Gamification Engages Job Candidates Beyond Their Resumes

Chances are, you don’t think of gaming when you think of searching for a new job — but gamification is somewhat of a burgeoning trend in some companies’ hiring processes.

Gamification is an office empowerment tool that not only makes things more fun, but also increases engagement, commitment and motivation, as well as stimulates users, consumers and employees to go beyond their limits to truly understand something.

“Studies show that over 70% of employees are not engaged at work, and job applications have become more tedious then ever,” says Mario Herger, founder of Enterprise-Gamification.com and a top 10 Leaderborded Gamification Guru.

“When everything else has failed, businesses need to look at industries that successfully manage to engage their users. One of them is the game industry.”

“When everything else has failed, businesses need to look at industries that successfully manage to engage their users. One of them is the game industry.”

While it may seem somewhat out-of-the-box, companies that offer unique ways to showcase applicant skills and passions are actually giving job seekers the upper hand, as they no longer need put all their eggs in one basket and rely on a resume alone. Job seekers looking to work at innovative companies should consider embracing this creative hiring technique.

Showing off your skills by playing a game

This recent article points out how emerging HR tech vendors have developed applications that enable companies to assess candidates’ skills based on how they perform on certain video games. Sadly, many experiments in this direction have failed, or have simply not met expectations.

As one example, Marriot’s My Marriott Hotel Facebook game, a tool designed to recruit employees for the company’s management program, disappointingly failed to generate any buzz. The game adopted FarmVille’s game concept, but shifted it into a hotel setting. Despite the various tasks the player could undertake, the game’s features did not excite players enough to make the project a success.

Tech companies are leading the way

Some companies (and tech companies in particular) implement “challenge-based recruiting” to assess a candidate’s ability to do a specific job and test their skills beyond video games and puzzles. These brands seem to rely less on resumes, embracing the ideas of best-selling author Seth Godin: “A resume is an excuse to reject you. Once you send me your resume, I can say, ‘Oh, they’re missing this or they’re missing that,’ and boom, you’re out. A resume… begs for you to get a job as a cog in a giant machine,” writes Godin.

Tech companies have been challenging software engineers and developers to compete for jobs by showcasing their technical and creative skills.

Tech companies have been challenging software engineers and developers to compete for jobs by showcasing their technical and creative skills. Google, for example, implemented “The Google Code Jam,” a global online software-writing contest that attracts over 7,500 people each year. The top 25 finalists are invited to the Mountain View campus to compete for $50,000 in prizes, as well as a chance to work at Google. Another example is Facebook’s “Programming Challenge,” in which candidates can solve programming challenges to “get noticed” by potential employers.

Opportunities for all industries

With tech industry jobs representing 5.4% of the private sector workforce, one might think that the chance to showcase value — no matter your academic background or years of experience — is an option available only to a small percentage of the whole workforce. Good news for the remaining 94.6%: There are positions across all industries that are recruiting with these methods, from marketing interns to bankers, from store managers to sales associates.

“For the first time, companies are not discriminating candidates based on their resumes; instead, employers can select the best people based on what they can bring to the table,” says Joanna Weidenmiller, CEO and co-founder of 1-Page, a job proposal platform.

A unique way to pitch yourself

Innovative companies are making unique pitching tools available to job seekers to help them stand out from the crowd and showcase their value to “win” a job (or at least an interview). Candidates can also access these platforms and work on unsolicited job proposals in order to frame their value proposition and, maybe one day, pitch the company of their dreams. Waiting for more companies to switch from resume-centric approaches to new and more engaging ways to assess candidates’ value, job seekers can always play on the offense:

Do your homework, find the challenges that your ideal company is facing, and propose a solution

Do your homework, find the challenges that your ideal company is facing, and propose a solution — and don’t forget to throw in why you are qualified, too. A well organized, straightforward and research-based job proposal adds more value than standard resumes.

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