Gamification in recruitment refers to the addition of game-like activities into the hiring process enabling the candidate experience to be more interactive and engaging. Gamification tools include:
- Interactive Assessments:
Interactive gamified assessments evaluate candidates’ skills in the areas of problem-solving, creativity, and technical aptitude.
- Simulations:
Gamified simulations present candidates with a realistic work scenario regarding either responsibilities or some aspect of the company.
- Challenges and Quizzes:
Quizzes evaluate the candidate’s knowledge of specific topics, while challenges present the candidates with tasks that evaluate technical aptitude and creativity.
- Team-Based Activities:
Gamified team-based activities evaluate the candidate skills in such areas as collaboration, communication, or conflict resolution.
Each of these elements includes rewards, achievement levels, and point scoring to provide objective measures of candidate performance. By using gamification, employers assess a range of knowledge skills, and abilities (KSAs), as well as such cultural traits as communication, team orientation, integrity, and leadership potential, all within a methodology that incorporates actual work-based scenarios. Gamification provides employers with a holistic view of behavioral and performance data that traditional hiring assessments often miss.
Benefits of Gamification in Hiring
There are several advantages that gamification bring to the hiring process for both recruiters and candidates.
- Fosters candidate engagement:
Introducing gamification into the hiring process builds candidate engagement through their interaction with the assessments. This can attract top caliber talent, especially those who are attracted to a more innovative and creative hiring approach.
- Greater accuracy in skills assessment:
Rather than relying on a candidate’s self-evaluation regarding skills, gamification allows recruiters to evaluate how candidates perform during a real-world work situation. For example, a front-end developer may be asked to work on a coding assessment, while a project manager candidates might be asked to solve a resource allocation challenge. In these two examples, the assessments help recruiters evaluate each candidate’s technical skills and problem-solving ability.
- Evaluate culture fit and soft skills:
Beyond evaluation of hard (technical skills), gamification can assist employers evaluate how well candidates align with their culture. Using such gamification exercises as team-based challenges, or scenario-based games, recruiters can observe such traits as leadership potential collaborative ability, versatility, and decision-making skills. and decide whether they would be a good workplace fit.
- Reduces bias in recruitment:
Gamification in hiring reduces bias by shifting focus from subjective impressions to objective performance data. This ensures that hiring decisions are based on demonstrated candidate performance rather than biased impressions that can be based on such a factors a candidate’s inclusion in certain demographic groups or gender.
- Increases Candidate Retention:
The interactive nature of gamification makes the hiring process more engaging for both the candidates and recruiters. This results in a decrease in candidate drop off and fosters a positive impression of the employer brand. By incorporating gamification tools into the hiring process to evaluate KSAs, and culture fit, employers move beyond traditional resume review and a Q/A interview approach to a more dynamic, and interactive experience that provides a holistic view of candidate fit across several areas related to the responsibilities and qualifications of the role.
Implementing Gamification in the Recruitment Process
Implementing gamification in the hiring process requires some pre-planning to ensure the tools align with hiring goals, as well as company culture. Let’s review some of the considerations:
- Clarify goals specific KSAs or work style traits you wish to assess
Before selecting a gamification assessment, it’s important to first identify the specific KSAs and cultural traits to evaluate. Does the role require technical proficiency, problem-solving skills, or leadership capability? Clarifying goals will help ensure that your company selects the most appropriate platform and designs the most accurate challenges and exercises.
- Choose the right Gamification Platform
Not all gamification platforms are created equally. Choose a tool that suits your industry, role, and evaluation needs. For example, one healthcare facility set up a patient room for nursing candidates to perform routine patient care. There were several intentional errors in the room that candidates were expected to notice and correct within ten minutes (e.g., another nurse was not wearing protective equipment, or the patient alarm being disconnected).
- Integration with existing process
Gamification is a useful add-on process but shouldn’t replace traditional recruitment methodology. Integrating gamified assessments with the existing interview process, pre-employment assessments and backgrounds checks provides a comprehensive view of candidate alignment with the technical aspects of the roles, as well as company culture.
- Transparency is important
Candidates should obtain a full explanation of the gamified assessments they will engage with and how their performance will be evaluated. This ensure candidates are comfortable moving forward and motivated to perform at their best.
- Data Drives Better Decisions
An important advantage of gamification tools is that they generate large amounts of data based on candidate performance on real-world work scenarios enabling the recruiting team to render informed, objective, and fair hiring decisions.
Traditional recruitment methods rely on resume review and interviews, while gamification introduces game-like elements into the process to assess KSAs while enabling a more interactive and dynamic candidate experience
While gamification tools can be applied to a wide range of roles and industries, the assessments are particularly valuable for roles that require problem solving ability creativity, leadership, and highly technical skills. It’s important of employers to decide which roles gamification will be implemented and consider the platform’s customization capabilities, data analytics, insights and privacy mechanisms, and its ability to design challenges specific to each role’s specific requirements.
Because gamification produces large amount of data sets, it is easy to track metrics, such as candidate engagement, time-to-fill, and quality of hire (based on retention rates).
Potential challenges can include the need to clarify the objectives of the assessment to ensure the assessment is focused on the task; for example, if the assessment is meant to evaluate address problem solving, don’t assign a task that measures team collaboration Additional challenges could include proper implementation (e.g. the assessment is administered in the same manner across all candidates), and addressing concerns about data privacy and security.
Final Thoughts
Gamification is changing the face of traditional recruitment methodology by allowing recruiters to utilizing a data-driven approach via the incorporation of game like activities to gain a deeper insight into a candidate’s technical aptitude and culture fit for a given role. By using gamification tools and strategies, employers can attract top talent, reduce bias, and pave the way for more informed hiring decisions.
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