Recruitment in Spain leads the pack with Artificial Intelligence and "gamification"

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

At the beginning of 2017, Unilever became news because it was one of the first multinationals to incorporate artificial intelligence and "gamification" to its talent selection processes in Spain. A year later, there are several companies that have started to join the trend and invest in new technologies to streamline their recruitment processes.

The introduction of advanced systems in talent selection processes has begun to become an almost "obligatory" step for many companies. The objective? To identify those candidates who have the most suitable profile for companies, attending to more than the data that the applicant provides in a CV or during an interview: their responses to challenges that, in a virtual way, evaluate their real abilities.

According to their advocates, these new technologies, based on Artificial Intelligence and data analysis, allow evaluating the skills and attitudes of professionals, while they face different virtual situations individually and / or in groups. However, there are those who raise doubt regarding the effectiveness of these processes and about their ability to select candidates that really fit (or don't) into an organization..

An article published by the newspaper Expansión delves into this idea, giving as an example to McKinsey, who has recently included in his recruitment process a dynamic that has led to more than 2,000 people facing a video game that posed the challenge of keeping an island alive populated by plants and animals.

The intention, writes the newspaper Expansión, was "to attract intelligent candidates with technological knowledge not coming from the business schools that belong to the Ivy League, its traditional talent hunting ground." The problem, says the author of the article, is that the interview process of the consultant is "analog and arduous". In fact, for three consecutive years, Glassdoor has classified it as "the toughest in the world".

In this sense, from the medium they express how this type of dynamics, increasingly common, not only to detect new talent, but also to know the strengths and weaknesses of the work teams of companies, are beginning to raise doubts about its effectiveness, because just as a candidate may have a bad day during the interview and not demonstrate their abilities, why would not the same thing happen in the case of virtual evaluation?

Other experts point to the importance of the professionals, responsible for developing this technology and observing the results, to know how the theories on practice really work, that is, what determines that someone who knows how to maintain the ecosystem of an island, be able to fit into a company or respond to the requirements of a particular job? How vital are these skills in reality and the day to day of the company?

Citing Rebecca Kantar, founder of Imbellus, the American startup that created the game on the island of McKinsey, the article explains that in an era of increasing automation, the defenders of these new selection processes point to a clear argument: the need to evaluate people for what they think and not just for what they know.

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

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