招聘人员当然可以登陆求职者的 Facebook或LinkedIn页面，看看他们的个人资料，剔除不符合需要的人，许多招聘者也的确是这样做的。但一些公司现在发现，运用网游技术招募、筛选申请人是一种物色杰出人才更有效率、更为快捷的途径。

    一些公司过去或许认为此类游戏是导致员工工作分神的主要因素之一，但它们现在发现，运用这种充满竞争性、具有积极意义的评价工具可以帮助招聘人员精确地找出那些或许缺乏明显的资历、但却具备成功所需技能的潜在雇员。同时，由于年轻人在日常生活中经常玩网络游戏，他们非常欢迎这种竞争性十足的评价方式。

    这种“社交式招募”还可以扩大品牌的知名度，激发求职者的兴致，加盟不太知名的公司。Facebook这样明星公司自然是求职者竞相追逐的对象，它发布的编程难题吸引了众多参与者，其中一些人最终成为该公司员工。

    德勤咨询公司（Deloitte Consulting）进行的一项调查显示，由于各家公司都在寻找具备多样化技能和高端技术的求职者，对顶尖人才的争夺已变得日益激烈。这项上个月公布的调查发现，25%的公司人力资源部职员都担心熟练工人短缺，这一比例较去年的16%出现了大幅上升。

    即便如此，许多公司依然严格恪守简历筛选、面试和背景调查等传统招聘流程，这些工作不仅费时费力，而且往往无法寻觅到各方面都符合要求的求职者。对于Upstream Systems公司来说，这些传统的方式根本就不管用。这家总部位于伦敦和旧金山的移动营销公司一度苦于找不到既具备分析和营销技能，又精通技术，同时还需要与遍及40个国家的客户打交道的全球营销经理。

    “我们当然可以聘请一个专家小组，但我们想要这样一个人，他单枪匹马就能运用我们的技术投入为客户提供营销服务，”Upstream Systems公司负责创意事务的高级副总裁盖伊•克里夫在伦敦接受记者采访时说。

    克里夫决定结合游戏机制设计一个竞争性的测试网站，从而寻觅到独特的人才，他们具备的技能很难、甚至根本无法从传统的简历中辨别出来。这个网站的网址是：http://thechallenge.upstreamsystems.com。

    这款对所有人开放，名为Upstream Challenge的游戏提供了7个有时间限制的挑战项目（比如数学、文字图像、为虚拟的工作情景匹配情绪等），以衡量应聘者的分析能力和市场营销知识。

    招聘人员需要扩大职位搜索范围，不能只关注形形色色的证书，而应重点关注哪些具备创造力、独创性和适应力等“软技能”的人才，《如何率先发现杰出人才》（The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else）一书的作者乔治•安德斯说。这本书列举并分析了顶尖企业在寻觅潜在雇员时所使用的种种创新方式。

    安德斯说：“这种招募理念发源于陆军特种部队。军方发现，在招募合适的人选时，最关键的考虑因素是他们的韧性，而不是体力或其他类似的特质。”

    Recruiters can certainly poke around a job seeker's Facebook or LinkedIn profiles to weed out undesirables, and plenty do. But some companies are finding that using online game techniques to recruit and screen applicants is a more productive, faster route to scouting out stellar hires.

    Businesses that at one time might have considered such games a major employee distraction are finding that using competitive, and positive, screening tools can help pinpoint potential hires who may lack the obvious pedigree, but have the skills to succeed. Since young adults often play online games in their everyday lives, they are open to embracing competitive screening approaches.

    Such "social recruiting" can also expand brand awareness and encourage interest in working at lesser-known companies. People clamber to work for star companies like Facebook, which has posted programming puzzles that have attracted significant participation and has led to some employee hires.

    Jockeying for top talent has gotten more intense as companies look for more varied and sophisticated skill sets from candidates, according to a survey by Deloitte Consulting. The survey, which was released last month, found that 25% of corporate human resources professionals were worried about skilled worker shortages, up from 16% last year.

