Nowadays, innovative technologies such as virtual reality can play an important role in the hiring process. In fact, through the use of virtual reality, recruiters are able to evaluate the technical and soft skills of each candidate and improve their hiring processes by reducing the effect of human factors such as interviewer fatigue and unconscious biases.
Recent studies show that 34% of recruiters consider investments in innovative interviewing tools as a current top priority. As more and more employers are turning to VR to improve their decision-making, let’s explore the key applications of this technology.
How Employers Are Using VR During Job Interviews?
Lloyds Banking Group is a great example of how virtual reality improves the recruitment process. By challenging 400 candidates to a series of lifelike VR tasks, the company managed to effectively reveal their key strengths and competencies. Therefore, candidates were then matched to the right position based on the data collected and observations made. Furthermore, candidates could now benefit from detailed feedback and a better understanding of their performance during their interview.
Recruiting candidates with diverse skillsets and assessing them in an unbiased environment is the main goal of VR simulations. That’s why Accenture has created multiple VR games to evaluate the behaviour, test collaboration skills and measure data interpretation of each candidate. For instance, one of these games consisted of an escape game scenario in which candidates were challenged to escape from a crypt using hieroglyph themed puzzles. Although unrelated to the position for which the candidate is applying, the game allows recruiters to assess applicants’ cognitive and creative thinking skills.
Observing Instead of Asking
VR simulations offer recruiters the opportunity to observe and identify important personality traits such as confidence, curiosity and team spirit. This is by far a more effective method than simply asking the candidate to talk about their strengths and weaknesses – a method that presents a higher chance of biased data and perception-based answers. See whether a candidate was able to find errors or risks in a virtual scene and make the correct choice.
Evaluating leadership skills, decision making and context behaviour is crucial for successful recruiting. That’s why the future of VR assessments is promising. An enterprise VR training company Strivr has already built partnerships with Fortune 1000 agencies to extend the use of VR assessments.
An Efficient Tool for Employer Branding
Another vital advantage of job-tailored virtual simulations is their positive effect on an employer brand image. Virtual reality is a great way to position your company as a tech-savvy and innovative while also attracting more qualified employees.
This is exactly why General Electric incorporated the use of virtual reality in their recruitment processes. To connect with millennials, the agency offered VR headsets showcasing a behind-the-scenes look into the technologies used for their oil and gas operations. This way, the company could build an emotional connection with candidates and grow their engagement. This, in turn, would generate positive word-of-mouth for the company and help build a brand’s reputation.
Summing up
VR is not intended to replace one-on-one job interviews. Instead, it aims to add more data points used to evaluate candidate skills and better predict their future job performance. Combined with other software and interview processes, VR has proved itself to be a key solution in making the hiring process more efficient and engaging. We believe it may soon become a fundamental tool in recruiting.
