Game-changing
recruitment
How gamified assessments can enhance your employer brand
cut-e Group
www.cut-e.com
E-mail: [email protected]
Version 1.0 July 2016
www.cut-e.com
How gamified assessments can enhance your employer brand
Are you looking to combine gamification and assessment?
David Barrett offers seven tips for creating a distinctive gamified assessment.
For decades, employers have used online psychometric assessments to identify the most appropriate
candidates in their applicant pool. Now, some recruiters are turning to gamification in a bid to
differentiate themselves, raise brand awareness and provide a more immersive candidate experience.
The attraction of using a game is that it challenges candidates and enables them to score points,
compete with others, try out different strategies and get recognition and instant feedback – all
without feeling that they’re being ‘measured’.
But a distinction needs to be drawn here. You can’t just introduce a game and expect it to make
your recruitment process more enjoyable, because the game will not be ‘fun to play’ if a job is at
stake. You have to introduce the right ‘gamified assessment’, one that will help you make a fair and
objective selection decision. In other words, you need to combine science and entertainment.
The best gamified assessments are powerful tools underpinned by proper science and validated
with psychometric rigour. Then the games offer not only an immersive, engaging and
entertaining candidate experience, they also provide specific psychometric insights about each
applicant’s skills, abilities and their potential to perform in the role. On top of that, they’ll give
you predictive analytics that will help you make future talent decisions.
Seven tips for success
A gamified assessment that helps you to accurately and cost effectively find the right
candidates, through an optimum combination of science and entertainment, is a seductive
concept. Here’s how to achieve it:
1. Make it yours. If you choose to use a generic game, you won’t differentiate your
organisation in any way. There may be a short-term cost advantage to using the same
game as a competitor but the longer-term impact, in terms of damage to your employer
brand, can be hard to shake off. Above all, you want your assessment process to feel
‘special’ and distinct to candidates.
2. Be clear about what you want. Gamified assessments can be built for a range of
purposes, such as pre-application attraction or candidate selection. Do you want to attract
applicants, expand your talent pool, offer guidance, assess specific skills or create a viral
game that can be shared to improve your brand awareness? If you’re looking to assess your
applicants, then what specific skills, abilities and aptitudes are you trying to find? For
example, are you looking for critical thinking, attention to detail, problem solving, initiative,
aptitude for learning or specific skills such as creativity or teamwork? Start with what you
want to measure, then build a gamified assessment that will deliver this. Don’t start with
the game and then try to modify it to measure something. Also, think about which aspects
of gamification will actually help you to achieve your goal. For example, you may want to
develop a valid and reliable Realistic Job Preview, which includes gamified elements. This
can appeal to candidates as it provides a fresh, brand-specific approach and it features the
‘look and feel’ of a game but it is also highly predictive.
3. Create an immersive candidate experience. The design of your gamified assessment
should appeal to candidates and serve its purpose. Don’t include fancy ‘bells and whistles’ for
the sake of it. Your candidates should be able to complete the game in a short time. Yes, it
should be enjoyable but remember it also has to be grounded in scientifically-validated
psychometric rigour and it should provide meaningful, job-relevant insights about candidates
as well as robust predictive analytics that will help you with future talent decisions. Get your
design wrong and you could find candidates ‘bad-mouthing’ your game on social media!
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4. Don’t limit yourself. Certain soft skills such as empathy may be difficult to assess via a
game. So consider whether a gamified assessment is really the best option for you, or
whether there are other ways of identifying which candidates have the exact behaviours and
competencies you require. Gamification is not the only way forward.
5. Think through how it will be used. Candidates should have an equal opportunity for
success, regardless of whether they play the game on a phone, tablet, desktop or laptop.
The layout and format should resize appropriately to display any text, image or video
elements on any device. The game also has to be ‘fair to complete’. Candidates should not
be disadvantaged if they lack colour vision or the manual dexterity to perform well, unless
these aspects are relevant for the job. Ensure you partner with a gamified assessment
provider who can design a quick, aesthetic and engaging candidate experience that’s
optimised for any device and that doesn’t compromise basic testing principles. This will
require trials across different devices to check candidate performance and completion times.
6. Make it scaleable. Choose a partner who can provide an underpinning platform; who has
expertise in assessing the skills and attitudes you need; who can deliver reliable analytics;
who can create a distinctive game and who can administer the process across local,
regional, national or international boundaries, according to your needs.
7. Communicate with your candidates. If you’re making a selection decision based on
someone’s performance in a game, good practice is to explain to your candidates what the
game is assessing and how their performance data will be used. If you won’t be taking a
candidate further in your selection process, outline the reasons why and explain that it isn’t
because they ‘failed’, it is because they don’t have the specific mix of skills or behaviours
that you’re looking for. You have to be able to justify and validate your decision – and you
can only do this if your game has a sound scientific basis.
Equipped with the right gamified assessment, you can deliver a great experience to every
candidate and also gain a rich source of job-relevant data and insights that can help you make a
quick and informed decision about whether or not to progress each person through your
application process.
For more information and related documents about how to get the most out of online
assessment, and other related information, please refer to www.cut-e.com
About the author David Barrett
David Barrett is Chief Operating Officer of international assessment specialist
cut-e which develops online assessments and gamified assessments that help
organisations worldwide to make the right talent decisions. cut-e has a
partnership with games developer Arctic Shores. David can be contacted via
[email protected]
cut-e has created an online soccer-related game, called the GoalMind challenge, in
honour of the 2018 FIFA World Championship. It tests decision-making and
reflexes, and asks: did the ball cross the goal line?
Try it at http://goalmind.cut-e.com
cut-e is a world leader in the design and implementation of innovative online tests and
questionnaires for recruitment, selection and development. cut-e helps companies identify
people with the right capabilities and cultural fit to deliver optimal business results. cut-e
carries out over 7 million assessments per year in over 70 countries and 40 languages.
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