Recruitment Gamification

Humans love games. Many people would already describe the hiring process as a 'recruitment game' - after all it seems to have rules (such as how to compose a cover note or behave in an interview) and various players (candidates, recruiters, hiring managers) and conforms to the classic engagement-reward structure of games. So as computer games are increasingly invading our everyday lives (Google Doodle games, Mobile games, Farmville, online poker, prize draw games, military training games, MMORPG etc etc), it seems like a natural progression to bring games into recruitment. Many would shudder at the thought, but like all these innovations, when done well, it can be highly effective and catch on very quickly.

Gartner defines 'Gamification' as "the broad trend of applying game mechanics to non-game environments to motivate people and change behaviour" (such as recruitment, training and health/ wellbeing). Furthermore, Gartner predicts that "over 70 % of Global 2000 organisations will have at least one gamified application by 2014".

So what's the attraction?

There seems to be a double-whammy at play in the recruitment field that has led to gamification's recent successes. Firstly, a lack of workforce engagement. A recent survey by Gallup, shows that 71 percent of American workers are “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” in their work. Secondly, job boards no longer work, or as Adecco said in 2010, after slashing their job board spending, "candidates that come via paid job boards are often unqualified, raising costs [as we] have to wade through irrelevant resumes". Indeed, those that are qualified are often put off by the apparent 'black hole' that jobsites, and even recruitment and company job portal websites, often represent. It could also be argued that when people finish work, they are more likely to want to relax with a game than fill out a long winded job application that could lead nowhere. The advantages of games is that they can be designed to target a particular audience, engage the attention of participants so that they see the process through, and they tap into our deep seated competition, accomplishment and addiction complexes. It also give the participant autonomy in the recruitment process and provides fast and clear feedback.

A great example of gamification success comes from Danish digital agency, Uncle Grey. After trying all the avenues they could think of, including traditional job adverts and even street level direct approaches (!), they used their own audience mapping skills to identify the profiles of their target audience. This produced the insight that the people with the development skills they were targeting tended to play a lot of games in their spare time, with Team Fortress 2 being the most frequently mentioned game. This led to a sponsored version of the online multiplayer game Team Fortress 2 that included in-game recruitment posters and Uncle Grey representatives playing the game that potential applicants were interacting with. The result was 50 applications in the first week and a successful hire on a small budget.

That's all very well in the digital arena, you might think, but what about companies outside the digital and online worlds?

Perhaps the best example here is Reveal by L'Oreal. Originally designed as a way attract male graduates to work at L'Oreal (and increase its workforce diversity), the game has transformed the brand. The game gives you a virtual idea of what it's like to work at L'Oreal, try out typical corporate challenges across departments from finance to marketing, and receive feedback on performance. The game has also built on classic psychometric tests to assess aptitude. This means it can be tweaked or even re-built as desired to reflect new thinking in psychometrics. And as participants say, its can be a voyage of self discovery for the applicants too. While the game incurred several hundreds of thousands in dollars to originally build, it has now been online for 2 years and has been a hugely worthwhile investment - with L'Oreal making over 100 hires each year. The ability to roll it out across multiple countries will allow it to save valuable time and cost in the long term, while making more effective hires. Furthermore, it has allowed hiring managers to look past the usual resume mistakes and instead focus on testing desirable skills in real time.

Looks like Game Over for job advertising.

The Olympic Road Race - Talent Management On Wheels

Like many people it would seem, I'm in a bit of a post-Olympics come down at the moment. Though I'm eagerly looking forward to the Paralympics, in which the UK is tipped as having one of the best teams its ever had. Still, in the interim it’s a good time to ponder lessons that can be drawn from these sporting endeavours. One highlight for me was the Olympic Road Race. Being a keen cyclist, this was always high on my must-see list and I did manage to make my way to Richmond park to see the riders come through.

Team GB's race plan, in the Men's race, was to assert control from start to finish with a high tempo that would wear down the competition. They would then deliver a fresh-legged Mark Cavendish (the fastest sprinter on the road circuit) in the final 2km or so to blow away the competition and claim gold. It was high stakes (gold or nothing), and ultimately it didn't work as the team failed to change their plan during the race when it became clear a different approach was needed (i.e. insertion of GB riders into the breakaway group). Still, it was one of the most heroic team efforts ever seen. Unaided by any other team, Team GB cycled at the front of the main pack for 5 hours and didn't give up until their bodies started shutting down (who expected to see Wiggo dropped to the back at the end of the race, a spent force). I was full of pride at the display of palpable determination, even though we didn't win any medals.

Taking this back to the ‘real’ world,  I couldn’t help but think what this means for team effectiveness and talent in general. In terms of talent, Cavendish was considered the greatest asset in this case - the skills that were needed to make the plan work.  But equally, the plan itself would only work given certain conditions (that there would be a sprint finish). With all the team resources being used up to make that happen, there was no spare capacity to manage an alternative situation in case  things started going a bit pear shaped (for example, sending two riders out into the breakaway group, in case they couldn't be reeled back in). This demonstrates to the importance of your talent acquisition strategy and is a good example of how contingency planning should be a prerequisite for talent acquisition. Of course, hiring or nurturing the right skills for your growth plan is number one, but how will you cope if the market changes?  What other skills does your team have, and should you also hire for breadth rather than specificity? What will be the major challenges and how quickly will you adapt when they force a change of course?

The other point is that team-think isn't always the best approach. Team GB was both an example of how a superbly functioning team can perform at its peak, and equally why a rigid team approach isn't always best to achieve an ultimate goal. If you took Team GB out of the road race and viewed their effort as an individual time trial, it would have been a gold medal winning team effort. But the circumstances of the race were such that this was misplaced. As many of the team were gold medal contenders in their own right, perhaps a more individual approach would have worked better (as it did for the gold and silver medallists). Cycling etiquette aside, the team could have formed sub-groups, or simply used individual tactics to position themselves better for a medal opportunity. As Susan Cain, author of “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” points out in the NY Times -  in the workplace there will always be those who work best when given a bit of time and space, rather than forced into group-think activities. They ultimately make a bigger contribution to the team's drive forward. Part of the challenge of people management is to understand that approaches need to be fluid. Too many businesses say 'this is the way we will work, let's get everyone to work this way'. The more adaptive and impact-resistant approach is to say 'this is the way we're working right now'. Surely the original meaning of flexible working? The Women's race, by contrast a more individual affair, produced a silver medal for Team GB, a whisker away from gold. Well done Armitstead!