8 Ways to Gamify Your Recruitment Processes

8 ways to Gamify Your
Recruitment Processes
By Tom Laine
tomlaine.com
tom.laine@somehow.fi
Copyright 2016 Tom Laine, tomlaine.com

Gamification according to Wikipedia
Wikipedia: Gamification commonly employs game design elements which are
used in so called non-game contexts in attempts to improve user
engagement, organizational productivity, flow, learning, crowdsourcing,
employee recruitment and evaluation, ease of use and usefulness of systems,
physical exercise, traffic violations, and voter apathy, among others. A review
of research on gamification shows that a majority of studies on gamification
find positive effects from gamification.
Gamification is not actual games, but use of game-like mechanics to activate
people in various ways. The activation methods, triggers, could contain
virtual or real life rewards, statuses, badges, levels, points, credits, “easter
eggs” (special surprise rewards), vouchers, discounts, gift cards, or even
concrete prizes.

The one thing in common with all gamification cases is Engagement. It
just varies who's being engaged, for what, and especially how.
The gamification of recruitment and HR processes has been a
frequently discussed topic at various HR forums for a few years now.
Only a few people really seem to understand what the gamification
methods are or what the benefits may be.
Here's my take on the topic!

Gamifying the recruitment process falls in my
book into 8 main categories - the what and why
Category 1.
What?
Activate employees to share recruitment ads and employer branding
content
Why?
Company personnel has on average 6 times the network reach the
company has. Personnel is also the most trustworthy advocate a
company can have

Category 2.
What?
Activate personnel to give referrals, point us to the right direction, who
are the most interesting individuals in their networks we should
consider hiring
Why?
To hire the best of the best and better cultural matches, people who fit
in the team.

Category 3.
What?
Activate our fans, friends and followers or even the applicants to share
our content in their networks
Why?
To gain awareness and for brand building purposes, sometimes just
plain ol' marketing

Category 4.
What?
Activate the top specialists out there to apply with us
Why?
You want to attract the best individuals, not just anyone unemployed
desperate for a job

Category 5.
What?
To educate the applicants about us. Give the applicants a possibility to
understand better our organisation, the company culture, our values, the job
content, methods, tools & technologies, etc., in order to make better
decisions whether to apply with us or not.
Why?
To avoid cultural mismatches. In short, it's transparency, and that's the name
of the game these days. The applicants will search for information about you
and how you treat your employees and a number of other things - whether
you want it or not.

Category 6.
What?
Test the potential candidates if they have what it takes to work with us
(while helping to understand the working environment, and more).
Why?
You want to test the applicants as well as possible before making the
decision. Firing is often more difficult than hiring.

Category 7.
What?
Educate the potential candidates how to apply better
Why?
To make candidates more comparable with each other and to guide
them to apply in the right way through the right channel with the right
kind of application. Of course you'll be able to spot the best ones more
easily if they know what you're really looking for and how the process
works.

Category 8.
What?
For simply marketing purposes, to build employer brand or to gain
media exposure with no greater cause or agenda behind it
Why?
What is the purpose or marketing or employer branding…

The "what and why" are easy to understand, but "how" is much more
difficult. Gladly we have some great examples from around the world
available.
Many of the following examples don't fall into just one category, but
have elements where actual tests or application processes work well as
marketing and branding campaigns as well. There are interesting
combinations in play, see what you could learn from these examples.
Enjoy!

The Idols and Apprentice models
A number of organisations have done Idols-type of auditionings, where
people get to "audition" live in front of the recruitment team. In some
cases there have been great amounts of people who have gathered to
audition for a job, and sometimes even chaos when there have been
more applicants than what the company can handle.
The airline company Finnair had a "service angels" auditioning, an open
event for applicants to come for these speed-date interviews, and
hundreds of people came over. Not all wanted to wait for their turn,
while there was a queue hundreds of meters long, and some of the
applicants started complaining about the queues in Facebook. Not
good.

Vila, a clothing company, organized a live auditioning to quickly go
through the applicants when looking for sales personnel for their
clothing store. 136 people showed up, quickly auditioned, and a small
number progressed to a more in-depth interview. The company was
looking for people with certain attitude, and surely style, oral skills and
looks must have played a role in the process as well, even if not openly
admitted. 4 people were hired, but they failed to find a Shop Manager
with this method and relied on more traditional recruitment for this
position.
The skillset in both of these cases was fairly simple and the weight was
on finding people with the right attitude and "appearance" more than
certain education or experience.

