Recruiting with Video Games and Artificial Intelligence Breaks the Traditional Mold

For a long time, companies and consultancies used traditional methods such as psychometric tests to select the most suitable people according to a role in the company. Over time, these procedures have become outdated and somewhat privileged. A pattern has been seen in the staff, and a person’s biases are unconsciously involved when reading only a CV and a cover letter. Scroll down to discover how to recruiting with video games and Artificial Intelligence

In order to innovate, one of the most important consulting firms in the world, McKinsey & Company, began to collaborate with an Artificial Intelligence start-up. They developed a test that links the way to analyze and solve a problem through automated tests that analyze the cognitive process. The Recruitment and People Analytics division teamed up with the start-up to create an innovative digital experience. It allows the applicant’s way of thinking and analysis to be adapted to more realistic scenarios.

In November 2017, the pilot program of an interactive test game with 500 users was launched in London. The responses from the program were highly positive. These made it possible to apply small changes to be able to start applying the evaluations in different offices at the end of 2018. To date, more than 15k people in 30 countries have applied for a position in the firm through these tests.

This test lasted 16 minutes, in which you had to complete assigned tasks with different challenges. The process and the decisions that were made informed McKinsey how to think about and analyze each situation. “All the elements are anatomically traced and can be mapped along with the actual or known factors,” says the Global Director of People Analytics on the structure of the video game.

Recruiting with artificial intelligence

In the evaluation, five types of cognitive tests are presented: Analytical Reasoning, Decision Making, Metacognitive, Situational Awareness, and Systemic Thinking. They are created so that no applicant has the same experience twice. Each test encourages applicants to push them to use their skills and unique ways of finding a resolution without looking for a correct answer.

This type of testing removes the advantages that a candidate could anticipate and tests the true skills of the applicant. Thus, finding a more suitable candidate for the position regardless of previous experience. Likewise, through this new test method, it is possible to see and analyze knowledge and a more developed analysis in terms of problem-solving.

The evaluations are made through Artificial Intelligence so that there is an adaptable scenario. Taking advantage of a neural network called the General Adversarial Network (GAN), an input image is created, generating a 3D cloud point. Thus, you can determine the goal and the design of the contexts for the test, how skills and knowledge are necessary in real-life cases.

Cycles of recruiting with video games.

The video game goes through different development cycles to achieve the necessary analysis and programming. First, you need UI tools, a full set of image and design resources, and rigorous QA. Afterward, the test’s core must be determined to design each scenario to be analyzed. In each scenario, data telemetry counts each mouse movement, click and sequence of events in order to collect the data and design an evaluation measure. This allows observing the reasoning and behavior in each question.

This innovative system has inspired large companies in Mexico to automate their processes for attracting, selecting, and hiring candidates. At Xira, we have collaborated with some of them to implement automation solutions for recruitment, attraction, selection, and onboarding. Achieving to hire more than 400 employees per week virtually. With RPA technologies, Ads automation, Machine Vision, Mass Mailing, and Transactional Virtual Assistants, companies can have certainty of criminal records, previous positions, duration of past employment, if they are registered with the IMSS, attachment qualification to the company, certainty of pre-hiring requirements and an organization of interview appointments before interviewing and hiring, this being the only human filter.

This new solution based on stimuli and reasoning has allowed a great change in the way of evaluating regardless of your history. Little by little, Artificial Intelligence has become a friend of companies. It’s important to note that they do not seek to replace personnel with automation but to unify both with unique benefits.