Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Gamification of Hiring

Posted by samzenpus on from the tope-score-profession dept.

First time accepted submitter funge writes "The Economist has an article on Work and play: The gamification of hiring about a start-up that lets you play games to show off your talents to prospective employers. From the article: 'The rules of Happy Hour are deceptively simple. You are a bartender. Your challenge is to tell what sort of drink each of a swelling mob of customers wants by the expressions on their faces. Then you must make and serve each drink and wash each used glass, all within a short period of time. Play this video game well and you might win a tantalizing prize: a job in the real world.'"

43 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Dance, monkey, dance! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously, WTF is wrong with employers these days??

    Isn't it enough that I went to college and built a solid base of good work I can point to that shows I can do the job?

    If you just want someone reliable who is quick to learn and gets things done, don't put me through the wringer like you're a Bachelorette holding out for Prince Charming!

    1. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by The+Mighty+Buzzard · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Those who can, do. Those who can't, manage.

      --
      Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
    2. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by Dunbal · · Score: 5, Funny

      When a hundred apply, you have to start examining CVs.

      Of course there's another method: take 50 CV's from the pile and throw them in the trash, and tell yourself "there, I got rid of all the unlucky ones".

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    3. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by pitchpipe · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Seriously, WTF is wrong with employers these days??

      It's corporatocracy at its finest. With fewer and fewer jobs, and more and more wealth being concentrated in the hands of the few, it is not surprising to see our corporate masters starting to act like the feudal lords of old. We are there for their entertainment.

      Because corporations are gathering power over our lives that used to belong only to the government, we need a bill of rights that covers interactions between corporations and individuals, their 'corporations are citizens too' bullshit notwithstanding.

      I, for one, do not welcome our corporate overlords.

      --
      Look where all this talking got us, baby.
    4. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think you're missing the point. The job market for programmers is changing, in Silicon Valley there are now far more positions than programmers. These guys aren't trying to rule out bad programmers, they are trying to attract good ones. (note: if you're going to reply to me saying you still can't find a job, the problem is you not the market).

      When kids from college hear that sort of thing, they think, "cool my job interview is a game!" Then they tell their friends, who are immediately jealous. Remember these are kids who've grown up most of their life playing games, have spent much more time playing games than working. It appeals to them. They want to dance.

      Note, when I say they are trying to attract talent, I mean they are trying to attract cheap college students, not actual experienced programmers. This kind of thing drives me crazy.

      Someday I want to start a company with a bunch of old, experienced, very very good programmers. We will all write solid, readable code, and get things done in an eighth of the time it takes everyone else. It will be wonderful.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    5. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by Kozar_The_Malignant · · Score: 5, Informative

      Demand on their time. When twenty people apply for a job, you can interview them all. When a hundred apply, you have to start examining CVs. But now, thanks to the internet, it's routine to get thousands of people apply for one job. What is an employer to do? They need some way to streamline the evaluation process. Games are another attempt to solve this problem. Many still rely on the simplist possible method though: Grab half the pile of applications and throw them straight in the bin, because there just isn't time to read so many.

      I never interview 20 people for a vacancy. I never interview more than 5, and I try to keep it to 3. It's simple to narrow down the field of applications. Our typical announcement will say something like,"Submit cover letter, completed application, resume, and three letters of reference before 3 pm Friday, June 25." Somewhere between 40-60% will fail to have all of those, and they go immediately to the reject pile. If I still have a huge pile, the next sort is made on some relevant criterion. We might have said, "College degree in Industrial Hygiene or related field preferred." If it's an entry level position, I cull out those without a degree. Then I read cover letters. Can you communicate clearly in standard, written English. Spelling errors are fatal. If you don't care enough to press F7, you don't care enough to be trusted with our work product. Now I'm down to a manageable group, which I score on a matrix. Usually there will be a clearly defined top group of 2-5, which I interview. The interview is almost all about how the person will fit into our group, because the finalists can pretty much all do the job. If not, we go back through the pole or go out again. I learned long ago that the wrong hire is hugely worse than an empty chair.

      --
      Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
    6. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Informative

      Seriously, WTF is wrong with employers these days??

      Isn't it enough that I went to college and built a solid base of good work I can point to that shows I can do the job?

