Driving Businesses – Recruitment through Virtual Worlds

Author: Business Beyond Reality

 

Vikram Bhardwaj, CEO of Redileon, a Mumbai based HR Firm, gets a hiring contract from a global BPO which wanted to hire a general manager to run its private hotel in Hyderabad. His agency puts a recruitment hoarding on top of a hotel for less than $1. The neon sign ad flashed: “Want to earn $125,000 per annum. We are hiring a GM to run a hotel in Hyderabad.” Within 24 hours, four candidates from Ireland, Philippines, Czech Republic and Dubai are shortlisted and the applicant from Dubai joins next month.

Does it sounds like any other recruitment process and doesn’t get your attention? Well not exactly! The hotel and the neon sign ad existed not in the real world, but in Second Life, a Virtual Environment. The job however was real.

Rahul Dutta, a Virtual Property Dealer, and the CEO of VR1World has tied up with DepoConsulting to hire people across worlds through the Virtual Environment.

Wipro Technologies is bringing new capabilities to corporate recruitment via its Innovation Isle Island in Second Life. To begin with, the prospective candidates will be able to submit their resume at Wipro’s virtual campus and the initiative will be later become an integral part of Wipro’s recruitment drive.

The IBM Recruitment Center offers diverse topics. Such as: career opportunities both in the development, as well as in areas such as consulting and sales, internship offers, Dual studies at the Vocational Academy, advancement opportunities and much more. This makes it an ideal platform for students, graduates and professionals who are interested in career and development opportunities at IBM.

In Indian Scenario, a lot of MNCs are already using Web 2.0 for Talent Hunt. Jayantika Dave, Director (HR) Agilent Technologies, recently sought out a professional networking site in her never-ending search for knowledge workers. LinkedIn, a professional networking site, allows us to commercially utilise the services,” says theVice President (Strategic Resourcing) at Wipro Technologies. “The traditional channels need to be augmented with some innovation. Social networking sites provide access to profiles that often consultants fail to get hold of.” says Tanuj Kapilashrami, the India head of HR at HSBC. 

A Virtual Environment such as Second Life is a fairly newly discovered jungle to do a talent hunt. Since 2003 the online system has more than six million registered users, of whom around the clock an average of 15,000 to 38,000 actively uses the system (Source: Wikipedia). 

I had an opportunity to talk to Ashima Misri, Ops & Business Development, Indusgeeks Solutions Pvt. Ltd. She mentioned that there are approximately 2500 active Second Life Users in India. When compared to more than 30 million active internet users in India (Source: http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/indias-internet-users-reach-30-million-637/), the number of active users of Second Life is insignificant.

The possible causes are:

1. The concept of 3D Internet and Virtual Worlds still hasn’t become popular among the common people. Because not many people are regular on Second Life for Social Networking, people resort to build social network on Facebook etc.

2. Mediocre Graphics Card PCs/Laptops. For a lot of people, such a Virtual Environment won’t even be supported on their machine!

3. For Personal Use, people generally take Dial up Internet or up to 256 Kbps   Broadband. It doesn’t give the performance required to immerse people in Second Life. 

During my meeting with David D’Angelo (HR Analyst at Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland) who has expertise in Talent Acquisition Systems and Recruiting in Second Life & Virtual Worlds, I was told that in US, there will be large number of retirements and the competition for talent is leading to recruitment in social networks and Second Life. He mentioned that for organizations, Second Life is a great place for screening of Applicants especially over a large geographic area. This is followed by a real world interview on the phone or in person. There are confidentiality issues and legal issues about doing all the work in SL right now. 

There are primarily two models in Second Life for the talent hunt - Islands and Job Fairs which give candidates a few choices. Companies like IBM have their own islands in Second Life where candidates can pass on their resume. Example of a job fair in Second Life includes the food service firm, Sodexho, which was covered by MSNBC in the September 10, 2007, article, “How your fantasy life can get you a real job”. The article details how a job candidate rather new to SL prepared to participate in a Sodexho job fair at the suggestion of a Sodexho recruiter he sent his resume to. His efforts at learning the nuances of SL paid off and led to a job as a chef in the senior services division of Sodexho.

During an interview, what the interviewee says is not the only important thing but how he handles the situation is equally important. Many interviewers want to see how the interviewee acts under stress. If the candidate looks confused like a fish out of water then the chances of his getting the job reduce. This measure is not possible in Virtual Environments like Second Life, which fail to observe the non-verbal communication/facial expressions of the candidate being interviewed.

A Live video streaming of the face and capturing gestures through sensors/vision could compensate for non verbal communication to some extent. The technology is still evolving!