Attracting talent: gamification of the employer brand and recruitment process

Through gamification, you can help your human resources (HR) efforts and develop your employer brand. Why is this necessary all of a sudden? I hear you ask. Our human resources approach has served us for years. Well, quite frankly, the world of work has changed, and this applies as much to the recruiting and applications process as it does to hybrid working and flexible shift patterns.

A basic job offer on a listing site is no longer enough to attract attention and inspire candidates to apply. As far as effective approaches to recruiting go, companies need to do more. Modern applicants are looking for a dynamic working environment, meaning to their day-to-day tasks, and opportunities that will help them build a career. The same goes for CVs, they’re no longer sufficient markers to assess a candidate’s competence and suitability for a role. Today, online gamification can make the difference in the recruitment game. Gamifying interactive content as part of your recruitment process not only shortens the hiring cycle by allowing you to more accurately assess a candidate’s suitability, such as by testing their soft skills or aptitude, but it also serves to paint you as an attractive, dynamic, forward-thinking company and employer.

What do we mean when we talk about the employer brand?

Employer brand is a term which encompasses all the questions and issues of brand image related to human resources and recruitment in business. It’s a representation of the identity of your company as it appears to potential applicants, as well as to your own existing staff. It’s a snapshot of a whole, and encompasses your HR practices like recruiting and onboarding, your approach to collaborative work and individual autonomy, broader goals, values, culture, and communication, as well as the internal and external reputation of the company.

In addition to its role in recruiting and retaining talent, the employer brand is also inseparable from the overall brand image of your business. A company who doesn’t take care of their staff suffers in the court of public opinion, and this can lead to boycotts, or drive potential customers to competitors who seem to treat their employees more favourably. How companies reflect as an employer has impacts across the business, from internal morale, to revenue streams.

Gamification to bolster the employer brand

Gamification tactics are becoming increasingly popular among employers, not only for recruitment, but also to create better onboarding experiences for new employees. Because play is universal, games, and by extension gamified experiences, can speak to all audiences for the betterment of your employer brand.

The effective implementation of gamification shows potential employees that your company is innovative, original, and contemporary. It gives them something to look forward to, it gives them a sense of being included from their very first day, and more broadly speaking, gamification used internally can be manipulated to create healthy competition between colleagues, or encourage teamwork and social interaction, depending on the desired business outcome. This can lead to an increase in productivity.

Use gamification to showcase your business and its values

Many candidates apply to work for the businesses that are most attractive to them. As much as money is still the key motivator for many applicants, as previously mentioned, the values a company holds and lives up to, their approach to corporate social responsibility (CSR), and working environment are counting for more and more. It is therefore essential if you want to be in the position of recruiting the best talent, to make your employer brand an attractive one. You need to show candidates as much as clients what sets you apart from your competitors, and the reasons why they should choose you over them. Essentially, HR and recruitment today is a form of marketing, and your business’s culture and reputation is the product, and job seekers are the customers.

You don’t just offer a job in the modern world, you need to sell and market a job. As much as the applicant is trying to show that their skills and experience are the solutions to your business problems, you need to show that working with your company meets their professional and personal needs. The process is more of a two-way street than before, with people being far more selective in terms of the companies they are willing to represent.

By integrating gamification into your hiring approach, you are not only engaging candidates during recruitment, but you can also provide them with information about the role as well as the business’s culture and values through the content of the game, which could provide extra motivation to make them want to be a part of your company.

Expert advice:

• Don’t be afraid to let your creativity shine. Create truly compelling gamified experiences for your HR needs with a Drimify Dynamic Path™. Tell the story of your business, the main steps of its creation and its values through various steps or levels.
• Set up a recruitment campaign with an entire programme made up of numerous fun, accessible games. Creating themed mini-games to win prizes and learn about the company’s work is a great way to build strong engagement and generate productive interaction with your content.
• Promote your job offers on all channels of communication to boost your recruitment campaign’s visibility. It is in your best interests that as many candidates as possible know about it. Your company must be present and active on all online communication channels, via websites, business pages, and social media. Promoting the games on various media formats helps to rapidly expand the reach of your campaign.

Use gamification to reach your recruitment goals

By integrating gamification into your recruitment and hiring strategy, and designing gamified content to aid your search for potential candidates, you have tools to stimulate increased candidate engagement, and increase conversion rates. Game mechanics, thoughtfully implemented, are perfectly suited to recruitment campaigns to encourage applications from strong candidates.

Consider the modern reality of applying for jobs. A highly desirable graduate position on a popular job listing site could attract anywhere from 80 to 800 applicants. From an informed, connected job seeker’s perspective, they understand they’re up against a numbers game if all that’s involved is a CV and covering letter. Their faith in any business’s ability to handle that sort of volume in a meritocratic way will be relatively low, so they will probably give their stock CV and covering letter with the bare minimum of tailoring. Introducing a gamified piece of content, that gives them a chance to demonstrate their relevant skills and knowledge, is automatically more engaging, particularly for strong candidates. They’ll recognise the potential to be fairly considered in gamified assessments, recognise the opportunity, and will go the extra mile in selling themselves and showing you their potential. You’re making the process less about making a good first impression, which makes people quite nervous, and giving them the reassurance to be judged on their merits, as well as how they may or may not perform on the day of an interview.

Ultimately, a gamified approach to hiring is fairer for the candidates, and through thoughtful game design on the end of the business, you can help to deliver the best person for the role being advertised, and faster.

• Combat physical and psychological prejudices: candidates don’t meet recruiters in person and are purely judged on their output.
• Expand the sense of fairness: the process is the same for everyone and the final outcome is based on objective skill and qualification criteria. The result of the game is not a final decision in itself, but it is a great measuring stick to refer to.
• Gather key information: creating a game with profiles and a ranking table allows you to collect very important data. By observing the choices and behaviour of a potential candidate, you gain more information on their work ethic and personal profile.  These can then be analysed by your recruiters to factor into final decisions.

In summary, games are an excellent tool to evaluate candidates in an objective manner. They will also give you a better insight into their personal and interpersonal skills.

Use gamification to retain top talent

A big challenge facing employers is figuring out how to continue to satisfy the ambitions and needs of your existing employees, and retain your most talented people. When you work on employee well-being in the workplace through well planned gamification, to reward and engage teams, you can help your employees find pride in being part of the team, and show them how they’re contributing to the work environment. When you put effort into the environment and culture of your company, you naturally create colleague satisfaction.

Work with the gamification experts to support you in gamifying your employer brand strategy and gamified recruitment projects. To find out more, check out our add-on offers or contact us to make the most of Drimify’s advice and expertise.

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