Month: February 2023

Gamification is the use of game design elements and mechanics in non-game contexts to increase engagement, motivation, and participation. Gamification has found applications in different sectors such as education, marketing, and customer service, and now it is hoisting its flag in recruitment.

To explore how gamification has spiced up the education industry, check out our blog on gamification in the ed-tech industry.

The Danish Company, Uncle Grey used Team Fortress players to get applicants for their front-end developer role. They provided sponsorship to the game’s leading players, who then displayed Uncle Grey’s job advertisements in the game and adopted the job URL as their in-game name. The response generated a large pool of qualified candidates, ultimately resulting in the successful recruitment of their front-end developer.

International advertising agency, Ogilvy & Mather createda social media competition to recruit their sales person. The campaign promised a fellowship at Ogilvy if they can sell a block of brick. This challenge not only found their eligible candidates but also tremendously increased their brand visibility globally.

Phoenix Software used escape rooms to recruit their candidates. They had to apply their technical skills to figure out the clues of the game. This not only tested the candidates’ technical ability but also their performance under pressure and their ability to coordinate as a team.

These are some of the gamification examples in recruitment showing how it can engage your potential employees and enliven your hiring process.

How to use gamification in hiring?

Skill Assessments

One way to use gamification in hiring is to create skill assessments that use game-like mechanics. For example, instead of a typical multiple-choice test, a company can create an interactive game that tests the candidate’s skills. This not only makes the assessment process more engaging for the candidate but also provides a more accurate picture of their skills and abilities.

Simulation-Based Exercises

Another way gamification can be used in hiring is through simulation-based exercises. For example, a company can create a virtual simulation of a job task or scenario, and have candidates play through it. This allows the company to observe how the candidate performs in a realistic work situation, giving them a more accurate idea of their skills and how they would perform on the job.

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality is another gamification tool that can be used in hiring. Companies can create virtual reality experiences that allow candidates to explore the company’s workplace, culture, and values. This can give candidates a better sense of what it would be like to work for the company, which can help them decide if the company is a good fit for them.

Gamified Application Process

The application process itself can be gamified to make it more engaging and interactive for candidates. For example, a company can create a mini-game that candidates must complete as part of the application process. This not only makes the process more engaging for the candidate but also helps the company identify candidates who are willing to put in extra effort to apply for the job.

Employee Referral Programs

Gamification can also be used to encourage employee referrals. For example, a company can create a game that rewards employees for referring qualified candidates. This not only incentivizes employees to refer candidates but also makes the referral process more engaging and fun.

Benefits of Gamification in Recruitment

Better Analysis

Traditional interview settings can often limit candidates from showcasing their full potential. Gamification on the other hand, offers an accurate assessment of a candidate’s strengths and weaknesses which may not be apparent through standard interview questions alone.

This approach also enables the identification of non-tangible qualities, such as emotional intelligence, common sense, vigilance, adaptability and coordination.

More Accuracy

Artificial Intelligence is the base of gamification and hence it provides better results in terms of accuracy. There is not much intervention by humans in the process and hence it provides a fair and unbiased evaluation.

Improves Candidate Experience

The spontaneity of gamification in the recruitment process, creates a more enjoyable and less stressful experience for candidates. This allows them to relax and approach the hiring process with more confidence and focus.

Increased Brand Awareness

Even if a candidate does not make it through the gamification process, the high level of engagement can still leave a positive impression and increase their eagerness to participate in future recruitment efforts. Furthermore, their experience may encourage them to spread the word about the company’s recruitment process to a wider audience.

Challenges Involved

Authenticity

Although gamification can be an effective way to evaluate a candidate’s abilities, it may not always provide a straightforward assessment. Due to the lack of direct interaction and the difficulty in confirming the authenticity of the candidate’s performance, it may be necessary to conduct additional in-person interviews before making a final hiring decision.

Cost

Creating gamified hiring experiences can be expensive, especially if a company is using virtual reality or other advanced technologies.

Accessibility

Not all candidates may have access to the necessary technology or equipment to participate in gamified hiring experiences.

Fairness

Companies need to ensure that gamified hiring experiences are fair and accessible to all candidates, regardless of their gaming skills or experience.

