Have you ever found yourself in the following situations when hiring?
- Misalignment between what you thought you should look for in a candidate, and what you really should.
- Time wasted on interviewing candidates whom you thought were the highpotentials, while they evidently weren’t.
- Hires who seemed to be a great fit with the job and company culture are not as successful as you thought.
Guess what’s the root cause of this? Trusting outdated candidate selection methods such as resume-based screening (which has proven to NOT at all be predictive of future job success). Luckily for you there is a way around this and that is by using game-based assessments.
In this blog, let’s dive into the 9 reasons why game-based assessments beat resumes!
9 Reasons why game-based assessments beat resumes
Focused on potential/learning
Resumes are focused on a candidate’s past, which not only leads to inequalities but also has been proven to be a poor predictor of job performance.
Whereas, a game-based assessments are focused on measuring potential and learning abilities. We are in a constantly changing labour market. According to the World Economic Form, in 2025 85M jobs have disappeared that we still had in 2020.
In contrast to that, 97M new jobs will arise. This means it will get impossible to screen candidates based on previous experiences, while learning ability will get more and more important.
High predictive power
When using resume-based screening, we tend to focus most on education and previous work experience to determine who is most qualified for the job. However:
- The correlation between education and job performance is 0.10.
- The correlation between work experience and job performance is 0.16.
(Source)
No room for social desirability
Only after reading your job description, the candidate is able to accordingly adjust what to include in their resume and how to phrase things, to come across in the most desirable way.
Whereas, a gamified assessment has less obvious socially desirable answers as they are better at concealing what exactly the games measure.
Enjoyable and fun for candidates
Ever heard anybody say they had a great time writing up their resume? Nope, neither have we.
Game-based assessments are more immersive, meaning that they make a candidate forget that they are assessed. This reduces stress and anxiety, resulting in a much better Candidate Experience.
Standardized format (easy to compare)
No resume will ever look the same, or include the same information. Therefore, making it difficult to objectively compare.
Game-based assessments offer you easy-to-interpret and actionable candidate reporting, allowing you to compare candidates based on the same insights. Gathered based on science and objectively.
Automated reviewing
If you receive 100 resumes, to properly shortlist candidates for interviews – it also means you need to manually review each of these resumes. Imagine other valuable things you could be spending your time on other than doing this for a full afternoon?
However, if you choose to use game-based assessments, you’ll be able to find your best candidates easily, by sorting and filtering on their assessment results rather than going through hundreds of pdf files.
No room for unconscious bias
Any information contained within the candidate’s CV can trigger unconscious biases and can overcloud your judgment of who is most suitable for the job.
Games don’t rely on self-reporting and limit the use of text, which prevents you from becoming victim of your own unconscious biases.
Innovative 21st Century format
The first CV was created by Leonardo Da Vinci in 1482. Later on, CVs became normal practice in the 1980’s after the fax machine made bulk job applications a possibility. That’s more than 40 years ago – nothing innovative about that. Just let that sink in.
Using Innovative technologies, such as game-based assessments, especially when recruiting and assessing candidates has repeatedly been proven to leave positive effects on applicant perception of an organisational image.
Equalture’s Game-based assessments
It’s always better to experience something yourself, rather than just reading about it, right?
Some words of encouragement
First resume was invented by Leonardo Da Vinci more than 500 years ago – seriously, time to let go of it. Or at least stop using it as the primary candidate screening method.
Trust me (and as this article has hopefully proven to you) – there are better methods out there for screening candidates than resumes.
I will also not lie, I can imagine and completely understand that not every company is ready to fully eliminate resumes.
Change and the unknown are things that humans tend to for the most. Yet, things that often times seem the most out our comfort zone, are things that lead to the biggest success…
Happy hiring!
