Is your company always looking for highly skilled people, but can never seem to fill all of your open positions?  Do you find that you are unable to take advantage of geographically distributed pools of talent because the cost of recruiting remotely is too high?  Or are you finding good potential candidates, but failing in getting them to be excited and engaged around the opportunity to work for your company?  Virtual Reality (VR) technology can be used to give your HR team a critical edge in finding, recruiting, and onboarding the best talent to power your business.  VR can help you tap into the global workforce, show off your firm’s culture and people, and significantly reduce the costs of having to rehire for a role after a candidate is not a fit for your company.  The current COVID-19 pandemic has raised the bar for Human Resources teams to respond to the challenges of recruiting and retaining top talent. While VR was being used to help companies recruit prior to the pandemic, its usage and adoption has been accelerated forward and is rapidly being deployed by companies today.  Here are some questions designed to help you think about the possibilities of using VR in your talent acquisition strategy.

What if you could have candidates from hundreds or even thousands of miles away visit your office before arranging a visit in person?

 Showcasing how your company is an innovative and exciting place to work is a key selling point for attracting the best talent.  Companies are using 360-degree video to create immersive, VR experiences that let candidates see and experience a typical day at your office. These experiences are far more effective than paper pamphlets or brochures and can be delivered via VR headsets at job fairs, company recruiting events, or campus career centers.  Furthermore, these VR experiences can be viewed over and over by candidates, either in headsets or via web or mobile platforms – allowing your company to stand apart from its peers and engage candidates in an innovative and unique way few others can match. Candidates can also experience firsthand how their future role connects with the mission of your company, ascribing a greater sense of purpose to their work and inspiring them to apply and learn more about how they can contribute to your culture.

What if it was possible to conduct meaningful interviews remotely, in a way that empowers you with data to make the best hiring decisions possible?

 Virtual Reality is a very useful tool that is being employed by HR teams to increase the throughput and effectiveness of the interview process.  While tools such as Skype and Zoom are common nowadays in early interview rounds, those platforms can be highly distracting, and likely do not represent the real-world, person-to-person, daily interactions that candidates will be faced with should they get the job.  VR allows for meeting in immersive virtual rooms, where interviewer and interviewee sit across from one another, use life-like photo-realistic avatars, and have a similar experience as they would have in person.  Candidates in VR headsets are separated from outside distractions, allowing for greater focus and engagement.  VR also allows for more in-depth hiring evaluation to take place remotely such as candidate meetings with multiple members of your team and being asked to detail how they would handle certain scenarios presented to them.  Voice inflection, tone, and intrapersonal communication skills are on much fuller display in VR – making these evaluations much more effective than using video-conference platforms.

Perhaps the greatest potential for using Virtual Reality for interviewing is the data that can be collected.  Candidate eye movements can be tracked when presented certain scenarios within a headset, giving the recruiter deeper insight into skill comprehension and aptitude.  Voice patterns and speech tracking can be evaluated for communication skills.  Interviews can even be recorded and played back, allowing multiple members of your team to evaluate a candidate before making a decision.  Using VR for interviewing will help arm your team with objective, measured data from which to make informed hiring decisions.  And the benefits of VR interviewing are not just limited to candidate evaluation.  Use VR to train your hiring managers to be more effective interviewers.  Let them practice repeatedly in headsets before speaking with actual candidates.  Evaluate their performance and show them real world examples of proper interviewing techniques and etiquette.  VR has the potential not only to increase the quality and engagement of desired candidates, but also to sharpen the interview skills of your team and help them make the best hiring decisions for your company’s success.

What if you could meet every new hire your company makes, regardless of their geography, demands on your schedule, or the number of people you will need to meet with?

 Communicating your company’s vision and mission to new employees is critical to getting them comfortable in their new roles and committed to be an active part of your corporate culture.  VR is an effective tool for onboarding candidates in a standardized way for multiple office locations and remote workforces.  Companies use the immersion and retention benefits of onboarding using VR headsets to drive home important company values and best practices.  They use 360-degree video experiences to introduce CEO’s and key leaders in a memorable way, when such interactions are nearly impossible in the real world.  Imagine being able to guide the tour of the new office campus with every new or potential new hire?  What about having the ability for your HR team to walk through the important social and cultural districts, or logistical elements of getting to the office to prepare new hires for their first day?  VR onboarding experiences can be delivered to new hires in an immersive way that not only increase the retention and effectiveness of key corporate messages by new employees but also set your company apart as an innovative leader that truly cares about the successful careers of its team members.

Once hired, how can you thoughtfully engage your employees on a successful path of learning and development?

 Recruiting and onboarding are just the beginning to a successful talent management strategy. Career development through training and education is critical for employee retention and growing the next generation of leaders for your company.  VR has the ability to deliver training and education in a way that increases knowledge retention of important job skills and boosts employee engagement in their career progression.  Do your employees have to perform in high-risk scenarios, or use complex machinery that takes many years to master?  Using VR for training in these situations allows employees to learn by doing, in a safe environment, ideal for repeating the skills necessary to be effective.  VR is not just ideal for knowledge-based training either. Companies are using VR experiences to deliver training in interpersonal skills such as diversity and inclusion, and having difficult conversations with employees.  VR training not only has the benefit of an immersive environment to engage employees and help knowledge retention, but it also allows data to be collected via the headset to help trainers and HR teams make better informed decisions about employee skills and performance. VR training platforms are also designed to be compatible with many of the most popular LMS systems, allowing Directors of Learning to seamlessly manage the distribution and data capture of VR training.

If you are interested in these or other ways that Virtual Reality can increase the effectiveness of your firm’s talent strategy or Human Resources team, Get Real is the ideal partner to show you the way forward.

Contact Get Real today at info@getrealxr.com

Here are some interesting articles to read related to this blog post:

• https://www.hrtechnologist.com/articles/recruitment-onboarding/emerging-vr-ar-in-recruitment-the-simulation-process/
• https://arvrtech.eu/blog/virtual-reality-helps-human-resources/
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2020/04/02/enhancing-the-employee-experience-with-virtual-reality/#11e7418b6454
• https://www.recruitmenttech.com/how-ar-and-vr-enhance-the-recruitment-process/