Gamification in Recruitment
A guest blog by Matthew Lasky, Head of Design for 4MAT
Despite not yet being recognised by spellcheck, gamification is fast becoming an online design buzzword. Those who are involved in designing websites are already very familiar with it; however, those outside this circle probably haven’t heard of it. Whether you’ve heard of it or not, you’ve almost certainly been involved in it!
Defining gamification
You may not realise it, but gamification is already having a huge influence in your everyday interactions with the internet. It’s a way of getting people to engage with a brand by being fun, enticing and empowering. All the big websites are doing it: Facebook, LinkedIn, even online shopping companies. It’s all about rewarding behaviour. That symbol on the right hand side of your LinkedIn profile that shows your Profile Strength – a classic example of gamification. It rewards you for putting in information and interacting with the service by recognising it in your profile’s strength. It sets achievable goals that leave users with a sense of accomplishment when they reach them.
There is also a social influence aspect – whereby users may want to share their success, which encourages others to join in and so creates a competitive aspect. This is all linked to social proofing: adopting the actions of others as the correct behaviour for a given situation since people want to feel part of a community. Foursquare plays heavily on this, with points to reward people and ensuring its users can see what everyone else in their community is doing.
How does it work in recruitment?
Following the big social networks, recruiters are using gamification in a number of different ways. It can be used to attract more varied applicants, reflect innovation and, crucially, make the recruiting process more fun! For candidates, it could be done through games, simulations and other reward-giving applications. It can be used to encourage existing job seekers to share opportunities and information and to interact with brands.
What have Anderselite done?
Anderselite wanted to introduce something fun, interactive and rewarding to their job application process. So we looked at the type of people who are likely to be visiting their website and what they’d be interested in using. The answer to this was varied, but one of the key areas they are looking to attract is technically-skilled candidates – such as engineers. We then researched the personality type of this target audience and understood that they are typically problem solvers. This is reflected in the final game: a classic problem-solving puzzle with that all-important competitive element! It also encourages users to send in their CV with a quick send feature implemented into the game. We’ve tracked how having this game is influencing how candidates use the site and, whilst we’re still in the early stage of evaluating this, the results are looking positive. For example, by using website tracking, we can see one user playing the game whilst adding job opportunities to a shortlist. It just goes to show how gamification in recruitment can play a huge role in attracting more candidates to the application process.