New age businesses are keen on exploring how gamification can be incorporated in their recruitment process, to reduce the dropout rate among candidates. Games, game based assessments and gamified assessment all fall into three different broad headings. Interactive games do play a key role in attracting a lot of applications but when the stakes are raised, games somehow tend to distort the seriousness of the process. Few companies have faced repercussions in the form of public humiliation, for using games and game-based assessments as a method of selection. There’s a mindset among a lot of people that these are “whimsical” tools and are not conducive to the serious task of evaluating individuals. Recreation is fun when the stakes are low of their application but in other cases, applicants might presume that they are not being taken seriously and their perception of that employer’s attractiveness can decline. Another issue is that the results may be inaccurate and unreliable.
Adult personality traits are moderately stable. If one’s traits and abilities were assessed today, and again in three months, the test results would be expected to be similar. However, if you “play a game,” you can improve your performance through reiteration, as you figure out how to alter your conduct to accomplish the objective. It’s hard to gauge stable traits and abilities with an instrument that has a variable outcome. One’s experience in responding to the decisions accessible in the game will adjust one’s outcomes, so any “measurement” accomplished through game-based assessment is open to scrutiny.
GAMIFYING EXISTING ASSESSMENTS
For incorporating gamified assessments into the selection process, the best process is to gamify an existing and proven psychometric assessment such as a verbal ability test. This can achieved in two ways : adding a cover story to provide context or revisiting the look and feel of the test. Either way a gamified assessment is still a psychometric assessment that will capture job-relevant cognitive ability or personality data; it has just been tweaked to consolidate game components, for example, levels, badges and rewards.
But for understanding the validity of these assessments, we need to answer the following questions?
What exactly is gamified personality assessment?
Gamification is the application of game design elements and game principles in no game contexts. It can also be described as a set of activities and procedures, to solve problems, by utilising or applying the characteristics of game elements. Gamification commonly employs game design elements, to improve user engagement, employee recruitment and evaluation, ease of use, besides others.
Is it better than traditional psychometric tests?
Gamification is certainly an enjoyable process. Candidates tend to be less conscious of their image and less stressed while playing a game, hence their actual personality can be gauged through this test. In addition to that, these games challenge an individual to think creatively and strategically to arrive at solutions. The cognitive element is naturally inherent in these games, which eliminates the need to test the candidates on these parameters separately. Thus, in certain cases, it might be superior to the traditional form, but we cannot completely eradicate the traditional form and rely solely on gamification, as both have their own perks.
Is it suitable for recruitment at higher level?
Higher positions test an individual, on the basis of their experience, as their skills and abilities have been evaluated at the initial stage of their careers. Therefore gamification is more suitable for evaluation for entry-level jobs and other similar positions, where certain technical skills are required.
POPULAR GAMIFIED PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT SITES
1. REVELIAN
An Australian based company specialising in data driven human behaviour insights. It serves its clients by helping them in making effective hiring and development decisions. With a plethora of psychometric tests under its belt, it works across a range of industrial sectors like government and defence, HR and business consulting, banking, finance and insurance, recruitment, tourism etc. It assesses both cognitive abilities and emotional traits through two different tests.
2. COGNIFY
Assessing cognitive ability through six mini games which helps in identifying an individual’s strengths and weaknesses like numerical and verbal ability.
