Our world is becoming increasingly digital where all our activities leave a digital trace — a bit like in a video game. Merging our real worlds and video games gives recruiters new opportunities to test someone's skills, recruit, and train new hires through gamification.

In case you're not yet familiar with the term, gamification is the application of game design elements and principles in traditionally non-game contexts. Psychologically, it's been shown to motivate people in ways that traditional tasks do not. People love getting points, going on quests, and leveling up, and these strategies have been applied to everything from wellness and weight loss to recruiting and training.

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Take, for example, the Marriott corporation, which designed an online game in the style of Farmville or The Sims; in it, players are faced with the challenges of running a hotel restaurant — everything from choosing employees to shopping for ingredients and getting meal tickets out to the dining room quickly.

While it may not sound like the next app store blockbuster, the game was designed as an experiment to both try to interest Millennials in a hospitality career, as well as attract candidates through a social gaming platform. In theory, the game could also be used to prequalify candidates who have an aptitude for the skills necessary to run a successful hotel restaurant.



Gametize is a gamification platform that is helping companies quickly and easily gamify recruiting, training, and marketing through a WYSIWYG game-building app. The app allows companies to set up challenges, set the rules, and publish the game quickly and easily. In a YouTube video, Gametize shows how the game can be used to prequalify candidates and create a leaderboard and friendly competition among candidates for a position.



Companies are also using video games and gamification as training portals. Even the U.S. Department of Defense has gotten in on the act, creating virtual games and simulations to train employees and candidates for important tasks that would be too difficult or too costly to do in the real world — say, building a spaceship or practicing fraud detection.

