmarker, Richard moved back to Newcastle, England,꧋ and joined Phil. They rented an office space for them and their full-time staff of four. From that point on, Richard🤪, his brother, and his team began their journey, this time, with Richard in the picture.
I understood the opportunity the more tha꧃t he told me about it. I knew from what he said, but basically, esports is a very startup driven industry. A lot of the companies who are involved in the space also have a big technological aspect to them, so it's very much like the tech industry. With my background being in more traditional sports with a heavy tech slant, there was a lot of overlap there in terms of how easy it was for me to understand the general structure of the scene with competitive teams who had coaches, analysts, and all that good stuff. I could see a lot of things I was already very familiar with from soccer and the other traditional sports that I'd worked in previously. So, everything seemed to make sense."
Since then, one of Richard's most significant accomplishments was pulling off a successful crowdfunding for Hitmarker in November of 2019. Richard not only managed to hit the mark, but exceeded it anဣd got a raise of $250,000, which was 250% of what Hitmarker𓃲 was expecting to receive.
I had to take ownership o💜f the crowdfunding campaign from the very beginning. I ran all the numbers, built a fi🎃ve-year forecast, planned out the full 30-day marketing plan we had envisioned for it, and spoke to potential investors multiple times a day after we launched it. Despite not being able to raise money from around 70% of our audience we hit 250% of our goal within six days. I don't think that had been done in esports before, so that's definitely something I hang my hat on.
Hitmarker now has a team of ni꧃ne, including Richard and Phil, and remain at the top as one of the best places to find a job in the industry.
Helping The World One Step At A Time
With COVID-19 affecting everyone, surviving during these hard times, especially when you can't work due to the limits of the pandemic, ♉has been difficult for many. But to lessen the worrying load that people face worldwide, Hitmarker has started to advise companies to hire for remote jobs. Additionally, Hitmarker promotes any remote job hiring and also spreads the word of any remote opportunities on their social media accounts.
From day one, as soon as the lockdowns started being announced around the world, we made sure that we were put in as much promotional effort behind remote-based rules as we possibly could. We knew a lot of people were going to be losing jobs and a lot of🧸 people were going to have to be forced to look for remote opportunities, so we tried to bring more focus to the remote opportunities on the website.
On a more personal level, every time we're made aware of somebody who has lost their job or been impacted by COVID-19 and the pandemic, we try and get the word out about them. That means we spotlight them on our social media accounts to try and boost the signal a little bit, because a lot of times, all it takes is the right person to see a LinkedIn post or a Tweet. We also offer free cover letter and re🍃sume audits for all Hitmarker users, and know of dozens of people who've gone on to find jobs off the back of our guidance.
At the beginning of this we𝔍ek, we also announced an initiative to support any company that is currently hiring, even if they are hiring for a role that will end up in a physical location like New York City or Seattle eventually. It's crucial to get the word out about companies who are business-as-usual, or who have pivoted to remote work because there has never been a greater demand for jobs in 🤪our industry. We're particularly keen to shine a light on anyone hiring remotely currently, due to not knowing how long this situation will persist.Although it's uncertain how long this global issue will continue, Hitmarker remains focused on helping.
Unfortunately, we've seen the true extent negatively of the pandemic on esports or gaming yet in terms of job losses and companies possibly going bust and running out of funding. So, I thin🍬k the worse might still be to come, but w🍸e're still coming up with new ideas and new ways that we can kind of help people and help companies if necessary.
Exciting Things To Come In The Future
In March, Hitmarker changed its entire website and made it so th♉at it runs better. Hitmarker has more plans for the future like instant messaging, connecting with friends, a more comfortable hiring process, calendar integration functionality, embedded/integrated video interviewing functionality, mentoring elements, and better followups ꦅfor applicants who have applied for a job.
Overall, Hitmarker aims to be your one-s🐻top-shop for everything job-related in the esports and gaming industry.
There are a million and one things we want to add to the site, but we only have a small development team. Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in the day where you can build things that are great and useful. The website has been very minimal throughout its existence, and it's been online for almost three years now, so there♚'s always a lot more that we want to do. We're working every day to improve the feature set and solve more problems♋ for our users.
TheGamer would like to thank Richard for taking the time out of his schedule for this interview. You can find Richard at his and , or through his email for more business-related🎉 inquiries. Che💃ck out if you're looking for a job in the industry.