Don’t get me wrong- Gamification is a great thing. It can add fun to some of the dreariest tasks in the working day. But there’s a point where gamification becomes irrelevant and then just plain timewasting.
And while it might sound like a fun idea, creating gamification that simultaneously fulfils some business purpose is difficult. Really difficult. But get it right, and it might add significant value to your recruitment strategy.
The key to success is to encourage engagement with your product or service. For recruitment teams- this can be split into two categories; internal vs external.
Internal gamification focuses on motivating teams by creating some (hopefully friendly, often not) competition.
External gamification can be used to entice candidates and clients to engage with your brand.
Here are a few ideas for how gamification can work in recruitment:
Internal Gamification
This Harvard Business Review shows that progress is the most influential factor in keeping people motivated at their jobs on a day-to-day basis.
Gamification is, in essence, a way to measure and reward progress.
Leaderboards and dashboards are a great way to measure, track and reward progress in recruitment teams. They provide transparency across businesses and department, and create healthy competition amongst teams and individuals to meet targets or goals.
External Gamification
Candidate Profiles can be tedious online forms. Gamify the registration process using fun graphics and profile ‘completeness’ prompts. Data can help you provide prompts, for example: “Your profile is less complete than 90% of other candidates” can be enough to prompt candidates to complete their profile.
Competitions could be used to gamify sharing on social media. For example, offering a promotion like ‘share this job with 3 friends and be in with a chance of winning £100’ work in much the same way as an employee referral scheme- but with a much wider reach.
Bad examples of gamification
Online games that have no recruitment relevance are a bad idea. Not only do they waste your candidates’, consultants’ or clients’ time, but the resources taken to develop these games means that the return on investment will be poor. Even if the game itself is good- it is bad for business.
The flip side of the coin is if you make a game with a business point that nobody wants to play. Gamification is all about striking the delicate balance between fun goals and business goals. Making a game that isn’t fun adds no value to your recruitment strategy.
Finally- consider how is the game won? Once the candidate completes their profile, do they win a badge? A game without a prize can be frustrating. So how can you get gamification right? In a nutshell- strike a balance between business goals and fun.