Reassure yourself, if you're not familiar with Fortnite, that won't stop you from understanding this article, which is well and truly dedicated to digital recruitment!

If you've never heard of it, you're not a video game enthusiast, a parent of teenagers, or a pop culture fan!

Fortnite is the most popular video game of the moment

It is indeed hard to miss what is probably the biggest phenomenon in the history of video games. 

Fortnite has 125 million players worldwide, who spend between 6 and 10 hours per week (often much more!) trying to de-zip their little buddies from their PCs, PlayStation 4s, Xbox Ones, or even Nintendo Switches.

Such engagement numbers would make every marketer in the world dream (but that's not the point)!

The premise of Fortnite is childishly simple: your virtual character lands in a flying wing on an island where 99 other warriors (all controlled by real players all over the world)

On site, weapons and equipment are scattered around that will allow you to achieve the final objective of each game, staying last alive (last one standing).

One winner for 99 losers, wouldn't that be a metaphor for something we're all familiar with?
Recruitment, of course!

So, is Fortnite the ultimate solution to finding the perfect candidate?

In the end, there can only be one left

The (cynical) idea of candidates fighting each other to get a job has often been exploited by cinema as in the film "Le Couperet" by Costa Gavras.

I imagine that some recruiters, exhausted by the string of unsuccessful interviews, have also fantasized about such a scenario at the coffee machine:

"-Here, rather than waste time choosing, how about we put all the suitors in an arena with a sword and shield and hire the survivor?

- Oh yes, not silly!".

This may have been conceivable in the days of ancient Rome, but it's not so much the trend in 2018 (who said "alas"??).

On the other hand, what's awfully creative is using a video game like Fortnite to interview for a job.

A little dance?

Having fun with Fortnite is exactly what advertising agency Dare.Win did, with spectacular success! 

Here is the company's proposal:

The agency conducted job interviews in the middle of a Fortnite game

This very creative approach picked up over 600 resumes in a matter of days, while spreading an image of her employer-brand that was very "cool" to all the other candidates (and even the BBC).

Getting Earned Media from Owned Media, at the Super Agency, we love it! Well done colleagues.

Besides the quantitative success directly related to the extraordinary popularity of a video game, the very premise of this type of interview allows for a better revelation of the candidate's personality.

In fact, that's what the agency's creative director, Damien Foui, who came up with the idea, says

"The game frees up speech and it also allows us to see the candidates outside their comfort zone."

One of the recruited candidates had the good idea to do a little dance step imitating the famous victory choreographies of Fortnite characters (so famous that dance schools offer them in England).

It may sound far-fetched, but these dances are a prominent part of the culture around the game. Remember Griezmann's celebration after his penalty kick scored against Croatia in the World Cup final.

The famous "Take the L" dance from Fortnite, performed by Antoine Griezman.

This brilliant strategy (directly inspired by Growth Hacking techniques) thus relies on a strong cultural anchor built around the logic of a game-event and challenge.

To what type of recruitment method can it be identified?

Event-based recruitment and challenge-based recruitment

Contrary to what one might have thought about Dare.Win's initiative, it was therefore not actually about selecting the two best Fortnite players (which wouldn't have made much sense, you'll agree), but rather to observe the candidates' reactions when they are in a different psychological context from the traditional interview.

In addition, it provides a memorable candidate experience!

This is what differentiates two innovative approaches to recruitment: event-based recruitment and challenge-based recruitment.

They sometimes tend to be confused because both focus on the candidate's skills and softskills rather than the resume.

Yet they are two very distinct approaches.

Challenge recruiting involves putting several candidates in a situation comparable to those they will face in their future job.

Here's an example of what a startup specializing in challenge-based recruitment offers: Coxibiz

The solution offered by Coxibiz allows candidates to be put in a situation via a virtual platform

In this case, the ability of the candidate to perform in a situation close to the real world is evaluated. It is a matter of testing skills, not necessarily the individual's fit with the company's values.

In contrast, event-based recruitment, whose specialist in France is the Toulouse-based company Feelinks, allows on the one hand to analyze the capacity of the candidate to face problems (Softskill) but also gives a lot of indications on his compatibility with the general state of mind of the team where he will be able to evolve (Culture fit).

With Feelinks, candidates and recruiters can play foosball against each other

"You can know more about someone in an hour's play than in a year's worth of conversations" wrote Plato.

So introducing gaming into the recruiting process in this way saves teams a lot of time and avoids the bad hires that cost so much.

"Anyway, basically, it's all gamification, right?"

Actually... no, it's not!

Gamification (or in good French, ludification) for recruitment is something else again... contrary to what is argued in this article.

Gamification is the transposition of mechanisms frequently used in video games (such as reward or level-up systems) into a non-game domain, usually on corporate websites.

A Gamified environment doesn't necessarily look like a video game interface , and does not use an external platform like Fortnite, which does not retrieve relevant KPIs.

Gamification is a strong candidate engagement tool that, paradoxically, is found very little on career sites in France.

Here's what a gamified candidate space looks like:

An example of gamification for recruitment

There are the usual systems of rankings, badges and progression, which allow candidates to situate themselves in the recruitment process.

Gamification itself should not be confused with the Serious Game, which is close in nature to challenge-based recruitment.

This recruitment/selection tool has been around since the 15th century, notably used for military detection and training.

Its purpose is to make the serious dimension of an activity attractive by introducing interactivity, rules, and possibly playful objectives.

Given the origin of this type of activity, it will come as no surprise to learn that the most ambitious (and effective) Serious game project was launched by ... the U.S. Army, through the development of its own first-person combat game America's Army, launched in 2009.

America's army: the most ambitious serious game for recruitment

Another famous example of a serious game for recruitment was offered on Facebook by the famous hotel chain Marriott with its "My Marriott Hotel" game.

Marriott's proposed "serious" video game to engage its candidates

Please note that Marriott was one of the very first companies to grasp the importance of producing quality content in order to improve its recruiting inbound recruiting.

His blog aimed at attracting candidates, Marriott on the move,  has been around since 2007!

Game on the green

Event-based recruitment, challenge-based recruitment, serious games, gamification: never has the playful dimension been so much a part of the thinking behind recruitment.

The rise of video game-fueled generations will certainly set this trend in stone.

However, for the time being, there are few hexagonal companies that really invest in these very high added value contents.

This is a real opportunity because the first to arrive will be the best served... like in Fortnite!!