Serious Games in Recruitment, Selection, Assessment

[Chuck Allen]

What, if any, are notable successes or case studies for the use of serious games in recruitment, selection, assessment, and similar human resource management activities? Who are the some of the experts/thought leaders for this type of application of serious games?

[Eliane Alhadeff]

Hi Chuck,
Not sure whether you've got any response to the above inquiry, but the collectively acknowledged and measured success for the use of serious games in recruitment and selection is America's Army game - a $5 million project that the Department of Defense released in 2002 as a recruitment tool. It uses a game engine developed by Epic Games and contributions from Virtual Heroes.

Other interesting case studies are:
Sun New Hires: Serious Games As Part Of The Onboarding Process
Serious Games Bringing More People Into Scotland’s Transport Sector
Serious Games Connect Royal Netherlands Navy With NextGen Recruits
Serious Games Developing Soft Skills

[Marcin Langer]

Hi Chuck,
I am a co-author of such an application, It isn't so much a serious game, I should say, it's more like an e-learning simulation, but we have certainly put a lot of thought to it and I must say it works pretty good. For sure it is a 'learning by doing' thing. It's designed for training of insurance sales unit managers responsible for recruitment and selection of new agents. The objectives of the sim were to develop the understanding of the process as well as to learn about the selection tools recommended by the client's HR, and how to use them. The most advanced feature of the simulation is the profile defining machine, that randomly matches different characteristics of candidates making it almost impossible to meet the same candidate twice if you replay the game, yet keeping them reasonable. The application uses real documents so it's pretty close to the actual real life experience.

I must admit though, graphics is the area I am least proud of - it's nowhere near the sims made by AVA Skills mentioned by Eliane (last link). I have seen those at OnlineEDUCA in Berlin. Very impressive.

Regards