      No, that's not enough. Employers want you to be a lot more humble than that. Your solid base of good work and education only means that you'll probably expect to be treated like a human being of value instead of someone desperate, sniveling, insecure.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    7. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because corporations are gathering power over our lives that used to belong only to the government, we need a bill of rights that covers interactions between corporations and individuals,

      Corporations are gathering power over our lives that never belonged to the government.

      There was actually a time when there was something of a balance between the aggregate of labor and the aggregate of capital. People like my grandfather got their heads bashed in so that future workers could have this balance, but an organized, systematic attack on workers' rights by an unholy alliance of the biggest corporations and the corporate royalist politicians like Ronald Reagan and Mitt Romney has created the arena-like atmosphere of today's workplace, where the question is not how small will my annual raise be, but how much of my compensation will I be required to give back to the employer. And those give-backs are certainly not because the corporations aren't profitable, in fact they are profitable at all-time historical levels. Rather those give-backs are meant to create greater separation between a self-appointed elite and the people who actually make the machines go. It wasn't the result of market forces that created this situation, it was the belief that money accumulated is morally superior to money earned. And that sociopathic worldview has destroyed families, communities and sickened society to the point of near collapse. The reason workers are making less, we are told by the likes of Mitt Romney, is because workers are not willing to make less. And tribalism is engaged in the most cynical ways to get people to stand up and demand to not get a pension, to demand to not have the right to collectively bargain, to demand not to be treated with respect. Meanwhile, the "capital management" elite are laughing up their shirtcuffs while voting each other obscene rewards.

      And that balance between the power of capital and the power of labor was not only good for the union workers, but it was good for the entire economy, the entire culture. We had an unprecedented period of growth, where workers at all levels of society could have a small measure of dignity, and expectation of a little better life for their kids.

      "Class warfare" they accuse, when any mention of their ugly willingness to break the social contract. "Class warfare!". They should only get a taste of real class warfare. Maybe that's the only thing that would make them re-think their destructive ways: actual class warfare. Because it makes one reconsider the errors of one's ways when the head of a colleague ends up on a pike.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    8. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      Isn't it enough that I went to college and built a solid base of good work I can point to that shows I can do the job?

      No. That is not enough. I have interviewed many, many people with degrees in computer science who cannot write a program to sort an array of ten integers. Those with a "solid base of good work" often cannot explain any of it, and will eventually admit it was done as a team project.

      If you want to work for me, you will have to prove you can write code by writing code.

    9. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      When a hundred apply, you have to start examining CVs. But now, thanks to the internet, it's routine to get thousands of people apply for one job. What is an employer to do?

      One option is to run them through a spell checker. That will cut the pile in half. People who don't even bother to proofread their own resumes, will probably do a sloppy job at anything.

    10. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well put.

      The gag is that they learn just that at those management seminars. I kid you not, I was forced to sit through a few of this. It reminded me a lot of kindergarden. Essentially, what you do is sit around and play silly group games. A bunch of people getting to stand on a tiny carpet and have to turn the carpet around without getting off it. I get it, we can only do it if we work together and if some lead and some follow, can I now get out of the armpit of that fat bozo next to me?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    11. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by dougisfunny · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Unless they're hiring for the CEO position.

      --
      This is not the funny you're looking for.
    12. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      Unions (in the US) cut their own throats when they made it hard to fire someone who sucks at their job. No one wants to work in a place where that one person who can't be fired because of seniority is constantly making their life miserable.

      Next time power swings to the side of the unions, we need to remember that.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    13. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If it's any comfort to you, it usually ends with the elimination of some heads. It just takes time.

      I know, but that's some cold comfort.

      For me, I don't really care. My working life, my accumulating life is over. I've gotten to a point, by long design, where these things don't affect me so directly any more.

      But I've got a kid, a daughter, who's just getting started in life. It burns me up that the world she's getting ready to take on is so hostile to the traditional values of love, family, integrity, fairness.

      Because to the people in charge, "family values" means making sure that two gay guys can't get the same rights as my wife and me, but to me, "family values" means that a family can afford to send kids to school and get mom surgery if she needs it and maybe retire to a simple life of ease for a few years. "Family values" means that buying a home is more than the three-card monte game that the financial industry has made it. I was there the day my mom and dad burned their mortgage on a house my dad was able to buy after coming home from WWII. How many families ever get to a "mortgage burning" any more? How many people in their fifties or sixties ever see that kind of independence? And it's not by accident that the answer is "very few".