Data Privacy

Gamification can involve collecting and storing sensitive candidate data, which can create privacy concerns.

All these adversities must be kept in mind while implementing a gamification-led hiring process. However, with proper tools and effective strategy, it is definitely possible for companies to overcome these challenges and fully leverage the benefits of gamification in recruitment.

Conclusion

Overall, gamification in recruitment has proven to be a powerful tool for companies seeking to enhance their hiring process. It provides a unique opportunity to make the recruitment process more engaging, efficient, and effective while providing a fun and engaging experience for candidates. With the ongoing development of technology, the use of gamification is expected to grow further in the coming years.

Artificial Intelligence has taken the world by storm, and so has the excitement and anticipation. It has changed the way people live, work and connect. From Alexa being the friend you never had to Chat GPT being the destination to get all your answers, AI is making waves for all the right reasons. But beneath the hype and glamour, employers worldwide have been finding ways to use this transformative technology to create faster, fairer and accurate talent acquisition process. Come, let’s delve into it!

The future of hiring

The future looks promising with AI shaping the talent acquisition process, one hire at a time. AI is not widely used in recruitment now, but it is predicted to increase by two, three, or even four times in the near future. The AI tools which have the greatest utility in TA are Big-data analytics, automated assessments and predictive analytics. It enables recruiters to source candidates more efficiently, assess candidates more accurately and onboard them more quickly.

Sourcing & Screening

Candidate sourcing and screening involves finding individuals who fit the job role and manually sifting through the influx of resumes.

AI can help in resume screening by automating the process of filtering through resumes and identifying those that best match the job requirements. Natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) algorithms can be used to analyze resumes and extract relevant information, such as education, work experience, and skills. Employers can compare this information to the job requirements to determine which candidates are the best fit for the position. This allows recruiters to concentrate on attracting and placing top talent instead of mundane tasks.

Assessing the right fit

The next and the most essential step in the talent acquisition process is the evaluation of candidates. Recruiters schedule multiple levels of screening to shortlist the right candidates. Traditional scheduling methods often involve a back-and-forth exchange of emails and phone calls, which can be time-consuming and prone to errors. With AI, candidates can easily schedule interviews through a self-service portal. Recruiters can also automatically coordinate interview times and locations based on the availability of both the candidate and the interviewer.

Recruiters can use AI to improve the candidate experience by providing personalized and timely communication throughout the recruiting process. This can include automated emails and text messages to keep candidates informed of the status of their application. Personalized feedback and recommendations can also be set which would increase their chances of getting hired.

Onboard to success

Onboarding is a critical step in the employee life-cycle. Effective onboarding improves employee retention, productivity and engagement. It’s an opportunity for the company to greet the new employee, validate their choice, and provide the conditions for long-term success. AI systems automate the tedious paperwork process involved in onboarding new employees. They also analyze data from resumes, job applications, and interviews to create a personalized onboarding experience for each new employee. Overall, AI can help to make the onboarding process more efficient, effective, and personalized. This leads to better outcomes for both the new hires and the company.

Smooth onboarding process creates a good perception about the company’s brand among job seekers thereby making it easier to attract top talents.

Hiring – No more a tiring task

One of the most exciting ways AI can enhance talent acquisition process is through the use of predictive analytics. By analyzing data from previous hiring processes, AI can identify patterns and trends that recruiters can use to predict which candidates are most likely to be successful in a particular role. This allows recruiters to focus their efforts on the most promising candidates, rather than wasting time and resources on less likely matches.

Here’s a complete report to know the hiring trends of 2023.

Enhance hiring workflow

In the next few years, finding top talent will depend on a recruiter’s ability to intelligently automate their workflow and unearth insights into their talent pool. The Applicant Tracking System has the capacity to combine data from several sources into a single, cohesive data set. This gives hiring managers and talent acquisition specialists access to the ‘big picture’ of a candidate’s likelihood of success.

Get, Set, Go

While AI may fascinate you, companies should implement AI in a way that aligns with their values and culture. It’s also important to ensure that AI does not perpetuate bias or discrimination. Hence one should strive to make AI a part of a productive but humanized talent acquisition process. Make sure that great people know you want, need, and like them. Pour more human energy into connecting and understanding people to achieve this.

