This is a very interesting article to read: “Serious Recruiting Games: 6 Tips For Using Games And Simulations For Recruiting Success“
It gives a nice summary of using games as a tool in a “light” way towards the more “heavy” versions or application of play.
Some remarks I would like to note extra as tips:
- “Provide candidates who come to your recruiting site with rewards. ” – make sure you know a bit about your candidates, and in what way the give meaning to the rewards
- “Investigate using virtual worlds such as Second Life” – decide on an appropiate context, inside the game (abstract) and also the context of being played (console or location)
- Develop video-based job tryouts. – try to look into the activity as gameplay, try not to make people “shoot” skills or knowledge but try to align or integrate the “job” activity well in the gameplay
- Hold virtual job fairs. – create events, build a climax, and try to create tension by using scarcity and things being rare or on specific moments and locations, to build suspense and make people desire to be there
But all in all this article is well written to make clear expectations about play as a tool.
Myself I often explain these options as well when people approach me with the question if I can make them a game for a specific reason. What happened for instance recent was that someone was informing me about a game he wished for educational purpose only… after talking 15 minutes, I managed to reveal the desire for this game to not only educate, but also recruit new students, make the industry more popular, make people outside the industry (society) aware about this industry and it’s added value, and finally to upscale the business more to other continents… I would say that is quit a lot to expect from one game… and still this person stayed very serious and engaged to me making this game happen soon….. sometimes it is hard to make people understand that a game is not always the answer and solution to everything that easy… however much I always say that games can really do so much!
But then again.. the US Army game started for recruitement only, then it became a tool for assesment and profiling, later as educational till it was developed to a commercial version since it was such a succes to be played… so true… it is a kind of magic…