Talent is your vehicle. Passion is your fuel and potential is your destinationTerry Mante
We have talked about exposure from a player's perspective, but how do you actually find these potential prospects? Depending on what level you are playing at, the scouting of players will be different. For example, in amateur levels you are usually scouted by other players that you have played with and brought in by them.
Finding Talent: Scouting
From there you can get further scouted. This is usually by coaches or analysts from within the scene. Word of mouth plays a huge part to discovering people, so it makes networking important. Now, once you have found these prospects it is time to see if they are the real deal. How do we go about doing that?
‘The Eye Test’
Does this ‘hyped-up’ player everyone is talking about pass the eye test when you watch their point of view? The thing with the eye test is that you have to be able to recognise what these players are doing differently that could possibly set them apart from the average high-level player.
Compare any two players in a game of your choosing – Write down the differences in their game and compare them. Are there similarities in their games that you can pinpoint as a key.
Number Standings
If hes a professional player or aspiring to become one he must have some metrics to backup his work. Usually these are displayed on the ladder ranking of any game. If hes a content creator or an starting one it’s the same. Numbers matter. It may not have big numbers but what really matter is hows the prospect looking into the future.
Theres different ways to do a proper scouting. Most tools that anyone can find could be:
Players:
- Ladder standings
- KPI’s inside of the played game or stats
- Team References
Content Creators:
- Veiwership
Previous brand partners or associatesRetention margins or growth margins. Both Key Perfomance Indicadors or KPI’s.
So, how do we approach to them exactly?
Reaching out and displaying interest
How to approach a talent? Human interaction is a must on any Industry, and eSports is no stranger to this. Players or even Content creators' value an straight forward approach with a clear intention: straight to business. They don’t have time to lose and neither do you.
Here is a couple of tips that may help you when seeking talent if you are doing it.
In person
If you have the candidate in person here is a couple of recommendations:
- Show any accreditation. This could be your role in a company, your social media or even your experience. We want to know if he would be interested in having a talk with you. Pitch your idea, asking him for a couple of minutes of his valuable time.
- Present your motives. Let them know what you are trying to do for them. Show them examples of how he can gain value working with you. This could be from creating and managing a social media account to having them do tryouts for teams.
- Show them where they are now and where they could be. Sell them the idea that you have in your mind. If they are interested, give them a card with all the information they need to get back at you.
Remotely
Most of the today interactions start digitally so here is a couple of tips:
- Approach their displayed emails for business inquiries with a professional written message. State clearly who you are, why you are reaching out, what you can do for them, where to find you.
- Have a landing page, social media (discord, Instagram, etc., email ready for them. Be ready for when they reach out.
- Have your information organized. Have a Database for Clients (Players, Influencers) and Providers (Teams & Brands)
Offer an attractive Deal
People want to get paid for their time. Either that’s from your own pocket or from someone else's. The era of free labor is coming to and end so you had better start cutting deals with brands or have a second job to sustain your ambitious project.
For new talent, most common methods of payment across the board whenever you are starting on the head-hunting business.
While you are trying to get them a job you can:
- Social Media Administration. Creating a social media post for them, running posts, highlights or messages for them
- Creating Visual edits for them
- Giving them Services. Many teams give away online value for their players. This can be from a food class to a full carrier tuition
- Giving them products as part of payment (Computer hardware mostly)
When you have successfully gotten them a job:
- Minimum wage.
- Small cuts on your end of the contract.
- Short term contracts to reevaluate it.
- No clauses that will shackle or maim his professional career.
Asking for a representative
In eSports approaching any talented person is the first step of a long walk. You will constantly face adversity and this will be the case till you’ve earned a good reputation across the board.
Many problems that you will face include:
- Poaching (when you want to enquire business to any talent already claimed)
- Legalities (previous contracts made by the talents or legal boundaries like age)
- Market monopoly or oligopoly of the market (when there's just one or a few that own every talent)
Portfolio checkpoint: 4F: Practicing headhunting
Using the different methods of scouting talent known: Ladder standings, KPI’s inside of the played game or stats and Team References. Try scouting upcoming talent to the professional scene on any genre of eSports out there.
Use the publishers in game ladder rankings, expose this players KPI’s and research on the internet for good references about this player (make sure these 3 requirements are expose as proof of this players talent.)
You can use Amateur and Collegiate competitions, Reddit posts or any sort of recorded highlight and the publishers in the game ranking system.
- Players Game:
- Players Name:
- Player IGN:
- Players Ranking:
- Selected KPI’s (Key performance indicators):
- Extracted Footage:
- Found References:
Write your answers in the portfolio.
