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When you think of a job interview what springs to mind? For the candidate perhaps a nervous walk to a vacant chair, consideration of how firm the handshake, how to formulate their answers carefully to ensure all keywords and characteristics are highlighted and less desirable attributes are masked. For the assessors, apprehension that you’ve created the right environment and selected the most appropriate questions to analyse potential candidates and discover who is the best fit for the role.
The traditional formal setting and corporate competency questioning can lead to an artificial environment where responses are unnatural - influenced by the event and surroundings. The final decision is primarily based upon the ability for the candidate to articulate themselves well in an environment which may be entirely dissimilar to that which they would find themselves working. Furthermore, the candidates’ answers are ultimately a self-assessment of their competency. Many candidates will purposefully withhold information or create fictitious examples to better answer the posed scenarios.
To mitigate these problems many companies have involved extensive selection processes and assessment days which include both individual tests and group discussion or activities.
Placing candidates in a real-time, problem-solving and teamwork scenario alongside each other helps create a comparable view of all candidates instead of multiple individual assessments. It also provides the option to involve the team in which the role is vacant so as to assess how the individual might fit in and collaborate on any challenges they faced.
Gamified assessment and recruitment has becoming increasingly popular over the last two years and Escape games in particular have become the new trend in recruitment assessment. The games are designed to help assessors identify core traits and behaviours within applicants, such as the ability to think both critically and creatively, work well within a team, communicate, collaborate, delegate, execute, listen and lead in real time.
The Knowledge Academy, a global training provider, found that over 70% of companies almost 700 companies would be willing to use an escape room session as an assessment tool, and over 70% of job seekers surveyed said they wanted companies to use more unorthodox recruiting assessment methods. [1, 2] Research published into the use of escape rooms as a form of assessment and recruitment has been positive. [3]
Nationwide, the world’s largest building society, added an escape room element to their assessment process earlier this year where candidates are tasked with solving a series of puzzles and logical challenges within 25 minutes and other companies are swiftly following suit.
Escape rooms provide the ability for individuals to demonstrate their competencies under pressure. The added adrenaline and time-pressure strips away the potentially intimidating and artificial formality, repetitive questions and carefully prepared answers and allows recruiters to observe an individual’s skills in action, providing a greater insight into how the individual might perform within the role. The games at Escapologic® challenge the strongest teams and the brightest minds. Don’t let them tell you how well they perform, let them show you!
[1] Guzior, B. (June 18) A job interview in an escape room? It could happen.
https://www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/latest-news/2018/06/a-job-interview-in-an-escape-room-it-could-happen.html?page=all
[2] Dorsey, C. (26/6/18) Unconventional recruitment processes gain growing appeal
https://www.insider.co.uk/news/unconventional-recruitment-processes-gain-growing-12794560
[3] Escape Room Recruitment Event: Description and Lessons Learned
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29505080 J Nurs Educ. 2018 Mar
1;57(3):184-187
[4] Why Escape Rooms Are a Great Way to Test Potential Hires
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/casey-wright-why-escape-rooms-are-a-great-way-to-test_us_5922438ce4b0b28a33f62d92 30/5/17
