While playing games during the workday can curb productivity, hiring managers have found in recent years that leveraging games for talent acquisition in the hiring process can actually improve the overall quality of candidate. This trend, called “gamification”, has made use of “serious games” to measure the potential success a candidate would have as an employee.
One of the most beneficial ways to take advantage of this new trend is through the use of assessments and simulations in the hiring process. Some of the advantages include:
A better recruiting experience for candidates:
A hiring process can be an exhaustive experience for a candidate to go through, and keeping the process engaging not only keeps the candidate enthusiastic, it often yields better insights to who the candidate is and what skills they possess. Gamification has a demonstrated history of making the process exciting, thereby keeping the candidate excited to continue through the hiring process. And, because these serious games are designed to make candidates “try to win”, they’ll likely put more effort into the process, so you know the extent of the skills a candidate has.
Data Feedback
Using games in the hiring process doesn’t just make the experience more entertaining however. Gamification has provided new opportunities to collect hard data on a candidate, providing insights and helping hiring decisions by being able to evaluate specific skills or personality traits in someone. Using these serious games to target job essential skills can give your hiring team a real look into the candidate that would otherwise be left to the judgment of interviewers in candidate interviews.
Realistic Job Previews
One aspect of assessments that can be leveraged in serious games is job simulations. By making a game out of a job simulation, the candidate is getting a real look at the job they’ll be performing at you company, while also building habits of “trying harder to win”, which can result in better, hiring performing employees since they’ll be conditioned to “win” at their job. This also reduces the chance that a candidate will get the wrong perspective about a job, thinking it to be something that it’s not, since they will have experienced the job first hand.
Refinement
If you’re using assessments as a method for gamification, you’ll want to refine and improve on your assessments over time. Whether it’s to improve on the quality of candidates by targeting successful skill sets, or creating more realistic job simulations based on recent changes with responsibilities to the position, being able to improve upon your assessments is key. And, with gamification, you have the added benefit of finding where the most and least engaging points in the experience are, and modifying those as needed.
To learn more about simulations enhancing the candidate experience, download the FurstPerson whitepaper below. And continue to check back here for more posts on the positives gamification and serious games can have in the recruitment process.
Topics: Talent Selection Ideas