How to use VR for hiring

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Year after year, the demand for well-qualified, reliable, and highly specialized employees increases. When defining personnel plans for your company, it is sometimes difficult to reach the candidates you are interested in. A lot depends on the method of recruitment we choose. In recent times, the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic has completely changed the rules of the game, so recruiters need to rise to this challenge and find new ways to recruit. How does VR technology support them in this process?

What influences the recruitment process?

Which recruitment method we choose depends primarily on the organization of our company, its size, and its nature. Also of crucial importance is the type of position we are recruiting for. After all, finding someone with the right qualifications requires time and commitment.

Today more than ever, people have become open to building relationships online. This is due to the situation we are living in. The lockdowns introduced during the pandemic have moved many events into the virtual world, and these changes can be seen in the hiring process.

The world is changing – new HR methods

For many years now, it has been hard for us to imagine life without the Internet. Running a business and searching for suitable employees is almost impossible without the use of online tools. In short, we all use the Internet nowadays, both employers and employees, making information exchange faster and allowing activities to be conducted on a larger scale.

E-recruitment can take many forms. The most popular of these are:

recruitment through social networking sites,
recruitment via recruitment portals,
recruitment via employer portals.

During the pandemic, video recruitment has become the only way to find new employees seamlessly. With the help of VR technology, it is even more effective.

How does VR support hiring?

The recruitment process

In using VR for remote recruitment, testing potential employees’ knowledge and competencies becomes more real. This form of contact has a substantial impact on the senses of both interviewee and interviewer. It can evoke emotions just like in the real world, so the reliability of candidate’s answers increases significantly.

Virtual “tour guide”

Virtual reality is also a handy tool for showing candidates what their future workplace will look like. This is done using so-called virtual tours. While office work is quite schematic, fieldwork can often be challenging. Such a “virtual tour” gives applicants a preview of the future workplace and quickly verifies their expectations. The German railway company Deutsche Bahn used this to significant effect to attract younger generations to apply for a conductor’s position which did not seem attractive to them. As a result, the company received many applications from younger people.

Onboarding

An employee’s first days at work are crucial as they determine how quickly they will be able to adapt and start working correctly. Effective onboarding significantly reduces adaptation time and increases the productivity of new employees. Here, virtual reality can help. Instead of reading extensive publications or learning an organization’s culture “on their own”, a new employee can do it using VR. Jet.com, an American e-commerce company, has used VR in this way to show new employees what work looks like and how they will spend their time together at integration meetings.

Training for employees

Another advantage of VR is the ability to conduct training for newly hired employees. This technology also allows situations that employees will have to deal at work to be simulated. For example, Walmart uses VR to teach employees soft skills and how to deal with stressful situations – including dealing with upset customers. Such a solution is not only of benefit to the employer. Preparing the employee for any situation strengthens their self-confidence, positively affecting their level of comfort at work. In the case of Walmart, this kind of training has boosted confidence by 10-15%.

Modern recruitment – what do you need to be ready for?

Traditional hiring models, where the employer posts their requirements and the candidate is expected to be interested in the offer, are a thing of the past. The speed of change has accelerated, especially now in the era of the ongoing pandemic, where many people have lost their jobs, and many others have decided to change employment. Problematic face-to-face contact has caused HR departments many problems. However, those companies that have relied on modern forms of recruitment by using technologies like VR have emerged from this challenging situation as winners.

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