In an attempt to attract top talent organizations have been turning to innovative, creative and engaging ways of revamping and strengthening their recruitment process. Some of them have even implemented games in their assessment process or have altogether gamified their assessments. Tools and concepts like video enabled interviews, virtual reality assessments, AI driven assessments, games that assess emotional intelligence and cognitive behavior and even gamified psychometric tests have all made their way into the corporate world. However, have all this made the recruitment process too much fun and less professional?

Why have organizations taken such steps? Why have gamified assessments become the chosen solution? Well to name a few reasons, using gamification organizations are looking to:

1. enhance and improve their candidate experience,
2. reduce or eliminate bias,
3. increase their ability to access more talent pool,
4. bring efficiencies into their recruitment process, and
5. recruit talent that’s rightly aligned with their culture.

What all this means is that gamified assessments have made possible for organizations to:

• Enhance the image of their employer brand,
• Attract a diverse and abundant pool of candidates,
• Gain insightful data and information about their candidates,
• Eliminate bias from their recruitment process,
• Shorten recruitment and selection time, and
• Create an interactive, fun and engaging recruitment process.

Is It Fun For Everyone?

The idea of gamified assessments may be innovative and creative, no doubt. However, are gamified assessments ‘fun’ for all candidates? Simply saying that a gamified assessment experience is ‘fun’ for all isn’t quite true. When you think about it ‘fun’ can be perceived differently by different people. Not everyone will find games like Candy Crush as fun. Sure, it has mass appeal, however, is it fun for everyone? I’m not quite sure.

When gamifying your recruitment process consider how the ‘fun’ will be perceived by various candidates. Candidates at varying job levels and functions will perceive fun differently. So how do you cater to varying palates of ‘fun’?

You implement a gamified recruitment platform, like C-Factor, that’s tailor-made to your organization’s needs, jobs and culture. The idea is to embed your organization’s ideologies, culture, philosophies and work environment into the games so that candidates get to ‘experience’ what it’s like working for you. It’s not just about fun and games and having a good time. It’s about achieving the goals you want from your recruitment process, without getting too caught up with the ‘fun’. During the design phase of your gamified assessments, make sure you’re truly keeping your organization’s values in mind.

Will It Work With a Toned Down Fun?

Yes! Even if you were to tone down the fun in your gamified assessments you still can achieve the objectives you’ve set from its implementation. At The Talent Games we surveyed 7,000 candidates who experienced our gamified assessments and learned what they felt most positively about was:

• How interactive the challenges were,
• The immediate feedback they received,
• The organization’s commitment to advanced recruitment methods, and
• The absence of bias in the assessment process.

Let’s be honest, anything that looks, feels and comes off too strongly as a game will probably be taken less seriously. However, having said that, gamification isn’t simply having games in the office. It’s much more than that. Gamification is about applying game mechanics to a corporate strategy. And that means not only making your recruitment process engaging, interactive, and creative, but also aligning it with the seriousness and appropriateness of your organization’s culture. Sure, if you can make the situation and assessments fun along the way, then why not!

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Paul Keijzer is the CEO and Founder of Engage Consulting and the co-Founder of The Talent Games, which aims to transform HR by digitising talent processes and creating more engaging and productive workplaces through gamification and mobile technology. As a global HR and Leadership Management expert, Paul knows how to combine business insights with people insights to transform organisations and put them on the path to growth.