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Gaming & recruiting: playing while finding a new jobGamification in recruiting enhances candidate engagement and motivation, transforming job searches into interactive experiences that improve talent acquisition
An organisation’s population is the key to achieving objectives and obtaining results. This makes the recruitment process critical, so as to attract the right resources, at the right time and, most importantly, to the right roles. To be effective, this process should be flexible and permeable to market trends and to the motivations that drive new generations to choose a company as their employer. Such motivations are increasingly less linked to economic factors and more so to the vision the organisation is able to express.
Another key element guiding candidates’ choices is the organisation’s ability to understand their attitudes, habits and motivational drivers.
This is without taking into account the speed at which today’s technical and digital skills evolve, or even replace one another, and the complexity of analysing and mapping soft skills, also increasingly required for managing rapidly changing contexts.
A good starting point for meeting these challenge is to bring the recruitment process closer to the preferences and habits of the target generations, so as to provide a candidate experience that is as close to their interests as possible, while at the same time delivering candidate information that will make the process smoother for the HR department as well.
Target generation preferences and habits: four generations of gamers
One of the most popular forms of entertainment today is gaming. In the wake of the boom experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, this is increasingly becoming a territory of exploration and experimentation also for organisations.
As can be seen from the data compiled by Newzoo, the younger generations are investing more and more free time playing games, and this opens up a new channel for the potential encounter between these generations and employer organisations.
Reinforcing this first datum is the amount of time spent weekly enjoying this form of entertainment: the four generations, in their different proportions, dedicate a significant amount of time to gaming. Today, this time lies at the heart of what might be called, perhaps provocatively but fairly realistically, a war of attention. How, then, can we attract the attention of possible candidates, when this is so fragmented between new and traditional forms of entertainment? How can we add the recruitment experience to these new widespread forms?
Show me how you play and I will understand who you are
By its very nature, each game offers a unique experience: the opportunities for movement and starting possibilities being the same, it is the player who creates the outcome, projected into the narrative scenario proposed by the platform. Players can show off their skills by solving a puzzle or a scenario proposed by the game’s narrative, thus contributing to the protagonist’s success. This kind of dynamic may be found in recruiting solutions that adopt gaming mechanics, with palpable benefits for candidates and recruiters.
This type of capability allows HR to optimise time and costs by improving decision-making regarding the selection of a resource for a given role and reducing the average one-to-one interview time by at least one-third. This reduction does not affect the quality of the interaction between the potential resource and the organisation. On the contrary, as a Workable research on the subject points out, a selection process that includes in-house gaming modes positively affects the motivation of candidates to continue along the selection path.
Furthermore, the gaming mechanism permits fair evaluation of candidates, reducing the possibility of cognitive and/or gender biases kicking in, which often risk influencing the outcome of the first meetings with applicants, whether physical or virtual. These biases often affect the process, with the fairly concrete possibility of missing out on potentially valuable resources (“If There’s Only One Woman in Your Candidate Pool, There’s Statistically No Chance She’ll Be Hired”, Johnson, Ekman and Chan, Harvard Business Review, 2016). Fairness in the selection process is also represented on another level: game-based selection methods that test candidates on specific – hard and soft – skills do not, at first, take into account previous work experiences, allowing them to express their potential beyond their sector of origin or seniority.
FIT4BIP – Experience in the field
At BIP, more than 70% of new recruits are Millennials and GenZs. “FIT4BIP”, the gaming path dedicated to candidates applying for open positions globally, springs from the need to meet the challenge that these generations impose on the recruiting process.
FIT4BIP is a web-based game that presents the candidate with a number of challenges requiring the skills most sought after by consulting firms, such as problem solving, communication and logic. However, there can be no game without a plot: the player-candidates enter a metagame dimension (a game dynamic theorised by Nigel Howard in 1971), in which they are called upon to work through different levels not only to prove their skills, but also to win and therefore reach the last mystery level waiting to be unveiled.
For more information on the plot, follow Amy’s adventures through a multi-episode podcast available on all industry platforms.
FIT4BIP forms part of the first step of the selection process: once candidates have submitted their CV in response to one of BIP’s job postings, they will be emailed a link to access and participate in the adventure, thereby providing a view of themselves that will lay the foundations for a more effective, high-quality interviewing process.