Gamification: A New Approach to Facilitate Recruitment

Abstract

Gamification has been considered as the inclusion of game features into non-game context. With the advent of novel technologies, gamification has provided novel opportunities for recruiting talented professionals. While undergoing the recruitment process, it is obvious that many young talented professionals may get disengaged and bored. On the contrary, gamification, which has gained popularity after 2010, has been considered as a novel approach to engage and inspire candidates appearing for interview (1-3). Gamification has been defined as, “the use of game design elements in non-gaming contexts” (1). Zickermann and Cunningham (4) defined gamification as “the process of game-thinking and game mechanics to engage users and solve problems” (p.14). The primary goal of using gamification in recruitment is to engage the candidates so that their training and hiring process may be facilitated and candidates may feel enthusiastic about the organization (4-5). Gamification has been into practice to facilitate the interview process by making it attractive, collaborative, and productive. Gamification evaluates a candidate on the basis of his performance in solving a particular role assigned to him (6). The explanation provided by the candidate on the basis of gamified problem help HR managers to evaluate the analytical skills of the candidates in an improved manner (7-8). Recruitment games provide realistic and case-based situations to the candidates making him acquainted with the actual nature of job. In such situations the candidate presents solutions based upon his analytical skills, thus is at more liberty to discuss his thinking and talent (9).