A software company I know well, organized The Apprentice type of
recruitment process to find a suitable person. They told the applicants
upfront that 3 people will get a short term "try-out" job contract to
prove their skills while working, but only one of them would get a
permanent contract after the initial try-out period. This allowed the
company to test the applicants in real life situations and test the
cultural fit as well as skills while all having to perform similar (or even
the same) tasks. The process gave room for better evaluation of the
applicants as a whole. To lie or pretend in a short interview or two is
easy, to pretend everyday for a month is almost impossible.

Employee engagement
Employee engagement is one of the most hyped keywords these days in marketing,
but now also in recruitment. And not just engagement of employees, but all
relevant stakeholders out there. How could we leverage people's networks, build
loyalty, enhance sales and marketing, collect product and service ideas, build
employer brand, activate internal and external brand advocates, and in general
drive customer-driven business development?
There are great tools for different types of engagement and community building.
We could use Sprout's or Meltwater's tools, or services like Smarp or People2Join,
or just ask our personnel what they'd be willing and interested in doing for
common good. Would they share the recruitment ads to their networks, would
they be willing to tell their career story on a video, post a message to a
user/developer group, or come and stand at our booth at a career fair?

Especially the use of different technical tools is fast becoming popular, after
all, it's seems like it's easier to tell the people how to use a tool than change
the culture and mindset... Just saying!
In the best cases people are really committed to helping the company hire
the best people out there, people are proud of their employer and happy
with their work, and share the content often even without asking. They want
to influence who's being hired. After all, nobody wants a colleague they have
to drag along.
The best want to work with the best, and for that purpose it's important to
give our personnel a face and voice, to use them as our honeypot for even
better applicants. And in many cases our specialists know better than our
recruitment team where to look for those passive candidates.

The gamification part? To activate people you sometimes need to
create small internal (or external) games, give prizes or keep a
leaderboard. A small thing to do to get the vast networks our personnel
have, to work for the corporate good.

Actual games
America's Army is by far
the most famous of actual
games organisations have
developed (or at least
planned and ordered) to
tell people what they do,
how they do it, and in
some cases even to test
the players' skills who's be
the best match of them
all!

Russian Army has had simpler games for the same purpose, and a
number of organisations have used small Facebook "games" to engage
people and to educate them about our opportunities and what it
requires to apply with us and do well in certain positions. Some
organisations have done it for long and with great success, some have
tried it out and given up.
Accenture, especially in the U.S., has used different Facebook games for
a long time and with great results, while Marriott Hotels had great
plans which never were realized as the first game didn't work quite as
well or give the kind of results as planned.

Shell has had some success with
their browser game, the Shell
Explorer Game, and it's got
some really nice features in it.
You don't even have to finish the
game to be able to apply or to
understand what it's trying to
say. It gives nice insight into
Shell's operations as such. The
only problem I see with it is it
being a browser game. So it
needs Internet connection and it
takes some time to load.

With fairly little effort, a game can give great insight into what a person
can do or is interested in doing. It also builds nice engagement, and can
explain really nicely what is required to work at the company and at
certain positions.
Some of the organizations using actual games as part of their
recruitment toolbox are e.g. Wells Fargo, WalMart, Medtronic, SAP, Sun
Life, T-Mobile, Dell, Hewlett Packard, McAfee, HBO Europe, Huawei,
Booking.com, VMWare, Sabre, U.S. Foods, D4, International Hotels
Group and Anheuser-Busch.
Can you identify others?

Online tests and challenges
Online skill and psychological tests are often boring and in many cases nonsense. I wouldn't trust
most of them. But using light and easy to use tests for activation and building engagement, sure, I'll
buy that.
One interesting example is ISS (the facility services company), who have used a Facebook test (they
call it a "game") to engage people to think about their career choices and what the company could
offer them.
Fazer, a bakery / confectionary company, has used Zef's survey tool to build a career test, similarly to
ISS trying to activate people to think about their career choices and to activate them to apply with
the company.
Different technical solution, similar ideology and similar results. In fact, these tests don't produce
any actual value to the user, only engage them to consider the organisation as a potential employer.