      People want to talk about the "gamification" of the job market. How freaking insulting. Human beings take work seriously. The work they do is not just about bringing home a check. I don't care if you're a machinist like my dad or a garbage man or a computer programmer. Our elites have turned it all to shit, and now they want us to fix it all for them by working an extra five years of our lives and by sending our kids to trade school instead of university and by renting instead of buying.

      I always go stop and stand around near my mom and dad's grave on memorial day. I look at the flag on my dad's headstone and the mention of "family and country" there. I can't believe how badly our "overlords" have mis-served us. As far as I'm concerned, they have forfeited their right to our obedience. The heads of corporations should fear us, not the other way around.

      I'm ready to pitch in and buy John Galt a one-way ticket, because he's a big selfish fuck-up.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    14. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Interesting

      When I was on the dole, the benefits money was conditional upon my showing constant effort to apply for work. Unfortunatly I don't drive, and so my working radius was limited. There just weren't that many jobs I was willing to accept within reach, so I ended up submitted a lot of 'pad the numbers' applications. Half-hearted standard cover letter, standard CV, off they go. Because I didn't care if I didn't get that job, I was holding out for something better.

      I got the something better, eventually. It still sucks, but it sucks less than a hour-long commute on the train to man helpdesk would.

      Another factor was that the employment advisor kept asking me to apply for jobs I was completly unqualified for, on the grounds that one computer job is much like the other. I had a diploma in networking and a very good knowledge of hardware - and, to the layperson, that makes me perfectly qualified for a position as a web designer or programmer in languages completly unfamiliar to me. So it is quite possible that some of those sloppy resumes are by people who don't actually want the job at all, but need to apply in order to put on a show.

    15. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by bky1701 · · Score: 2

      I'd rather we not start getting tons of Zanders.

      --
      Great Intellect...
    16. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by geminidomino · · Score: 2

      Oh great. Now we've got Pierson's Pupeteers in the HR office...

    17. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by Kreigaffe · · Score: 2

      Assuming that belief in "luck" is, in fact, a sane belief.

      PROTIP: It's a half-step above consulting chicken entrails.

      --
      ... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about. :|
    18. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by thoughtspace · · Score: 2

      And exclude anyone from another English speaking country that use 's' instead of 'z' (e.g. for initialise).

      Our only redeeming feature is we don't use that awful American word 'gotten.' In Australia, we are taught to avoid 'got' where ever possible - 'gotten' is right out of the question.

      Considering we have a long past of being Americanised (Americanized?), "Dance, monkey, dance!" seems somewhat appropriate.

    19. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by sinij · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Really? Are you hiring for entertainment industry? If not, hobbies (or any other part of personal life) has nothing to do with it and you might as well go with a "unlucky 50% approach" someone suggested above. Most people don't list any hobbies because it has nothing to do with your ability to do the job, and unless you are fresh graduate your resume space is better used for something else.

    20. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by tehcyder · · Score: 2

      Human beings take work seriously. The work they do is not just about bringing home a check.

      I don't take work seriously, and it is overwhelmingly about bringing home a check.

      In my experience it is the capitalists, corporatists and billionaires who place work at the centre of the universe.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    21. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by AuMatar · · Score: 2

      Unless my hobby has something directly related to my job, I wouldn't even list it. Why does someone hiring me for a programming job care that I lead a video game guild? It's irrelevant, and looks unprofessional. And truthfully I'm pressed for space in just listing what I've done in 11 years, I don't have room in a standard 2 page resume to go into that depth (and nobody reads beyond page 2).

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    22. Re:Dance, monkey, dance! by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      I don't take work seriously, and it is overwhelmingly about bringing home a check.

      I think you're mistaking "work" for "career". Most everyone I know takes some pride in their work. They do a "good job" even when nobody is watching.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  2. I guess that makes sense by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We've been asking for a meritocracy for a long time, now. How do you expect to prove your merit without some kind of testing?

