游戏开发商打造求职者的开心农场

    12岁时，布莱登•奥尔森就自称为“虚拟世界痴迷者”。当时的他热衷于早期版本的《阿斯龙的召唤》（Asheron's Call）——世界上最早的虚拟世界游戏之一。

    “从此以后，我清楚地知道自己究竟想做什么了。”奥尔森说。尽管他那时还不知道什么是创业者，而且直到上大学时才结识了一位创业者。

    10年后，现年23岁的奥尔森通过诺威尔公司（Novel Inc.）将他的两个爱好——创业和虚拟仿真——合二为一。这家成立两年的公司旨在重塑雇员求职和雇主招聘的方式。该公司希望将求职申请和筛选过程开发成一种视频游戏。在游戏中，求职者可以体验一系列的模拟工作场景，然后再决定这份工作是否与他们的个性和技能相匹配。

    奥尔森在2009年创建了这家公司，并担任CEO一职。他说：“总的来讲，玩家既能玩得开心，又能学习到一些具体的东西，帮助他们判断自己对意向的工作到底是更倾心了，还是觉得索然无味。”

    诺威尔公司正在完善其产品，奥尔森预计将于今年末推出。他说，目前该产品主要面向求职者，但最终雇主也可以用来筛选和培训员工。奥尔森的商业模式是什么？他打算按照玩家/求职者人数向企业收取少量费用。

    诺威尔公司已经吸引了多个知名的合作伙伴，并引起了媒体的大量关注，这在很大程度上应归功于奥尔森的热情。他正与耐克（Nike）、星巴克（Starbucks）和阿拉斯加航空公司（Alaska Airlines）的人力资源部主管合作，为潜在员工打造合适的模拟工作环境。

    奥尔森已经从总部位于加拿大温哥华的麦克林集团（McLean Group）和著名的硅谷技术投资家吉姆•贝特彻等投资者手中获得了200万美元风险投资。上个月，在《财富》（Fortune）杂志每年一度的“头脑科技风暴大会”（Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference）上，他参加了名为创业偶像（Start-Up Idol）的创业公司筹资竞赛，结果输给了人工智能应用程序开发商克莱沃森斯公司（Clever Sense）。

    他甚至聘请了《阿斯龙的召唤》的主要设计者托比•拉加尼担任诺威尔制作公司（Novel Studios）的副总裁。

    诺威尔公司还与华盛顿大学（the University of Washington）达成了合作关系。为美军研发类似模拟场景的行为科学家布鲁斯•阿沃利奥正为该公司从事研究工作。“（诺威尔的项目）是可行的。我们有充分的理由可以这么说。”阿沃利奥称，“跟年轻人聊聊，你会发现，其中至少有3/4的人说他们都在玩虚拟游戏。”

    说不定奥尔森的虚拟游戏甚至可能会使某些求职者意识到，为别人打工还不如自己创业。

    译者：千牛絮

    At 12 years old, Brayden Olson was a self-described "virtual world nerd," playing an early version of Asheron's Call -- one of the world's first virtual world games.

    "From then on, I knew exactly what I wanted to do," Olson said. Never mind that he didn't know what an entrepreneur was and wouldn't meet one until college.

    A decade later, Olson, now 23, has combined his two loves -- entrepreneurship and virtual simulation -- at Novel Inc., a two-year-old firm that aims to upend the way prospective employees and employers find each other. Novel wants to turn the pre-job application and screening process into a video game, in which candidates go through a series of simulated workplace scenarios to determine if a job is a good fit for their personalities and skills.

    "You'll basically be having fun, but you'll be learning some specific things and you might find yourself more attracted or less attracted to the job," says Olson, who founded the company in 2009 and serves as its CEO.

    Novel is still tweaking its product, which Olson expects to release later this year. For now, he says, it will be aimed at job hunters, but it could eventually be used by employers to screen and train workers. His business model? He plans to charge companies a small fee per player-slash-applicant.

    Novel has already attracted big-name partners and quite a bit of press attention, thanks in no small part to Olson's enthusiasm. He is working with human resources executives at Nike (NKE), Starbucks (SBUX) and Alaska Airlines (ALK) to create the right simulation situations for would-be workers.

    He's secured $2 million in venture capital from investors such as Vancouver, the Canada-based McLean Group and Jim Boettcher, a well-known Silicon Valley tech investor. Last month he was a contestant in Start-Up Idol, a fundraising competition at Fortune's annual Brainstorm Tech conference. (He lost to artificial intelligence app maker Clever Sense.)

    He's even hired Toby Ragaini, a lead designer on Asheron's Call, as vice president of Novel Studios.

    Novel also has formed a partnership with the University of Washington. Behavioral scientist Bruce Avolio, who has developed similar simulations for the U.S. Army, is providing research. "There's a variety of reasons this could work," Avolio says. "When you talk to young people, you find that at least three-fourths of them say they play games."

    And who knows, Olson's game may even help a few job seekers realize that instead of working for someone else they really should start their own companies.