Some of the more complex tests
could earlier be found at the
Accenture U.S. Facebook page, but
for some reason they are not
available anymore. Same with
Marriott's Facebook game that
educated about their jobs and
activated people to apply.

Educating the applicants
Like with Marriott's Facebook game and Shell's browser game
examples, the point in many of these efforts is in educating applicants
what it would be like and what it requires to apply with and work for
the company and at certain positions.
There are great examples available, like PricewaterhouseCoopers
Hungary’s 12-day Facebook game Multipoly, New Zealand's Air Force,
and L'Oreal's career app “game”. They work very differently, but try to
achieve the same result; to explain about different jobs and context,
what happens within the company.

New Zealand's Air Force wants
you to understand all aspects of
becoming an employee. The roles
available, salary level, typical
educational background, duties,
and more. The gamification in
this case is how the roles are
showcased and explained. Check
this out, a simple but very
effective and useful one.

At L'Oreal's mobile app game
you get to choose a field of
interest, and you're then guided
(with a character) to make
decisions like you were working
with the company. And at the
end, of course, you're activated
to apply with L'Oreal now that
you've proved yourself worthy
and stated interest.

French Postal service
Formaposte explains a
normal working week
of a postman, with an
actual game. All the
way from taking
morning showers to
making decisions
regarding the delivery.

Social activity and skills testing hand-in-hand
Some of the games and gamified content activate people to like, share
or comment recruitment ads or employer branding content. Some are
more focused on actually testing people or at least showing what the
job is all about. Often while activating people to share the content.
Next you’ll see some interesting examples, but remember to also check
out Indian TechGig’s coding challenges, Techniqueen.at’s challenges,
IGN’s Code-Foo challenges, and Google’s Code Jam sessions.

How would Enterasys’ job
application process sound to
you, would you apply or even
be eligible to apply?
…need to apply via Twitter with
certain hashtag, have more
than 1000 Twitter followers,
need to have the social
influence score Klout above 60
and similar Kred score over 725
(High!), and they will
crowdsource Twitter for public
endorsements!
So you need to prove that you
are an influencal communicator
in real life to be able to even
apply.

You may have heard about probably the most
extraordinary recruitment case ever, at least the
one that has gained most media exposure. W+K's
social media challenge for their Old Spice account.
Wieden+Kennedy (W+K, the Old Spice's designated
advertising partner) asked applicants to create
social media content to 10 different media, using
their skills and networks to show they have the
understanding of these media at a level creative
enough for W+K to even consider them. Here are
the 10 categories of which at least one was
required, and all without explaining to anyone that
this content is related to a job application.
Pretty crazy requirements, right?

Arla's #socialhunting case is one of the most
interesting ones. Arla was looking for a Marketing
Assistant, and wanted not just to test their skills, but
use their skills to do promotion for Arla at the same
time.
Candidates needed to create a max. 30 second video
of themselves, explaining why they love Arla and why
they would be the perfect match for the Marketing
Assistant job. And to prove their skills, they needed to
spread the video across social media with the
hashtag #socialhunting.
Arla promised that the applicants with most views,
likes and shares would automatically get to the
interview stage, and they would then additionally
pick a couple of applicants they liked best based on
actual skillset and content.
Unfortunately it's not public information whether one
of the "audience favorites" or staff picks got the job...
Anyway, a great amount of visibility for the company,
explaining in so many ways why people want to work
for Arla and how they appreciate the company.

Domino’s Pizza has a great tablet app game, where you need to first learn to make a round pizza. If it’s not
round enough or the right size, you can’t progress. Once you pass, you then need to spread the tomato
sauce. If you pass, you get to add toppings, then use just the right amount of cheese spread evenly on top of
the pizza. Then the pizza needs to be cooked properly. Only after all levels passed, you are ready to apply
with Domino’s. Fail? No application, please!

With the recruitment agency
Hays things are quite simple.
Look through a few interview
videos and decide who's the
best candidate, and apply to
become a recruiter!

Australian Air Force is
one of many defense
organizations using
gamification methods
to activate potential
candidates and to test
them.

Here's the British
intelligence agency
MI5's gamified test for
future surveillance
officers.

For actual testing of
candidates, some
organizations make the
applications not just
funny, but difficult to
pass. If you can't crack
the code, don't apply
with the British
intelligence agency
GCHQ...

