Job requirements: WoW Guildmaster. Experience & education a plus

A Wired article showcases a guy that got a job partly because of the leadership skills he learned while leading a guild in WoW. And if you're wondering, this job isn't as a GM or game related.

Good for him!

The article talks a lot about the actual skills gained by playing WoW and being a guild leader. I think there's something more they don't mention. It's passion. There's intense passion underlying someone that accomplishes what this guy did. You don't just sign up for the job and sit around doing nothing.

When you're hiring candidates for a job, passion is the one attribute you can never find in a resume. I don't care how qualified or skilled the person is, there is no more important attribute. It can make up for anything else because the person will have the hunger to learn and to innovate. As an employer, the trick is to recognize two things, the passion itself and to see if this person's passion is transferable to the job.

As an applicant, you should ask yourself this question: Is this something I can be passionate about? If the answer is yes, then ask yourself, can I show this to the employer during the interview or any other way?

There's just no replacement for passion.

(By the way, here's my story: In my cover letter to Acclaim, when listing my qualifications, I wrote the following: "A unapologetic, no-holds barred intense love of gaming." I followed it up by being the biggest gaming nerd ever in my interview. Of course, they still wanted to see skills and experience but now that I got their attention, that part was easy.)