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Recruitment

XR in Workforce Development: A Game-Changer for Recruitment and Retention, with Lenovo ThinkReality and Transfr

Lenovo ThinkReality and Transfr discuss the importance of training solutions for workforce development

There is a truism of DE&I initiatives, that it’s hard for people to become what they cannot see.

This expression arose from the perspective of socially excluded groups accessing careers and other opportunities, but it has an even broader application in the workplace today. Many students leave education not just unprepared, but also unaware, of the range of exciting career opportunities they could explore.

That’s why Transfr’s approach to workforce development uses the Lenovo ThinkReality XR tools, to showcase, prepare, and train young people, to access new career possibilities. The ThinkReality VRX headset creates immersive simulations, while the ThinkReality A3 smart glasses provide augmented layers of information in new workplace scenarios. Together, they broaden access and address the recruitment challenges faced by a range of industrial and public-sector employers.

Tapping new talent to fill essential roles

As Transfr CEO Bharani Rajakumar explained, “our mission as a company is to get everyone on a career pathway to upward mobility. With over 300 training simulations, we help candidates acquire the baseline skills they need to be attractive to an employer. We serve a demographic we call undiscovered talent.”

In the US, in particular, there is a high demand for vocational skills, owing to an emphasis on academic degrees and a lack of a European-style apprenticeship culture. “So we work with public education institutions to provide physical access through XR technology to diverse demographics, and make sure people get the training they need,” Rajakumar continued.

The immersive experience of XR training not only provides training and practice to build skills and confidence in new career roles, but it can also open up candidates to new jobs they had never previously considered.

It creates a safe environment for trying out new career possibilities as well, as Mattney Beck, Senior Manager Product Marketing at Lenovo, explained. Because no one likes failing in public.

“People can be anxious about trying new things, putting themselves out there,” he explained. Experimenting with new skills and activities in VR derisks career exploration socially. “It gives candidates the chance to focus on the task in the module, and not feel like they’re going to be embarrassed in front of a crowd… Muscle memory gets created by repetition,and in VR you can repeat as many times as you like until you know you’ve got it right.

“Generally confidence is built by a series of small wins,” he continued, “and if people can show up with skills learned and practiced on day one, it’s amazing the sense of accomplishment that comes from that. This is a real benefit for VR that other types of training simply don’t offer.”

The future of recruitment, selection, and onboarding

In a world where digital natives frequently learn, socialise, and ultimately work remotely, the opportunity for candidates to gain literal hands-on experience across different roles has huge benefits for hirers as well.

As Rajakumar explained, “One surprising outcome has been an increase in retention. The reality is, that when folks have been through XR training during recruitment, they stay in the job longer.

“The training process itself acts as a filter and an opt-in – some people will bow out, and those who do not will enter their new job with increased confidence and decreased friction from day one.”

For a generation entering the workforce today, whose formal education and work experience has been disrupted by the pandemic, the value of this additional confidence and fit cannot be underestimated. From muscle memory to soft skills, the ability to rehearse and reach competence before showing up to a new role makes all the difference to the new hire, who effectively completes some of their onboarding and training ahead of time.

For their new manager, it’s as though they have hired a more experienced candidate, who will take a much shorter path to being productive and profitable in their position.

XR workforce development training with Transfr, leverages the hardware solutions of Lenovo ThinkReality, to create a genuine win-win for both parties to the contract.

Quelle:

XR in Workforce Development: A Game-Changer for Recruitment and Retention, with Lenovo ThinkReality and Transfr

11. Oktober 2023 0 comment

Examples

How XR Is Shaping the Future of Recruitment?

5 ways extended reality will change the workplace.

Recruitment is the most crucial division of a company. One good hire and your business can skyrocket. Likewise, one bad hire and your company can go into the drain.

Having said that, we know that there’s no perfect recruitment process to dig deeper into the swarm of applications and find the best match. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t do it.

With time, companies have started employing new-age technologies and tools to source, vet, and hire the best talent. It has brought up many ways to achieve recruitment targets. It has given many options which once sounded impossible.

Virtual and augmented reality have already made their mark in marketing and technology industry verticals. But you could be wondering how XR can help in recruitment.

And, this is what we are going to discuss in this article. Here are 5 ways XR is transforming the recruitment space.

1. Showcasing the Employer Brand

A company needs to showcase its vision, mission, and core values to recruit the best talent. And XR helps them do so. With the help of augmented reality, companies can present themselves in an immersive experience to potential hires.

Companies can use XR at job fairs to portray what the potential hires will get if they join them.

