在线游戏成招聘人员新宠

    招聘人员当然可以登陆求职者的 Facebook或LinkedIn页面，看看他们的个人资料，剔除不符合需要的人，许多招聘者也的确是这样做的。但一些公司现在发现，运用网游技术招募、筛选申请人是一种物色杰出人才更有效率、更为快捷的途径。

    一些公司过去或许认为此类游戏是导致员工工作分神的主要因素之一，但它们现在发现，运用这种充满竞争性、具有积极意义的评价工具可以帮助招聘人员精确地找出那些或许缺乏明显的资历、但却具备成功所需技能的潜在雇员。同时，由于年轻人在日常生活中经常玩网络游戏，他们非常欢迎这种竞争性十足的评价方式。

    这种“社交式招募”还可以扩大品牌的知名度，激发求职者的兴致，加盟不太知名的公司。Facebook这样明星公司自然是求职者竞相追逐的对象，它发布的编程难题吸引了众多参与者，其中一些人最终成为该公司员工。

    德勤咨询公司（Deloitte Consulting）进行的一项调查显示，由于各家公司都在寻找具备多样化技能和高端技术的求职者，对顶尖人才的争夺已变得日益激烈。这项上个月公布的调查发现，25%的公司人力资源部职员都担心熟练工人短缺，这一比例较去年的16%出现了大幅上升。

    即便如此，许多公司依然严格恪守简历筛选、面试和背景调查等传统招聘流程，这些工作不仅费时费力，而且往往无法寻觅到各方面都符合要求的求职者。对于Upstream Systems公司来说，这些传统的方式根本就不管用。这家总部位于伦敦和旧金山的移动营销公司一度苦于找不到既具备分析和营销技能，又精通技术，同时还需要与遍及40个国家的客户打交道的全球营销经理。

    “我们当然可以聘请一个专家小组，但我们想要这样一个人，他单枪匹马就能运用我们的技术投入为客户提供营销服务，”Upstream Systems公司负责创意事务的高级副总裁盖伊•克里夫在伦敦接受记者采访时说。

    克里夫决定结合游戏机制设计一个竞争性的测试网站，从而寻觅到独特的人才，他们具备的技能很难、甚至根本无法从传统的简历中辨别出来。这个网站的网址是：http://thechallenge.upstreamsystems.com。

    这款对所有人开放，名为Upstream Challenge的游戏提供了7个有时间限制的挑战项目（比如数学、文字图像、为虚拟的工作情景匹配情绪等），以衡量应聘者的分析能力和市场营销知识。

    招聘人员需要扩大职位搜索范围，不能只关注形形色色的证书，而应重点关注哪些具备创造力、独创性和适应力等“软技能”的人才，《如何率先发现杰出人才》（The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else）一书的作者乔治•安德斯说。这本书列举并分析了顶尖企业在寻觅潜在雇员时所使用的种种创新方式。

    安德斯说：“这种招募理念发源于陆军特种部队。军方发现，在招募合适的人选时，最关键的考虑因素是他们的韧性，而不是体力或其他类似的特质。”

    Recruiters can certainly poke around a job seeker's Facebook or LinkedIn profiles to weed out undesirables, and plenty do. But some companies are finding that using online game techniques to recruit and screen applicants is a more productive, faster route to scouting out stellar hires.

    Businesses that at one time might have considered such games a major employee distraction are finding that using competitive, and positive, screening tools can help pinpoint potential hires who may lack the obvious pedigree, but have the skills to succeed. Since young adults often play online games in their everyday lives, they are open to embracing competitive screening approaches.

    Such "social recruiting" can also expand brand awareness and encourage interest in working at lesser-known companies. People clamber to work for star companies like Facebook, which has posted programming puzzles that have attracted significant participation and has led to some employee hires.

    Jockeying for top talent has gotten more intense as companies look for more varied and sophisticated skill sets from candidates, according to a survey by Deloitte Consulting. The survey, which was released last month, found that 25% of corporate human resources professionals were worried about skilled worker shortages, up from 16% last year.

    Even so, companies still hew to traditional resume screening, interviews, and reference checking, tasks that are time consuming and often fail to produce the right match. These conventional methods were not working for Upstream Systems, a mobile marketing firm based in London and San Francisco, which struggled to find global marketing managers with the right mix of analytical, marketing, and technology savvy to work with its clients in 40 countries.

    "We could hire teams of experts, but we wanted a single person to use input from our technologies into the marketing for our clients," says Guy Krief, senior vice president of innovation at Upstream in London.

    Krief decided to incorporate game mechanics to design a competitive test http://thechallenge.upstreamsystems.com that could identify people with a blend of skills that would have been much harder, or impossible, to discern from a conventional resume.

    The "Upstream Challenge" -- open to anyone -- provides seven timed exercises including math, word images, matching emotion to hypothetical work scenarios, and other challenges to measure a candidate's analytical skills and marketing knowledge.

   Recruiters need to widen their job searches beyond paper credentials, and focus on candidates with "soft skills," including creativity, ingenuity, and resilience, says George Anders, author of The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else, which examines innovative ways top companies find employees.

    "The idea got started back when the Army Special Forces found that tenacity, rather than physical strength or other such attributes, was more critical to recruiting the right candidate," says Anders.