Qvik is not as strict as
GCHQ where you
have to really pass
the test in order to
apply. With Qvik you
can just play the
puzzle and they'll
decide whether they
want to interview you
or not.

Sometimes
things don't
go quite as
planned,
thou...

Ernst & Young takes testing
seriously. They have created
several different logic games
to test your ability solve
problems. And some of the
games aren't easy, far from
it!

Referrals, incentives and bonuses
The use of employee engagement tools like Smarp is becoming popular.
There are both upsides and downsides with technical tools, but
properly used they can help the organization reach out to greater
audiences than with just about any other means. If you can activate
your personnel, not to talk about their networks, to spread the word
for you, that's worth a looooot of money.

These tools are built to activate
the users with a number of
gamification methods, such as
giving them credits or points,
statuses and badges, they have
leaderboards, and even actual
concrete real-life prizes for the
most active users!
Here’s one job ad distributed to
Facebook with Smarp's
SmarpShare tool, by an employee
of Borenius Attorneys.

LinkedIn has recently published 2
interesting mobile apps to support
this kind of behavior; Elevate and
Referrals. Elevate is an employee
engagement app, available for
organizations with 500+ people at
LinkedIn, whereas Referrals
engages employees to share your
recruitment ads and refer people
from their personal networks
towards the recruiter. Elevate is
available already, but Referrals is
available just for a very small
group of U.S. based bluechips for
now.

Funny little things
The gamification could happen just about anywhere, proves Spotify.
Here's a funny little thing one of their recruiters did to find interesting
people from all over the world. And all tailored to You, individually, and
using their own platform. Pure genius!

Did you see it? If not, go back and read the song names! Nice touch! A headhunting outreach as a Spotify playlist!

Jaguar Land Rover doesn’t use quite as much effort as Spotify, but they
don’t fall short much. Here’s what they do at Instagram with pictures and
clever short videos. Do the tasks seem easy?

How would you feel about using max. 140
characters and having to post your job ad
without words, using only emojis/emoticons?
Well, L’Oreal’s done just that! And of course,
some smartass applicants have applied using
only emojis… Good luck identifying the best
candidates!

Sometimes the effort is not that small, like with Heineken’s new campaign ”Heineken Go Places”, where they
have built a webtest that guides you based on your own interests through their portfolio of products, business
areas, and more, in an engaging, funny way. Check this out, here are only a few steps along the long way of
going through the video-driven engagement process! The process functions also as a sort of a personality test.

What recruiters first, candidates second
We've seen the number of gamified job applications, creative
application methods and funny availability announcements from all
over the world during the past few years. If recruiters find a new tool to
post job ads at or network or build employer brand, you can be sure a
few job applicants will do the same their own way, trying to enhance
their possibilities of being found at these same tools and media. Here's
a couple of the most interesting examples.

Nina really wanted to work with AirBnB, so she created a website with content looking like AirBnB and about
how AirBnB could benefit from her knowledge of certain markets. And started attracting attention to her
website in hopes for AirBnB to notice her effort.

Robby Leonardi wanted to find an interesting new job, but wasn’t sure what the
perfect job would be, so he put his skills and expertise in play to receive job offers
and to see what the world has to offer. And the world noticed Robby…
To progress in the game, you needed to run your character thru a few levels, all
explaining different sides of Robby’s skills, interest, achievements, and more.

Robby got plenty of job offers from all over the
world, and Baidu even copied Robby’s
character without permission for it’s own use,
but Robby didn’t get that one magic job offer
he was looking for. And the search continues…

Sami managed to identify the job he’d always dreamed of. But how to get noticed and
convince he was what the company was looking for…? Sami put in some extra effort and
made a campaign out of his application process, explaining it all in a YouTube video.

Going too far? Possibly. Scary? Yeah, a bit. Going the extra mile? Sure, if this doesn’t
convince the hiring manager that this guy is serious about his application and motivated,
nothing does.
Got other great examples in mind? Share it!

Want to know and learn more about how to gamify your
recruitment processes? Join one of my social media
recruitment trainings or watch my training videos
(available Autumn 2016)
Want to know more about me? http://www.tomlaine.com/
Want fo befriend me at LinkedIn? https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomlaine
Want to book a training or consultation? tom.laine@somehow.fi

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