    On the plus side, if you try to go to work for a beer bar you can always just play tapper. Or the minigame in Fable.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:I guess that makes sense by Shoten · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A meritocracy is about the merits of what you do...this manifests itself in the hiring process as a 'resume'. Obviously, if you haven't been hired yet, you can't stand on the merits of what you have done for the prospective employer yet, so instead it's all about the merits of what you have done for past employers. But this has nothing to do with playing a video game, especially one that uses a fairly arbitrary skill to determine success. I agree that it'd be useful to have fair, objective and broadly applicable metrics for hiring decisions. But at the end of the day, jobs differ enormously, and so do the required skills, suitable temperaments, and even desirable personality traits. And often those factors differ for the same job, when different companies are compared, due to cultural or organizational differences.

      --

      For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
    2. Re:I guess that makes sense by blackraven14250 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The thing is that the example in the summary has a clear application to a specific job (bar tending), not general applicability to all jobs. I could see lots of games like this being created for different professions, and used as a skills check before letting someone work. For this one in particular, it answers a couple of the most important questions for a bartender. Can you manage a bunch of people's needs at once effectively? Do you know the mixed drinks? Those two are the sorts of skills that are hard to quantify via an interview alone, and someone can exhibit them for the employer to see while playing the game.

    3. Re:I guess that makes sense by Osgeld · · Score: 2

      depends on what your future employee wants, if they want someone who will do anything, no matter how ridiculous the request, and never even bat an eye, this this monkey yes-man test is perfect.

      The one I went though recently though is much more realistic, working though a temp agency with no promises for 4 months to prove I could do the job and that I was a good fit ... not that I could fuck off on a computer playing video games.

      I am now a full employee

    4. Re:I guess that makes sense by Man+of+E · · Score: 2

      There is a startup called Hire Art http://www.hireart.com/ that's doing something similar without the "gamification". Instead of playing a game like in the article, or going to the other extreme and requiring full-scale work samples, they have smaller-scale tests related to the required skills, including reading comprehension, basic numeracy/statistics, and more technical tests. An employer can choose modules and put together a short test to identify the skills they're looking for. Some tests can be graded automatically, and others are reviewed by humans.

      The method in the article is tricky, because creating games for specific jobs is going to be quite time-consuming and psychologically complex. These games are good for hiring bartenders, but what if you want to hire drivers, or data-entry staff, or IT professionals? All different skills and you can't expect to know every business as well as the hiring manager.

      So the HireArt approach seems like a good middle ground me: the tests are a slight barrier to the applicant so they don't send millions of copies of their resume hoping to "get lucky" on a job that isn't a match; anyone qualified shouldn't have trouble passing. Meanwhile, both the employer and applicant get a chance to make a first impression without taking too much of each others' time.

      From what I hear, it seems to be working quite well so far. Applicants who get interviews are more likely to be good fits.

      Disclosure: I know one of the company's founders

      --
      Ceci n'est pas une sig
  3. Globalization by mwfischer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Muslim... water
    Buddhist... water
    Hindu... water
    Seventh Day.... water
    Mormon... actually lost, needs directions

    What do I win?

  4. Was TFA ... by PPH · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... referring to a job interview for a job as a bartender? Otherwise, what's the point?

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  5. And how by Janek+Kozicki · · Score: 3, Insightful

    is that related to any skills you might need at work?

    --
    #
    #\ @ ? Colonize Mars
    #
    1. Re:And how by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Obey stupid commands, do meaningless tasks and amuse your superiors?

  6. My personal experience by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    For years my quiz bowl teacher tested membership based on an untimed written test. I made the quiz bowl team each time, and was captain during the one time when I can recall spending a lot of time after everyone else had finished putting down my answers. Our team only performed remarkably well during its first existence, when it was a different teacher and the team had been composed of a different set of people (I can't recall the evaluation process). I was on that team, but contributed no answers to a 2nd place tournament finish. Whereas the best we ever did after that was 4th. In fact, during one of those days with the new teacher, I can recall that we had a fun match between quiz bowl players and other kids in the gifted program and we got beaten. So in this case, the untimed written test served as a poor evaluation for who would be actually good at playing quiz bowl.

    Hence, I would imagine this game would serve as a great way for someone to recognize faces and memorize drinks, but would be a poor way to evaluate whether a clumsy person could actually tend the bar.

  7. The Last Starfigher by severett · · Score: 5, Informative

    In other words someone watched The Last Starfighter. Not exactly a new concept.

  8. What about learning? by utkonos · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Do you look at how the candidate plays the game after three or four times? Or perhaps you let the candidate play the game for a day, then look at their performance the next day. Are they still not very good at the game, or have they mastered the game?