A screening process having AR will be more exciting than the standard skill assessment screening on the phone. Such interviews can help candidates better assess whether they possess soft skills and other intangible qualities that make them ideal for the position.

As part of a well-rounded interview process, VR experiences can help determine how different candidates may react to real-life on-the-job challenges or gauge their comfort level in difficult situations. With AR, you can determine how the candidates will respond to the on-the-job challenges and gauge their comfort level in difficult situations.

Hershey leveraged augmented reality in 2014 to give an experience to the potential hires of what it looks like working in the company.

2. Testing Candidate Skills

XR helps in finding employees with the right skill set through gamification. A game enables you to move from the traditional methods of recruitment. Gamification allows you to find the right fit. You might wonder how?

Playing games require people to be committed to their tasks, thereby enabling them to think whether making such an effort is worth their time. This activity will give more refined applications as only serious candidates will make an effort to play the game.
Gamification makes the entire recruitment process fun and interactive while allowing you to assess the candidate’s basic skills and abilities.

Jaguar used mixed reality for their recruitment process. While they were hiring electronic and software engineers, the car manufacturing giant partnered with Gorillaz to use an MR game that tests candidates with code-breaking games.

This was a great recruitment strategy as a more significant number of people applied for the open positions. This also allowed Jaguar to keep a tab of the people who performed well in the game and shortlist them for the next rounds.

XR does not just help in hiring the right candidate; it also helps in attracting and evaluating talent. By using gamification, companies can attract top talent that is also suitable for them. Aside from that, they can teach the recruits different skills which they may need to do the job properly.

3. XR Can Help Interviewers Test Spatial Skills

Well, till now, we’ve seen how recruiters can make positions attractive for the candidates, but what about the selection process? With the help of XR, companies can pick the most suitable candidates. The more effectively the company can choose suitable candidates, the better it will be for the company.

With the help of XR, the company can quickly gauge a candidate’s spatial skills. The company might have found its desired candidate, but it isn’t easy to gauge their skills until a task hasn’t been assigned to them. With extended reality, these shortcomings can be improved.

This helps companies to simulate real-time situations. For example, the company can offer an XR environment motion graphics and ask the potential candidates to build the product from scratch. As they proceed, they can share their thought process and show how they navigate in three-dimensional space.

4. Sharing the Work Environment

Displaying a positive workplace culture is crucial to recruit the best candidates. Many companies tend to show a relaxed and flexible atmosphere where employees are free to explore new opportunities and work on their own terms. Using XR, you can showcase your work culture to potential candidates. You can also build interactive experiences that show the potential hire all the things that your workplace offers.

General Mills used this strategy to give recruits a feel of what it’s like to work in their company. Hence by using XR, you can also enhance the candidates’ experience.

Besides, AR is beneficial in mobile recruitment. A study by Inc shows that 9 out of 10 job seekers apply for jobs using mobile devices. Hence, it’s imperative to have the top-notch mobile experience to draw candidates to your job vacancies.

5. Offers Hands-On Training

In many industries, the safety of employees is a primary concern. In industries where manpower has to deal with hazardous materials constantly, XR can play a crucial role in safety training procedures.

AR can be beneficial in industries where employees need to take risks to operate machines, handling equipment, and other things. Companies can develop AR and VR-enabled training modules that can help them get the job done without actually working in that hazardous environment.

This is helpful for chemical, heavy machinery, and such industries with life-threatening procedures. For example, you can make your employees learn about fire breakouts with the help of AR, which eventually helps in curbing accidental cases.

Are You Going to Use XR for Recruitment?

AR, and XR in general, have immense potential to transform the recruitment space. And, it will be fascinating to see how companies are using these technologies to their advantage. However, XR technology is still in the nascent stage. In the years to come, we can expect more companies to jump on the bandwagon and use XR for their recruitment.

Quelle:

How XR Is Shaping the Future of Recruitment?

9. Juni 2021 0 comment

Knowledge Research

4 Big Impacts of Virtual Reality in Recruitment

Virtual reality recruitment is one of the buzziest trends of the past few years. Analysts predicted that 2019 would be a turning point for the VR industry – with either widespread adoption or industry stagnation sinking sales and effectively killing the future of this technology. Smartphone VR suffers from low popularity, but headset VR is gaining ground in the consumer market. For recruiters, this kind of virtual reality presents an interesting opportunity to change and improve the candidate experience.

In this virtual reality recruitment guide:

Virtual reality (or VR) is an immersive, interactive experience that works through a headset to simulate another reality. Wearing a VR headset can put you in a virtual world, a shared experience with others wearing a VR headset. Companies are exploring ways to use VR in their day to day operations. For example, the Houston-based Training Center of Air Conditioning and Heating launched a full technician course that allows students to get “hands-on” experience using an HVAC lab – all through an immersive learning simulation.

