With wide-ranging applications in the work scenario, nearly 66% employers surveyed by TimesJobs.com are considering using the gamification process in near future.
November 2012: Employers today are ready to experiment with their hiring strategies and gamification seems to be another innovation approach in this direction. According to the survey results, nearly 25% employers already use gamification for the purpose of recruitment. They screen potential candidates for attributes like competitive drive and multitasking abilities that would set them apart from other candidates who are only academically qualified for the job.
Gamification plays an important role in crowdsourced recruitment. Madu Ratnayake, Vice President social business strategy & global quality framework, Virtusa, explains, “You get to real ‘crowdsourced’ recruitment when you effectively engage your entire employee base as brand ambassadors and lead generators in the recruitment effort. Gamification is a powerful tool to create that excitement and tap into the competitive spirit of your employees to make every single one of them an ‘active talent scout’. Hiring contests, leaderboards and badges are the building blocks of a social gamified recruitment process.”
Not Just Fun and Games
According to the TimesJobs.com survey, nearly 60% of the surveyed employers use gamification for employee engagement. In addition, 43% of the surveyed employers vouched that gamification generates compelling stories that drive enhanced employee participation. Another 27% employers believe that games generate achievable short-term goals and simultaneously prepare employees for reward driven long-term goals.
Employers today couple gaming with social media to attain efficient talent engagement tools. Anil Garg, VP-HR, Whirlpool, stated during the recent TimesJobs.com boardroom dialogue that they have been extensively using social media along with gamification to engage prospective talent. They use cryptic puzzles through social media to keep the brand connect alive.
Being a rather new concept, organisations are still assessing the potential of the process before they decide to take the leap. However, some of the more progressive ones are already testing the waters using gamification products on TechGig.com an exclusive online community for the Indian IT sector. This online techie community, by TimesJobs.com, provides a platform for candidates to learn, compete and showcase their skills and talent.
Some of the popular TechGig.com gamification products are –
The Code/Skill Contest - a highly engaging real-time contest where software professionals can participate in a coding challenge and see where they stand in terms of their coding skills.
CodeHire - an innovative hiring mechanism where the employer can challenge the developer community with a coding problem for the purpose of selection for employment. CodeHire resolves many issues that are associated with traditional hiring and provides a streamlined approach to hiring candidates with expertise in the specific skills required by the employer.
CodeJudge - is a powerful white-labelled online assessment platform, which is helping companies recruit the best tech talent by judging their coding and skill knowledge. This platform is seamlessly integrated with corporate job-boards as well as the Company’s Social Media presence.
While gamification is yet to evolve into a standard hiring and talent engagement tool, the latest TimesJobs.com Study revealed other interesting insights such as -
- • Nearly 22% surveyed employers are yet to use gamification as their hiring strategy
- • About 5% of the surveyed organisations use gamification for their health and wellness programs for their employees
- • Nearly 20% surveyed employers believe gamification provides well defined tasks and rules
- • Nearly 15% surveyed employers believe gamification promotes social collaboration
- • About 14% organisations believe gamification can lead to unanticipated consequences
- • Only 8% of the surveyed employers use gamification for hiring at senior levels
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