The Recruitment Game – Can Fortnite Help Recruit Your Next Senior Executive?

Gamers – teenage nerds who spend their evenings in darkened bedrooms wasting time chasing wizards, right? Not quite. According to the Royal Air Force, not only is gaming a worthwhile pastime but, can also help with recruitment. In an interview with the BBC, an RAF spokesperson said, ‘The ability to assimilate information, react swiftly and co-ordinate actions whilst remaining calm under pressure are gaming attributes and some of the leadership skills that the RAF are always looking for in a variety of roles.’

The RAF is far from alone in recognising the correlation between gaming skills and their benefits for the business world – gamification marketing company, Klujo, uses “pull” strategies to empower employer brands to engage their followers and convert them into applicants through gamified content – allowing organisations to showcase their employer brands in creative, fun and engaging ways.

All to play for

In the past couple of decades, the way we recruit executives has evolved in a number of different ways. The traditional question and answer interview has been replaced by curveball questions, problem solving tasks and assessment days. It shouldn’t therefore come as any surprise that, in 2019, businesses are looking to technology to help recruit key staff – including gaming. Innovative recruitment app, Knack, uses a science and artificial intelligence gaming platform to help businesses to scout and recruit personnel. Businesses now regularly harness the power of popular outlets such as social media and forums in order to source staff so, with 23.1 million gamers in the UK between 6 and 64, according to UKie, it seems that there’s a huge opportunity for businesses to use this medium in order to attract top level employees.

Recruiters get ahead of the game

It’s becoming an increasingly popular belief that playing video games instils in the player desirable business skills such as leadership, multi-tasking and problem solving and, more and more recruiters are looking to games built on behavioural neuroscience and predictive algorithms to gain insights when recruiting senior staff. In today’s world, there are often a disproportionate number of candidates applying for top roles and busy companies are increasingly looking to technology such as automated video interviewing in order to streamline the process and lighten the load for HR staff and, gaming techniques may just be a natural progression from this.

Humans are naturally competitive – and never more so when chasing desirable roles. By using gaming techniques for recruitment, employers can tap into this by competitiveness whilst allowing candidates to gain information and insights ito the company or brand.

As gaming skills move from dork to desirable, it may be time for employers to get onboard with this trend – maybe even introducing game style aptitude tests and other recruitment procedures!