Screening Job Candidates Via Video Games

There have been a few stories published lately about how resumes and the interviewing process is changing with new technology helping employers find good candidates to fill certain job roles.

First is this story by Planet Money, which discusses an interesting test candidates take to see if they’re the right fit to work at a call center.

The second is this story by Catherine Rampell in the New York Times Magazine about how some companies are using video games as screening devices for certain candidates:

“There is a huge amount of money to be made in matching people to their careers better,” Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist at M.I.T., told me, “and improving the allocation of trillions of dollars of human capital.”

Brynjolfsson is advising one start-up that hopes to revolutionize what might be called the human-capital-allocation market. The company, Knack, uses video games as a screening device to determine how creative, cautious, adept at multitasking or easily distracted, among other attributes, potential job applicants are. Its “Wasabi Waiter” game, for example, casts the player as a server at a sushi restaurant who must figure out what dishes to recommend. It’s one of the more gimmicky-sounding entrants in an already crowded field competing for that “huge amount of money.” Other companies include start-ups like ConnectCubed (another gaming-based assessment technology), Good.Co, Evolv and Prophesy Sciences, as well as older firms that also provide other personnel-management tools, like Kronos.

These companies are an outgrowth of the “Moneyball”-style, buzzwordy “big data” empiricism that has transformed fields from professional baseball to political campaigns. H.R. firms are increasingly administering newfangled tests to existing employees to track which traits or habits correlate with whatever the firm considers to be evidence of success.

Perhaps “good on paper” will also include being “good at video games.” Though I’m not very good at video games, so this could work against me.

Support The Billfold

The Billfold continues to exist thanks to support from our readers. Help us continue to do our work by making a monthly pledge on Patreon or a one-time-only contribution through PayPal.