    I would be much more interested in hiring someone who can master the game in a short period of time than someone who passes some lower standard instantly, but stays at that level.

  9. It looks like the answer here ... by dbIII · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It looks like the answer here is to keep HR away from the bartender and cut off the cocaine supply to those that let them run with this idea.

  10. I know, RTFA is taboo here, but FTFA . . . by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 3, Informative

    "Happy Hour, which will be unveiled to the public on May 28th, is one of several video games developed by Knack, a start-up founded by Guy Halfteck, an Israeli entrepreneur. The games include a version of Happy Hour in which sushi replaces booze, Words of Wisdom (a word game) and Balloon Brigade (which involves putting out fires with balloons and water). They are designed to test cognitive skills that employers might want, drawing on some of the latest scientific research. These range from pattern recognition to emotional intelligence, risk appetite and adaptability to changing situations."

    "According to Chris Chabris of the Centre for Collective Intelligence at MIT, a member of the Knack team, games have huge advantages over traditional recruitment tools, such as personality tests, which can easily be outwitted by an astute candidate."

    "Some firms seem to see the potential. The GameChanger unit of Shell, which seeks out new disruptive technologies for the oil giant, is about to test if Knack can help it identify innovators. Bain & Company, a consultancy, is to run a pilot: it will start by getting current staff to play the games, to see which skills make for a successful consultant. (The ability to charge a lot for stating the obvious is presumably not one of them.) “If someone can materially improve our ability to select the best talent, that is worth a lot to us,” says Mark Howorth, a recruiter at Bain. And if not, at least the process will be fun."

    This might clear up some questions about what this is all about.

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  11. Personnel selection is hard. by slasho81 · · Score: 2

    Personnel selection is an extremely hard problem. Sorting out people for jobs is one of the most important problems organizations face. It's almost always unrecognized in its complexity, and the majority of decision makers are unaware of the current process's inefficiency and ineffectiveness.

    The solution the startup in the post offers is preposterous and obviously ineffective. It's also downright insulting to prospective employees. A degrading selection process will have a negative effect on the quality of the prospective candidate pool you'll have.

    If you take into account current research findings and practicality, the best you can do today to select someone for a job is:

    1. Only consider candidates with a respectable educational certificate (i.e. those with quality education, either academic or vocational).

    2. Let candidates perform a sample of the job they're interviewing for. Score their performance objectively. Select the highest performers.

    That's it. No interviews, assessment centers, theoretical exams, references, past job experience, resume screening, etc. They're all worthless and impractical.

  12. End run around the ADA? by subreality · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Your challenge is to tell what sort of drink each of a swelling mob of customers wants by the expressions on their faces

    That sounds to me like they want to filter out Aspergers / autism spectrum applicants, but they can't actually say that since it'd violate the ADA, so this test lets them accomplish that in a legally deniable way.

  13. Re:Principle by TaoPhoenix · · Score: 5, Funny

    "The Perter Principal Lives!"
    You have risen to your level of spelling incompetence.

    --
    My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
  14. Discrimination suit waiting to happen... by He+Who+Has+No+Name · · Score: 2

    ...from somebody who doesn't drink or go to bars and therefore has no familiarity with mixed drinks or the culture of bar attendance. Like, say, Mormons, Muslims, or... eh, me.

  15. The gamification of... by gagol · · Score: 2

    Or how to manage a peter pan generation that just don't want to grow up and work.

    --
    Tomorrow is another day...
  16. Board games count better by Kittenman · · Score: 2

    Many a year ago (back when I started out: clue - I bought the Joe Walsh LP with 'Life's been good' on it on the same trip...) I got interviewed by employers in the UK. On my CV (which was thin in those days) I'd put that I played boardgames. The interviewers asked why this was relevant. Thinking on my feet, I replied that it showed experience in conflict resolution and teamwork. I think it did, and I still do.

    Not sure why a PC/video game would show that the player had teamwork. Maybe the potential employer would be better off sitting the candidates around a 'Diplomacy' board and coming back in three hours. And not necessarily hiring the winner, but the one that
    a) Everyone got along with
    b) Did ok, considering the starting position
    c) Didn't argue every *&^%ing point ...

    and yes, I got the job.

    --
    "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill