Ah, yes. It finally had to come up

Ah, yes. It finally had to come up. As an entry-level programmer, you're expected to learn a lot on the job, but you need certain skills to be useful and productive from the very beginning. Hobbyist game programmers obsess about DirectX and OpenGL. That's fine, but don't worry too much about it. You're not going to see a single line of those APIs unless you're hired as a graphics specialist (unlikely for a junior-level position). The specific skills will depend on the exact job and company, but these are pretty universal given what typical junior programmers get to work on. Fluent in C++. Most game development (for PCs and game consoles) these days is done in C++, so you'd better be comfortable with the language. Knowing the syntax and compiling "Hello world" isn't good enough. A class in college isn't going to cut it either. The ideal candidate will have at least read Effective C++ and will have used C++ in some significant projects (either your own projects, or in some term projects at school). You should be able to discuss the order in which destructors are called for classes with inheritance, when you need to provide a copy constructor, or what const-correctness is and why is it a good idea. If not, hit the books right away.