From training to marketing and e-commerce, VR has implications for the way we interact and work together in the business world. How will VR change the way recruiters and HR teams find talent and fill their open positions?

By expanding your remote recruitment

Free sourcing tools and recruitment platforms can only take you so far. Virtual reality recruitment presents a tool for hiring managers to expand their candidate pool to remote candidates. Recruiters can design simulated office tours and interviews with candidates who are far afield. A fully immersive experience allows candidates to see and feel the office culture and picture themselves in the role without having to be physically present.

Likewise, virtual reality recruitment has the potential to be a more cost-effective way to entertain multiple candidates throughout the process. US companies spend an average of $4,000 to fill an open position. Virtual reality recruitment can give hiring managers the ability to assess more candidates without spending the money to physically bring them in for multiple interviews. It can lift some of the constraints that many companies face in finding top talent.

By combining Virtual Reality with AI

Perhaps the biggest use case for virtual reality in recruitment is the ability to simulate an on-the-job experience during the interview process. As Forbes contributor Bernard Marr argues,

“VR is about putting people inside virtual environments and those environments – and their inhabitants – are likely to become increasingly intelligent over the next year…Virtual environments allow students to practice anything from construction to flight to surgery without the risks associated with real-world training.”

Recruiters can combine virtual reality recruitment methods with skills assessments for a truly immersive on-the-job assessment of a candidate’s true talent. As recruiters move away from misleading resumes, a fully immersive skills test can highlight knowledge necessary to be successful in a position. Talent Trials can be expanded beyond editing documents, spreadsheets, or coding to include presentation skills, teamwork, and other interpersonal capabilities.

By going beyond one-way video interviews

One-way video interviews are a fantastic way to get to know a candidate. But what if we could go a step further? VR lets recruiters enjoy some of the key benefits of one-way interviews, and also go beyond some of the time restrictions and other limitations. Video interviews allow recruiters to get a feel for a candidate’s personality and culture fit, and job seekers love the video interview process. However, pre-recorded videos can make people feel self-conscious; they may not work as good predictors of on-the-job success. Virtual reality empowers recruiters to meet a candidate “in-person” and still see them in action as a potential new employee.

By providing a great candidate experience

Let’s face it – competition for talent is steep. Companies must wow candidates to get them to sign on. Virtual reality recruitment is a sexy new tool in the talent tech world that can make a company stand out from the crowd. According to research, nearly 60% of candidates have had a poor candidate experience during their job search; 72% of those candidates share their negative impression online or with others. Online video interviewing has been proven to have a positive impact on a candidate’s experience with your company, and VR promises to increase that impact exponentially.

Top Tips: Companies using Virtual Reality in Recruitment

Use Virtual Reality to show off your workplace environment
Jet.com is an American e-commerce company that sells a wide range of products to customers both nationally and across the globe. The company is utilizing virtual reality in recruitment by giving potential candidates an opportunity to witness the corporate culture, office space as well as even getting a taste of the companies ‘happy hour’ celebrations. This gives candidates an insight into the potential workplace they may be employed at, before deciding if the environment suits them or not.
Use Virtual Reality to give candidates an insight into the role
Another company that is employing the use of virtual reality in recruitment is German railway company, Deutsche Bahn. Due to typically receiving little to no interest from younger generations when hiring for positions such as train conductors, the company decided to use virtual reality to give younger people a more in depth understanding of the role and what their responsibilities would entail. The result? A huge increase in applicants with improved skills sets, and ones genuinely excited to work in the role.
Virtual Reality to understand candidates decision making
Finally, Commonwealth Bank has started to use virtual reality to test candidates’ decision making in real-life scenarios. They give the candidates situations that their employees actually face, and use VR to assist in understanding how the candidate makes decisions in stressful and confronting situations. This gives the bank a better awareness of candidates who have the qualities and skills set they are looking for.

Final thoughts on Virtual Reality in recruitment

VR is still expensive – and it privileges companies that can spend big bucks. For now, companies should focus on the immersive experience aspect virtual reality promises to deliver in the future. How can recruiters create a real-world simulation for the candidate? Talent Trials from Vervoe are just one option. Augmented reality – a similar, though less expensive and investment-intensive option – can give recruiters the ability to showcase short presentations or office tours. This year is predicted to be a big year for virtual reality recruitment; savvy recruiters should keep an eye on how this technology develops in the coming months.

Quelle:

4 Big Impacts of Virtual Reality in Recruitment

28. April 2020 0 comment