Ever since the dawn of AI in recruiting, coding assessment software has become increasingly popular in recent years to evaluate candidate’s technical skills.   

Using an assessment software now is the most straightforward approach for evaluating developers, while it has been different in the past. Let’s look at the history of coding interviews and what led to the rise of coding assessments.    

Whiteboard Interviews

Back then, candidates were required to code on the whiteboard!!. Bizarre, isn’t it?

This method was long-used and quite popular in the ’80s, ’90s and even in the early 2000s to evaluate a developer’s skills. This approach was known as the Whiteboard Interview. 

Candidates who make it to the in-person whiteboard interview have a couple of hours to show the tech team how quickly and concisely they can code. They have to stand up, turn to a whiteboard and handwrite code from scratch while a handful of senior developers scrutinize their every word and move. 

Whiteboard exercises weren’t designed to be quick, scalable, or solve real-world issues to secure top talent hiring. Most questions would last an hour, while job interviews take up to a whole day and they seldom simulate real-world problems. This strategy was effective enough back then as software developer professions were relatively new to the market.

The Microsoft Way 

The turn of the millennium marked a new era in coding interviews. Microsoft was a pioneer in the coding interview as they test not only a candidate’s technical knowledge and coding ability but also their problem-solving skills in a creative manner. Interviewers often brought questions like these to test their logical thinking abilities,  

1. There are three ants at the three corners of a regular triangle. Each ant starts moving in a straight line toward another randomly chosen corner. What is the probability that none of the ants will collide?

2. Suppose you have eight billiard balls. One of them is defective – it weighs more than the others. How do you tell, using a balance, which ball is faulty in two weightings?

As funny as it sounds, Microsoft’s technical interviews always had some brain teasers or required logical thinking to answer the questions. Bill Gates’s obsession heavily influenced this with puzzles, and it was Gate’s idea to present dilemmas in interviews.

But over the years, these became less popular in favour of technical screening software as the latter was set to change the game forever.  

As the need for software developers grew, businesses started looking for alternate methods of efficiently hiring. The assessment software was seen as a proven solution and started to gain popularity as a critical component of the screening process to evaluate a candidate’s coding efficacy.   

The coding assessment software began to dethrone Whiteboard and Microsoft’s interviewing methods. Because of the tech industry’s realisation that it will need to hire a lot more developers to support the industry’s exponential growth.   

So, what is Coding Assessment Software?

In simple terms, coding assessments are tests that are given to candidates to evaluate their technical ability. Using this Technical screening, companies can test job candidates’ coding skills by presenting them with challenges or tasks they must complete using a programming language.  

The quickening pace of advanced technologies

In the 1990s, recruiters made the best of the available resources. Now, modern recruitment started implementing more technologically advanced methods to screen and test a developer’s communication and coding abilities without a whiteboard and marker. The coding Assessment software enables remote viewing, editing, and discussion of programming challenges in a faster and more scalable way in real time.  

Greater demand for skilled developers

The rising need for qualified developers is one factor in the growth of technical screening platforms. With the proliferation of technology in every industry, there is a growing need for developers who can build and maintain software systems. As a result, businesses are ready to spend on resources that will enable them to find and hire the best individuals.  

Coding assessment software also offers convenience and flexibility for both companies and candidates. These platforms make it easy for companies to administer tests and review results, saving time and resources. For candidates, it allows them to complete the assessment at their own pace and from the comfort of their own homes, making the hiring process more convenient and accessible.  

Analyzing in-depth skills

Another factor contributing to the popularity of coding evaluation platforms is their capacity to offer a more impartial and uniform method of evaluating candidates’ abilities. Traditional techniques for assessing coding skills, such as reviewing resumes and conducting interviews, can be arbitrary and biased. Contrarily, coding assessment tools let businesses evaluate applicants for particular competencies and take a consistent performance measurement of their results.  

Conclusion

The rise of coding assessment software reflects the growing importance of technical skills in the job market and the need for companies to find reliable and efficient ways to evaluate candidates. As the demand for developers continues to rise, the technical screening will become even more widespread and sophisticated in the coming years.