    Even so, companies still hew to traditional resume screening, interviews, and reference checking, tasks that are time consuming and often fail to produce the right match. These conventional methods were not working for Upstream Systems, a mobile marketing firm based in London and San Francisco, which struggled to find global marketing managers with the right mix of analytical, marketing, and technology savvy to work with its clients in 40 countries.

    "We could hire teams of experts, but we wanted a single person to use input from our technologies into the marketing for our clients," says Guy Krief, senior vice president of innovation at Upstream in London.

    Krief decided to incorporate game mechanics to design a competitive test http://thechallenge.upstreamsystems.com that could identify people with a blend of skills that would have been much harder, or impossible, to discern from a conventional resume.

    The "Upstream Challenge" -- open to anyone -- provides seven timed exercises including math, word images, matching emotion to hypothetical work scenarios, and other challenges to measure a candidate's analytical skills and marketing knowledge.

   Recruiters need to widen their job searches beyond paper credentials, and focus on candidates with "soft skills," including creativity, ingenuity, and resilience, says George Anders, author of The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else, which examines innovative ways top companies find employees.

    "The idea got started back when the Army Special Forces found that tenacity, rather than physical strength or other such attributes, was more critical to recruiting the right candidate," says Anders.

    Upstream Challenge于2011年年底上线以来，已经有大约700位求职者完成了这个时长60分钟的在线测试项目。Upstream Systems公司只联系得分超过特定水平的求职者，克里夫说，这样做是为了避免挑战参与者错误地以为只要参与就可获得一份工作。他补充说，公司已经通过电话联系了一些成绩优异者，最近几周招募了4个人，还有2个人正在接受聘任考核。

    塔吉特百货（Target）和谷歌（Google）等公司还使用游戏来实现其他目标，包括减少差旅费、提振员工工作效率和士气等。其他公司正在使用游戏扩大品牌知名度（倘若同时还能够招募到优秀的员工，那就再好不过了）。

    万豪国际（Marriott International）就是这样做的。这家国际酒店管理集团推出了一款网络游戏，名为《我的万豪酒店》（My Marriott Hotel）。参与者需要模拟完成一些与酒店相关的工作，比如管理一间餐厅厨房，包括购买原料、审查已制作完成的食品订单等等。这款游戏提升了万豪酒店在全球的知名度，但其初衷并不是为了筛选员工。

    一些网上招聘活动面向20岁出头的求职者，它们还增添了玩游戏的技术。位于旧金山的求职网站Identified.com 最近增加了类似于游戏的奖励措施，鼓励求职者提供更完整的个人信息。

    “为了确定合适的人选，公司的招聘官们各显神通，采用了包括笔迹分析在内的多种方式，”新职介绍机构Challenger, Gray & Christmas公司首席执行官约翰•查林哲说。“有时候，这也是彰显企业文化的一种方式。”

    游戏化公司（Gamification Co.）致力于把游戏思维和工具融入市场营销，并为商界提供相关的咨询服务。公司首席执行官加布• 兹彻曼表示，使用游戏机制依然是一种新兴的技术。“这并不意味着制作一款真正意义上的游戏，更多的时候只是汲取一些游戏元素，重新设定其意图。”

    当然，游戏化的吸引力并不只限于招募和筛选人才这一个用途，作为一种吸引和激励人的手段，它可以广泛应用于教育和医疗服务等领域。高德纳咨询公司（Gartner, Inc.）2011年12月份发布的一项研究报告预计，对游戏化方式的运用“将在未来几年中显著增加”。这份报告的作者布赖恩•伯克表示，大约70%的世界2,000强公司将把游戏技术作为一种行为激励工具，用以招募和培训员工，加强其工作表现，运用游戏技术还有助于其他目标的实现，包括鼓励新创意、改善员工健康状况、打造客户忠诚度等。

