Adaptation, the ability to lead, convince, adapt and make choices quickly… Video games demonstrate these useful qualities in business. So some take the plunge and recruit through this complementary means of a CV, a cover letter and a job interview. Explanation with Brice N’Guessan, editorial director of Video Games Magazine.
franceinfo: So a French start-up decides to use video games as a recruiting tool?
Brice N’Guessan: The name of this company is Skilleofor skill which means “competence” in English. Hugo Chabrouty, the co-founder of the company, has always been passionate about video games. He has worked in the field of human resources and he now wishes to provide companies with a disruptive and up-to-date recruitment solution.
And the video game is all found since it holds a place of choice among the French. Half the population gambles regularly. Hugo Chabrouty therefore regretted that the skills that can be developed by playing are not valued during a job interview. He therefore developed this Skilleo platform.
How does it actually work?
You connect to this platform using your LinkedIn account, the professional social network. The employer can thus directly consult the CV. But this CV only contains what Skilleo call them hard skillsthe technical skills you may have acquired at school or in training.
The video game will make it possible to complete this by helping to apprehend more complex skills to evaluate, since they directly affect our personality: autonomy, adaptation or even leadership. The video game favors the spontaneity in the candidates which disappears completely with the classic questionnaires.
Skilleo works with very easy-to-access video games such as racing games, or games of reflection and skill, which do not last more than 10 minutes. We absolutely do not look at the performance. Winning or losing doesn’t matter. On the other hand, we scrutinize the way of playing: are you looking to improve yourself, do you have curiosity to understand the mechanisms or even teamwork. All this data will be compiled to highlight the famous soft skills of the candidate.
And this evaluation protocol has been worked on with both video game studios and specialists?
Yes, Skilleo worked on this methodology using experimental protocols developed by the Center for Research on Cognition and Learning in Poitiers. Additionally, they also work with video game studios to define soft kills that can be featured in video games.