    Upstream Challenge于2011年年底上线以来，应试者已经涵盖了全职主妇、律师、作家、营销人员和出租车司机等各个行业。其中一位是来自加利福尼亚州奥克兰市的技术作家凯瑟琳•马丁内斯，她最终被该公司聘用。

    她说：“我在Twitter上发现了这个链接。我喜欢玩游戏，解谜题，特别喜欢《愤怒的小鸟》（Angry Birds）这款游戏。我当时觉得尝试一下这个测试肯定挺好玩的。”现年30岁的马丁内斯当时刚刚下岗，因此饶有兴趣地接受了这项挑战。

但是，她说，它“比我想象的要难很多，因为有严格的时间限制，需要参与者跳出固有的思维模式。”

    在完成挑战大约一周后，她接到了Upstream Systems公司打来的电话，接受电话筛选，随后又赶赴旧金山参加面试。今年年初，她搬到了伦敦，开始在Upstream Systems公司总部工作，目前正在接受培训。

    “我觉得单凭我的简历不可能引起他们的兴趣，”马丁内斯坦言。“但这款游戏发挥了我的强项，因为它是这份工作日常需要完成事项的一个缩影。”

    译者 任文科

     At Upstream, some 700 people completed the 60-minute online test since it went online in late 2011. Upstream only notified those who scored beyond a certain level of points in order to discourage challenge-takers from assuming that participation would result in a job, Krief says. Those who scored well were contacted by phone, and four have been hired in recent weeks. Another two are in the pipeline, he adds.

    Businesses such as Target and Google also have used games to achieve goals like reducing company travel expenses or improving employee efficiency and morale. Other companies are using games to amplify brand awareness, with recruiting as a side benefit.

    One of those is Marriott International, which has an online game, "My Marriott Hotel," where users can simulate hotel-related tasks like running a restaurant kitchen, including buying ingredients and checking completed food orders. The game boosts Marriott's brand globally, but it is not aimed at screening or selecting employees.

    Some online recruiters targeting 20-something job seekers are also adding game-play techniques. The San Francisco-based job search site Identified.com recently added game-like rewards to encourage job applicants to provide more complete online information.

    "Companies use a lot of ways, including handwriting analysis, to identify the right people," says John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the outplacement company. "Sometimes it's a way of saying something about their culture."

    Using game mechanics is still an emerging technique, says Gabe Zichermann, chief executive of Gamification Co., which advises companies on incorporating game play thinking and tools with marketing. "It is not about making a literal game. More often it's about taking elements of games and repurposing them."

    To be sure, gamification's appeal is broader than recruitment and screening, and it can apply in areas like education and health services as a way to engage and motivate people. The use of gamification is predicted to "increase significantly in the next few years," according to a December 2011 study by consulting company Gartner, Inc. Some 70% of the world's top 2,000 companies will use game techniques as a behavioral motivator to recruit, train, and enhance employee performance, as well as to encourage new ideas, improve employee health, or build customer loyalty, among other goals, according to Brian Burke, the report's author.

    Since Upstream's challenge went online in late 2011, test takers have included at-home mothers, lawyers, writers, marketers, and a taxi driver. One of them was Katherine Martinez, a technical writer from Oakland, Calif., who was hired by the firm.

    "I found the link on Twitter. I love games and puzzles. I'm an 'Angry Birds' fan. And I thought it would be fun to try it out," she says. Martinez, 30, had recently been laid off from her job, and took the challenge on a lark.

    But, she says, it "was a lot more difficult than I thought because there are strict time limits to finish, and it requires thinking outside the box."

    About a week after she completed the challenge, she was screened by phone, then traveled to San Francisco for an interview. She moved to London earlier this year to work in Upstream's office there and is in training.

    "I don't think my resume alone would have attracted their interest," Martinez admits. But the game played to my strengths because it is a microcosm of what you execute on this job every day